Historiography of the ANC: conflicting views

By Vladimir Shubin

 

 

Any researcher who is dealing with the problems of the liberation movement in South Africa and its leading organisation – the African National Congress (ANC) inevitably faces a number of questions, and the answers to them are important not only for the history but for better understanding of the current developments in South Africa. What forced the movement to begin using armed struggle? How did the ANC survive in underground and exile during several decades and then again become an undisputed leader of the anti-apartheid forces? What role did ANC’s co-operation with Moscow play in this respect the? How effective were the actions of the ANC armed wing – Umkhonto we Sizwe? What finally allowed the ANC to begin negotiations with the government in Pretoria under acceptable conditions and to reach political settlement?

 

Archive material in South Africa and Russia

In search for answers to these questions a historian, apart from interviews of participants, must look first and foremost for primary sources that is for archive materials. A lot of them were collected in the Department of Historical Documents of the Mayibuye Centre of History and Culture at the University of the Western Cape. When in 1996 the Government of the RSA decided to create the Robben Island Museum, these Archives became a “joint venture” of the Museum and the UWC and known as The UWC-Robben Island Mayibuye Archives, the official collections management unit of the RIM. These Archives provide a unique and often fragile documentary record of South African history and culture, particularly with regard to the apartheid period, the freedom struggle and political imprisonment in South Africa. The Mayibuye Archives comprise more than 100,000 photographs, 10,000 film and video recordings, 5,000 artefacts, 2,000 oral history tapes, 2,000 posters from the struggle, more than 300 collections of historical documents and an extensive art collection.[1]

Especially valuable for researches are the ANC materials which were transferred to the Archives from the ANC Headquarters in Lusaka (1971-1991) and its office in London (1960-1990) as well as collections of materials of prominent ANC and SACP leaders such as Yusuf Dadoo and Brian Bunting. They are quite versatile – from the minutes of meetings of the ANC and SACP highest bodies and personal notes of their leaders to letters and reports sent to the exile leadership of the liberation movement by underground workers and political prisoners.

Very interesting are tapes with 336 interviews taken in exile by Hilda Bernstein (Watts), a prominent activist and about 150 interviews taken in South Africa by the late veteran of the revolutionary movement Wolfie Kodesh as well as interviews with commanders and fighters of MK, taken by Howard Barrel, a journalist, historian and former ANC cadre.

Another collection – of Jack and Ray Simons, two leading figures in the South African revolutionary movement – is housed in the library of the University of Cape Town. This collection catalogised by Annica van Gylswyk, a NAI librarian, contains mainly materials of the South African labour movement; of a special interest there are SACP “internal” bulletins (1976-1988).

 

A good part of the ANC archives, including materials of ANC offices in a number of countries and those of the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College (SOMAFCO) were donated to the University of Fort Hare,[2] the alma mater of Nelson Mandela and some other ANC leaders. Unfortunately it took quite a time to put them in order and to make really accessible for researchers (though they have to travel a long distance to get there). In any case it is deplorable that the liberation movement ANC archive materials are divided between these three and some other institutions.

Official statements of the ANC and its allies, besides the archives, can be founded as a rule in their periodicals published abroad and partly illegally in South Africa.

 

As a Russian scholar I am glad to say that important sources on the history of the liberation movements in South Africa are available in our country as well. Primarily these are documents housed in the Russian State Archive of Modern History (former CPSU archive). The author, so to say, was lucky to get acquainted (at least partly) with those documents, in particular, with the collection of the CPSU Central Committee Secretariat in the early 1990s before they were “sealed” again pending institutionalised declassification. The most fascinating there are documents connected with the re-establishment of contacts between Moscow and the opposition in South Africa in 1950 – 1960s. Some documents on South Africa are available also in Collection no. 89, declassified as evidence by the state during so called “CPSU case” in the Constitutional Court of Russia in 1992.

Among other Moscow archives I can single out the archive materials of the former Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee, which for three decades maintained active and versatile ties with the ANC. Among these materials are minutes of discussions with prominent leaders of the Congress and other South Africans who visited Moscow. At present “official”, that is registered materials of that Committee are housed in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, and other materials, so called “current archive” – in the Institute for African Studies.

