adventure-seekers
Stefaans Brmmer investigates one of the most successful and audacious projects in Umkhonto weSizwe’s armed fight against apartheid
“UNDERSEAT storage for food supplies, camping equipment, tools, spares, etc,” was how a brochure touted the ample luggage capacity of the safari truck. What the brochure did not mention were the extra compartments – so secret they were not discovered in seven years of border-hopping – which had a capacity to hide three- quarters of a ton of AK47s, explosives, detonators and the like.
Now, for the first time, members of the underground struggle have told how they pulled off one of the most successful and audacious projects in the armed fight against apartheid.
Using a converted Bedford truck – with unsuspecting young Aussie and Kiwi travellers installed on the upholstered seats at the back – a small group of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) operatives and supporters smuggled up to 30 tons of war matriel from the frontline states into South Africa between 1987 and the early 1990s.
The project was run behind the facade of the tour company Africa Hinterland – an MK front funded “in brown paper envelopes” by the African National Congress – registered first in Britain and later also in South Africa. It accounted for the majority of MK arms brought into the country at the time: as much as 90% in the later years, according to some estimates.
Launched when “overland trucking” became popular among young tourists, Africa Hinterland still stood out: while overland tours generally went no further south than Harare or Gaborone, the ANC operation “broke” the cultural boycott, taking its passengers all the way to Johannesburg and Cape Town. Repercussions from the Anti- Apartheid Movement were feared, but never materialised.
The Mail & Guardian became an unwitting, minor partner when it published regular ads for the Africa Hinterland tours throughout the early 1990s and as late as December 1993. The actual smuggling of weapons appears to have been halted not long after an end to armed hostilities was agreed in the Pretoria Minute of August 1990, but the safari operation itself was maintained for some time as a fall-back option in case negotiations broke down.
Behind Africa Hinterland was a small London- based underground committee, the “London Traders”. Convened by the “red millionaire”, veteran communist businessman Mannie Brown, its members included the likes of fellow communist Wolfie Kodesh (for a short while), MK operatives Muff Andersson and her then- husband Calvin Khan, and a leading British academic who prefers to remain anonymous.
Also on the committee at one stage, and the designer of the truck, was Rodney Wilkinson, revealed in the M&G 18 months ago as the man who planted the limpet mines that severely damaged the Koeberg nuclear plant. The bombing, shortly before the plant was to have been commissioned in 1982, was one of the great coups of MK’s special operations division.
Both Brown and Kodesh were close friends of Joe Slovo, then MK chief-of-staff and head of special operations, under whose command Africa Hinterland was created. Aziz Pahad, then a leading light in the London underground and now deputy foreign minister, played a key role alongside Slovo.
Cassius Make, MK’s head of ordnance until he was assassinated by an apartheid death squad in Swaziland at the end of 1987, controlled the provision and distribution of the armaments. That role was taken over in 1988 by “Rashid”, by then Slovo’s successor as head of special operations. He is now a senior member of the Defence Secretariat.
Africa Hinterland has, since its disbandment, remained one of the ANC alliance’s best-kept secrets, perhaps among other reasons because arms remain a sensitive subject in violence-ridden South Africa. But the main local players have applied for amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which means inevitable exposure.
Brown said the project had brought greater security to MK arms-smuggling operations. Previously, weapons had been brought into South Africa in piecemeal fashion, often in hidden compartments of cars, but the dangers were many and the turnover low. “This was successful, whereas the others were risky.” That “innocent tourists were used as cover” still bothers him, “but drivers were trained to avoid accidents”.
The overland idea was first mooted in the late Sixties, when Slovo visited Brown in London. Brown had gone into exile in 1963 after possible exposure in a scheme to help political prisoners escape. Brown sent his sons on an overland trip, but they reported the chances of detection too great.
By the 1980s it was different: better technologies had been developed to seal arms, preventing detection by sniffer dogs, and the frontline states had become favourably disposed towards the armed struggle. An endless supply of arms was available from the Eastern bloc countries.
Wilkinson arrived in London in 1983, fresh from his bombing escapade at Koeberg. In liaison with Pahad, he started working on plans for the overland truck. Slovo brought Wilkinson and Brown together.
Said Brown: “[Wilkinson] explained to me his design. Joe asked me, would it work; I said I didn’t see how it couldn’t work … It was a brilliant design.”
It was simple: luggage and camping equipment were stored under the passenger seats, but with access only from outside the truck body. The cavities went another 10cm deeper along the entire 5m length of the passenger section, but blocked off from the outside and accessible only from under the passenger seats. Hidden rods undid the seat upholstery, revealing metal covers which were unbolted to access the smuggling compartments.
The plan was on: the ANC London office paid the first funds to Brown on May 10 1985, and on June 30 1986 Africa Hinterland was registered as a British company. Wilkinson spent the better part of 1986 at a workshop he rented in Ipswich, converting a brand-new Bedford truck into an overlander. His budget: 80 000, including the price of the vehicle.
Around Christmas 1986 the truck was shipped to Kenya’s port of Mombasa. Two months later the first of the trips started along a 10 000km route from Nairobi through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe or Botswana to South Africa – visiting, of course, all the tourist attractions along the way.
Except when a “dry run” was undertaken because of security scares, the passengers would be separated from the truck in Lusaka while it was being “serviced” by Khan. The guns and explosives, already sealed in grease, plastic and heavy tin-foil, and packed in boxes made to fit the oblong compartments, were stashed.
Once in South Africa, the consignment was received by supporters recruited and trained by the ordinance section’s Andersson and Khan under Make, and later Rashid.
The drivers would hire a van under false names, transfer the weapons to it, and leave it at predetermined parking lots – such as at Eastgate shopping centre in Johannesburg or the Pick ‘n Pay headquarters building in Claremont, Cape Town.
Brown said: “The internal and external units never came into contact [to protect identities]. The internals were told to look for certain signals on the vehicle.” The “internals” would remove the van, empty it and return it to the same place for the drivers to collect.
Brown said: “Of course the real heroes of this story are the drivers. They have not been celebrated … They were the ones who risked their liberty, while I was sitting comfortably in London.”
After Rashid took over, it was decided to run the tours from South Africa. Shorter two-week safaris (against the earlier two months) meant a faster turnaround. The shift took place about the same time the ANC was unbanned.
The task of keeping the tour company going and driving the truck now fell largely to a young Dutch citizen, the latest in a string of foreign drivers. He would drop the travellers in a game park, then load the consignment somewhere in Zimbabwe.
The driver said from Amsterdam this week: “Crossing the border, one always had the odd nervous moment. But we were running a safari … The soldiers at the border would just see a bunch of nice tourists.”
The driver said the arms smuggling continued for a while after the Pretoria Minute was signed – probably until early 1991 – but MK remained involved in the company until about the end of 1992, “just to make sure that if negotiations broke down we had the opportunity to take it up again”. After that, until 1994, he continued running Africa Hinterland as a purely commercial operation.
Technically, MK’s continued role in Africa Hinterland after August 1990 probably contravened the Pretoria Minute. But, said Jakkie Cillliers of the Institute for Security Studies: “Everybody hedged their bets. The government was doing it; the ANC was doing it … It was par for the course.”