Special Hearings — Political Party — 1998-05-06

MASUA GERARD PATRICK LEKOTA: Mr Chairperson, if I may just add to this reply.  It is important to understand that in all regions and localities where we had affiliates, the leadership of those affiliates took responsibility and we are accountable to the National Executive ultimately for the activities of our membership there.
 It will be seen for instance, if one looks at the second founding document of the UDF, the working principles of the UDF, it says quite clearly and I quote"
"All regional formations and member organisations shall have complete independence within the umbrella of the United Democratic Front provided that actions and policies of members are not inconsistent with the policy of the UDF".
So any affiliated organisation was guided first of all by the generally accepted non violent policy of the UDF and the pronouncements of the leadership at national and provincial or regional levels and so on reached membership via established organisational leadership in those areas.  
 So to a very large extent few activities took place in the regions, in the areas in which we had affiliates without control of accountable leadership.  Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

AZHAR CACHALIA: If I may just add to the answers already given.   I think when we deal with the question of ungovernability of South Africa and the inability of the apartheid system to continue operating in the same old ways, our analysis of the situation should not be a simplistic one where you look at the liberation movement on one side or the UDF on one side and the regime on the other.  There is a whole complex of factors which contributed to the ungovernability at that time.
 And if we may just highlight some of them.  Firstly contradictions had begun to sharpen within the apartheid system itself but also contradictions between the National Party led government and the private sector, business, a bit capital in South Africa.  You would recall how the rubicon speech of PW Botha also contributed to that, when the whole world was waiting on him to give a message of hope and he gave something that devastated virtually the whole world and it was the business sector that said it's time for him to go.  
 He had problems with his own ministers, like Pik Botha and others.  But also the international community had begun to intensify the isolation of South Africa.  They had run into problems with regard to their ability to pay international loans.  
 You would recall that he then imposed a moratorium on the payment of loans to foreign banks and so on.  At that stage I think he was required to pay about 12 billion and he said: "We are not going to pay it".  He delayed it for about six months or so.
 Now you had all these contradictions, you had contradictions of your junior partners in that government, Labour Party Allen Hendrickse and others, beginning to defy apartheid, marching on the beaches and saying we're not going to respect this apartheid rules anymore.  So there was a whole complex of these contradictions which really contributed to the ungovernability of that time. 
 But I think I must also say that - by the way, the UDF never adopted a policy of making the country ungovernable but certainly we were when it was becoming more and more difficult for apartheid to continue governing.
 But we may also say that we are being asked, is it the element of undisciplined action or the elements of disciplined action which contributed maximally to making it difficult for the regime to govern.  I would say it would be the elements of disciplined action which contributed to that because you cannot sustain mass action which is not disciplined, it cannot be sustained.  In due course it falls apart.  
 You can sustain it only if it is tied to disciplined organisation and thus the UDF continually insisted that we could not rely on spontaneous actions, we needed to have our people mobilised, disciplined and give them political education so that they do not engage in acts of bravado where they simply want to confront a heavily armed enemy without being able to read moments when it is dangerous to take certain actions.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.
 Mr Mpshe, won't you go down to the next cluster of questions?

UNKNOWN: Mr Chair, I will do so but Mr Chair I wonder whether the other questions that I posed have been answered.  If the Chair was aware of the answers that came from the delegations, they concentrated on the ungovernability and did not respond to the first three questions that I posed.

CHAIRPERSON: Why don't you re-state them?

UNKNOWN: Which comrade Popo had allocated to certain members of the panel.  I will repeat them Mr Chairman, for convenience.

CHAIRPERSON: I think Mr Morobe answered the first question about the concern of lack of capacity to deal with those problems but the other more precise question you posed I think was, what active steps were taken in the limited capacity one did have at the time to meet the situation.  Am I right?

UNKNOWN: That is correct Mr Chair and that is when I referred to page 9 and page 10 of the submission.

CHAIRPERSON: Could we have a response to that please?

UNKNOWN: Chairperson you must know that one of the key objectives of the regime at the time was to continually incapacitate the UDF, continually do so.
 We had tens of thousands of our activists detained without trial during the period from around 1985 to 1990 and this is no exaggeration.  Just about anybody in any position of leadership, at a national, regional or local level had ended up in prison.  So incapacity certainly was a matter of concern.
 We had taken tremendous risks ourselves to continually build the capacity of the UDF.  In fact Murphy, Morobe and I were arrested in Port Elizabeth in 1987 I think it was when just about every one of our activists, virtually even rank and file were in prison in the greater Port Elizabeth area and we had gone there to revive our structures in order to build capacity and we ourselves got arrested in the process of doing that.   So we had taken great concern but we never ever pretended to be the leaders of the liberation struggle, we were the leaders of the UDF, not the leaders of the liberation movement which was much bigger than the UDF, which is a huge big thing and beyond our capacity to control.  We had no ambition to do it.  
 In fact our view was that the ANC led the liberation struggle and was at the helm of the liberation movement, so what we attended to was UDF structures which were, had perhaps a great impact but a limited impact within the entire liberation struggle and liberation movement if one may say so.  We did not attempt to do everything that we were not able to do as such.
 We were also mindful of the struggle intensifies and as has happened in struggles elsewhere in the world, you will have more and more independent action on the part of masses.  That people more and more were displaying a characteristic that they did not need an instruction from anybody to fight the enemy but people felt duty bound to fight the enemy so they did not wait for an instruction to say: "May we launch a campaign, may we march in our own area and may we organise a consumer boycott" or something of that sort.  So there was quite a lot of independent action but even that generally organised independent action.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Mpshe?