TUESDAY, 3.00PM
ANC deputy president Thabo Mbeki acknowledged today that “thing had gone wrong” when township self defence units were given arms from ANC caches in the early nineties. Mbeki, leading Truth Commission evidence for the ANC for the second day, had been challenged by commissioner Hanif Vally on whether the ANC had been irresponsible in arming and training a force over which it would have no control.
Mbeki said the ANC had complained to the government about the inability of township communities to defend themselves from attack during the early nineties, when mystery attacks on communities had been commonplace. Former Defence Minister Magnus Malan had made the suggestion that weapons from ANC caches be licenced and handed over to the Self Defence Units.
“An attempt was made to keep an eye on the SDUs by the national leadership. There were instances where we had to intervene when there were all sorts of crazy things.” In one incident, he had been alerted to a plan by an SDU to blow up a hostel housing Zulu speaking workers on the East Rand. “We intervened and that did not happen.”
Acknowledging the continued proliferation of weapons in South Africa, Mbeki stressed that the ANC had never distributed arms to its cadres on a massive scale. “We were concerned about the consequences of arming everybody. When Umkhonto we Sizwe distributed weapons, it was to specific people. It was not like handing out sweets in the street.”
Mbeki said the continued availability of weapons in South Africa was a source of concern, and there was new evidence suggesting that licensing authorities were helping gangsters to license their weapons.
Deputy Defence Minister Ronnie Kasrils, previously MK’s intelligence chief, later told reporters that less than a thousand weapons had been handed to SDUs, of which about 800 were retrieved and handed to the military authorities.