Special Hearings — Armed Forces Hearings — 1997-10-10

MR GOOSEN: No I accept that, that those two issues are not linked in my view at all.
 Could I perhaps look to a slightly broader, if you like a broader issue and go back to some questions asked right at the outset of this session relating to the notion of people's war. The mobilisation of an irregular army in a sense, and I use the term irregular in a sense that I would for a moment regard trained MK combatants organised as a regular army, so an irregular army in the sense of the development and formation of armed groupings within townships, that's that a critical element of the notion of people's war?  
 And I think in the submission made by the ANC previously is recognition that those formations, those armed formations were not under the command of MK, under the direct control of MK, but that they may have acted in line with MK directives, MK positions.  In a situation where you embark on a strategy of people's war the question is how do you shut down that mobilisation?  And I want to ask this specific question in relation to the cessation of armed activities, suspension of armed struggle by the ANC, what steps did the African National, what steps did MK leadership take to ensure the, for want of a better word, the demobilisation of armed formations in the townships, the people's army?

SATHYANDRANATH RAGUNANAN MAC MAHARAJ: Chairperson, the idea of self-defence units doesn't date from 1990 only, it pre-dates that.  It dates it to mid-late eighties, '87, when repression had reached intolerable levels in the
country.  So we saw that need as a result of pressure from the ground, and there we defined, I think, three levels of cadres, the highest level being the MK officer.  We recognised that to be of maximum benefit it could not, the SDU's could not function in those conditions under a structure from Lusaka.  They had to be community based, community led.  So we made a clear distinction between the type of combatants that would be involved in the people's war with the officer of the MK critical to bringing not only sophisticated skills but firm political grounding linked to the community leaders.
 The situation changed in 1990.  The decision taken by the National Executive in July 1990 to go to the Pretoria discussions and offer a cessation of hostilities, a cessation of the armed struggle, suspension of the armed struggle, was taken by the NEC and communicated and a matter of debate thereafter even within the ANC, but it was a decision taken and communicated publicly and across the length and breadth of our structures.  And even when communicated as a decision it was allowed to be debated.  But that did not mean that the cessation of hostilities, of the suspension of the armed struggle meant stop the SDUs, because the violence in the black community was escalating and then the question of the SDUs arose in a different context now, and that is where Deputy President Mbeki related it to the DF Malan accord.  So while the term SDU is 
there I am saying there was a change in the environment in which the need for it arose.  Ideally 1990 should have brought an end to all the killings in this country, it didn't.  It led to an escalation of the killings and the need for the SDUs to defend the community.  
 So we did not have to communicate and say now stop the SDUs, because if I remember correctly the NEC decided to suspend the armed struggle around the 20th, 22nd of July, and I was in detention on the 25th and on the 26th of July General Basie Smith came to see me at Sandton Police Station and said the wave of violence that is going to hit this country will make everything else a child's play, and when I came out indeed, August, September, was a murderous time for our people in the townships. So that's the context.  So we did not go out to say stop the SDU's but we certainly went out to the MK combatants that the armed struggle is now suspended.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Kasrils.

RONNIE KASRILS: Yes, just taking up that point Chairperson that as far as the organised contingents of MK were concerned the record is a very good one, because as Mac Maharaj points out with the August decision, August 1990 by the ANC, cessation of hostilities, I think that's the DF Malan Agreement, MK as an organised unit there was absolute obedience, absolute discipline, and that's the way a revolutionary movement exercises and shows it can exercise very
good control.
 Now if I can just elaborate a little in a theoretical way, because Mr Goosen is looking at something we were developing, particularly in the latter half of the eighties, and this was in Sishaba, I certainly contributed to this discussion, how we saw the armed struggle developing into people's war.  Chris Hani made many statements and articles and interviews on that.  Firstly, if I could just correct you, we didn't see MK as a regular force.  A regular force is the professional armed structures of a State, and an insurrectionary movement or a guerilla movement is an irregular force, so MK we always knew it as a guerilla army, an irregular force, not organised on the formal lines of a regular army, a conventional army, but we viewed MK as the advanced armed military detachment of the revolution, if I can use that term.  And as the struggle developed our whole focus was similar to that of other revolutionary movements, whether in Nicaragua, Sandanistas in Salvador, the Vietnamese, and very influenced, as the green book shows, by the Vietnamese theory which in a sense embodied revolutionary guerilla warfare from China and many other countries in history, was that the advance vanguard is actually small by nature, and you are seeking to link with the people in terms of freeing the people and freeing a country.  
 And Mac Maharaj earlier talked about the fact that for us, and 
ours was very particular this way, we never saw the armed struggle as the leading element or the only element, we viewed the mass struggle, the people's struggle, strikes etc as fundamental.  But in terms of that armed struggle we saw the need, and had that objective of building up a more popular base for armed struggle, our people showed throughout the seventies and very much into the eighties, the youth particularly but there were workers and people of the rural areas, that they were seeking to replace the stones they threw at the police and the defence force with guns.  They realised this was the only way to protect themselves and advance the struggle.  And any revolutionary movement looks to those advance sections now of the people, the most militant elements, to bring them in to armed action. 
 And in our theory we spoke about, Mr Goosen the objective of organising - we used the term in the mid- eighties, it later came to be called the SDU's of a people's militia and we defined it, now this isn't strict ANC or MK theory it was more a discourse which did gain ground, that a people's militia we saw as people in localities struggling with sticks and stones in hand as being the type of people we would want to bring in as our reserve and support of MK.
 That then became the SDU's and as Mr Maharaj has pointed out and Mr Mbeki previously in a totally different context of that 
attempt at low intensity warfare against us, particularly in 1990 and through to '94, to try and subvert the way the struggle was going, and that then changed.  And in our approach with the ceasefire, the ban lifted on the ANC but the problem the communities had of needing to defend themselves, we tried to make that a more community based SDU and did everything possible to assist and give guidance and so on.  So I hope that helps with the clarification.

CHAIRPERSON: Just to clarify, Mr Maharaj, you were telling us that there were three levels of leadership and you gave us the MK officer, but I think in the description I missed out the other two or you didn't give it to us, I'm not sure.