 

Historiography on South African liberation struggle is vast; it is enough to say that the most comprehensive bibliography, The ANC and Black Workers in South Africa, 1912-1992: an Annotated Bibliography by Peter Limb contains over four thousand entries.[3] Earlier (and much shorter) works deserve attention as well such as A. Kagan’s The African National Congress: a Bibliography published by the United Nations Centre Against Apartheid.[4] South African researcher Sandile Schalk together with the author presented an Introductory Bibliography of Umkhonto we Sizwe in the 1960sat the Conference on the Beginning of the Armed Struggle in South Africa, held in the Mayibuye Centre in 1995.[5]

Among historiographical works of the Russian academics one has to single out a corresponding part of South Africa. The Rise of the Protest. 1880-1924 by Apollon Davidson, аs well as articles buy him and Irina Filatova.[6]

 

Russian literature dealing with the ANC

Russian historians paid great attention to the modern history of South Africa. However, the number of works devoted specifically to the ANC history is rather small. The above mentioned book by Davidson remains a “classical” work on this theme. Although it is dedicated to the conception of the South African national liberation and socialist movements at the end of the nineteenth and in the first two decades of the twentieth century, the study of the problems presented in it goes far beyond this chronological framework. In particular, Davidson correctly noted that the South African forces of protest had accumulated great experience, socially very significant, but little known,[7] and that one could only be surprised, how little was said and written about that positive experience of international collaboration, which had been built up in South Africa during several decades.[8]

The activities of the ANC and its allies in the period after its banning in 1960, unfortunately, was not the object of the special studies of Russian academics. It was examined in the monographs South African working class in the struggle against reaction and racism and The black dwellers of the “white” city by Valentin Gorodnov and in the monograph Struggle of the black population of the RSA (1970s) by late Alexey Makarov (all in Russian) and in the number of the collective works of the researchers of the Institute for African Studies, however, not as the main object of these studies. [9]

As a whole one has to state that the policy and practice of the ANC was mostly discussed in the USSR/Russia in periodical articles. The exception is Democratic and black nationalism and Marxism and left extremism by Vladimir Tikhomirov (also in Russian) from his series Development of the political thought in South Africa. 1948-1988.[10] However his political bias and non-critical use of mostly secondary sources hardly makes it possible to consider these books as valuable academic works.

Regrettably in the 1990s the current history of the ANC in effect ceased to be an object of the research by Russian historians which for the valid reasons were concentrated on the study of newly available archive materials, albeit of the earlier period, especially the documents of Comintern. It resulted in a chapter “Comintern and Africa” by Davidson in a “documented history“ of relations between the USSR and Africa“ as well as in articles and papers by him, Gorodnov and Filatova.[11]

 

Western literature on the ANC

As far as the academics of the West are concerned, the rise of the anti-apartheid movement in the early 1960s generated their significant interest for some years. Most known in this respect became the books of the American researchers – Urban Revolt in South Africa, 1960-1964: a Case Study by Edward Feit and African Liberation Movements: Contemporary Struggles Against White Minority Rule by Richard Gibson.[12] However, none of them are characterised by fairness in the examination of the ANC activities. Moreover these two books, especially the work of Feit is based in many respects on the publications of the renegades of liberation movement, and also the materials of the court cases against liberation fighters which contained numerous distortions of history.

The most serious work of western researchers are the books of American scientists Thomas Karis and Gail Gerhart from a series From Protest to Challenge: a Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa.[13] The third volume is dedicated to the period of 1953-1964, and the fifth to the period of 1964-1979. (The fourth volume, Political Profiles was prepared by Karis together with Gwendolyn Carter, contains the biographies of prominent participants of the movement.) The combination of extensive documentary material with the fundamental introductory articles, which can be regarded as independent works (divisions on the ANC history in them were written by Karis) is the special feature of these books.

 

The questions of the ANC activities were touched upon also in Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 by Tom Lodge.[14] Its author should be commended for the very fact of publishing a book on this subject in apartheid South Africa. Naturally, it became a “basic reading” for many scholars and students. Unfortunately, however, the book contained a number of errors which were multiplied when the book was uncritically quoted or referred to. Besides, Lodge devoted much more space to the PAC than to the ANC both chapters – "Guerrillas and Insurrectionists 1961-1965" and "Revolutionary Exile Politics" though by the time of publication of his book the difference in the "political weight" of these two organisations was clear enough.

Among other books which deserve attention are Whirlwind before the Storm: The Origins and Developments of the Uprising in Soweto and the Rest of South Africa. June-Dec. 1976, the book dedicated to events in Soweto in 1976 by Alan Brooks and Jeremy Brickhill, and in Moses Kotane: South African Revolutionary: a Political Biography by Brian Bunting.[15]

 

In a popular form the history of liberation movement in South Africa was presented in South Africa Belongs to Us: a History of the ANC by Francis Meli, The Struggle: a History of the ANC by Heidi Holland and National Struggle, Class Struggle: South Africa since 1870 by John Pampalis (the second, enlarged edition of this book was published under the title Foundations of the New South Africa). In the first of them the complex history of the ANC was presented in a rather simplified and so to say “sanitised” from but in the absence of more comprehensive books at that time its publication still played a useful role.[16]

In the early 1990s a series of small biographical books They fought for Freedom began to be published in South Africa. However unfortunately its first issues were not free from inaccuracies, and since these books are intended for the wide readership there is a danger that those errors will be engraved in the memory of the new generations of South Africans.

As to the activities of Umkhonto we Sizwe it looks like just two books have been devoted to it so far: MK: the ANC's Armed Struggle by Howard Barrel and a pamphlet Submit or Fight! 30 Years of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the History of a People's Army, published by the ANC Political Education Section.[17]

 

The autobiographies

In recent years one after another began appearing the books of direct participants in the liberation struggle in South Africa, in essence of memoirs nature. The first of them was Ronnie Kasrils’ “’Armed and Dangerous’: My Undercover Struggle Against Apartheid”, published in 1993.[18]

Most known memoir book is A Long Walk to Freedom. The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela  written by the ANC leader with participation of American journalist Richard Stengel.[19] It should be noted however that since Mandela for a long time was imprisoned, often in the almost complete isolation from its comrades, who were remaining free, this book is vital as a source first of all for the study of events prior to August 1962, i.e., to its arrest, and of the period of late 1980s – early 1990s.

Important factual material about the developments in 1950s – early 1960s is contained in the works of Gowan Mbeki, the late patriarch of the South African liberation movement (and the father of the incumbent President of South Africa), who for the long years was a member of the ANC and SACP leadership.[20]

Some periods of anti-racist liberation struggle are described in the memoirs of Joe Slovo, a prominent leader of the SACP, ANC and Umkhonto. Unfortunately they were not finished before his death in 1995.[21]

 

Of other memoirs one has to single out Memory against Forgetting. Memoirs from a Life in South African Politics by Lionel (“Rusty”) Bernstein, a veteran of the liberation struggle and one of the accused at Rivonia trial in 1963-1964.[22] Anthony Simpson, British journalist and the author of the best (so far) biography of Mandela,[23] rightly calls “Rusty’s” book “well-told and unpretentious story”.[24] Indeed, “unpretentiousness” is a striking feature of Bernstein's book (and I should say, of his whole life). Simpson is also very right when he says:

“…the sacrifices of Bernsteins and their white colleagues on the left would yield a crucial political reward and significance for South Africa’s future: for it showed to young black nationalist leaders of the forties, including the young Mandela, that there were white people who were prepared to abandon their privileges and identify themselves completely with the African predicament…”.[25]

However rich the picture painted by Bernstein is, for a historian, nevertheless, some questions remain. Perhaps exactly due to his “unpretentiousness” he obviously belittles his own role in the crucial turn to the armed struggle in South Africa. He just says that “an interim decision” on thus matter was taken at the SACP Conference “in the end of 1960”[26] and that by the middle of the year (1961) “our [SACP] groups in Johannesburg had been up and running for some time” to be merged later with the units organised by Nelson Mandela.[27]

One would like to hear more about Bernstein’s own role in launching the MK. He insists that he “was not ever a member” of MK and technically he is right,[28] but according to an eye witness it was him, then a member of the SACP Executive Committee, who delivered a crucial report on the matter:

“Rusty gave this report for armed struggle. It was discussed at some length and accepted, it was very unspecific but everybody knew that some steps would be taken in this direction and in fact it was a very important decision”.[29]

The book contains very precise and very warm characteristics, given by Bernstein to the top leaders of the ANC – Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu.[30] In particular he correctly notes that Sisulu “was always hugely under-recognized by the world outside”.[31] Nevertheless, one would expect from Bernstein more details on such an obscure issue as the relations between Nelson Mandela and the SACP in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

However it is a pity that Bernstein decided to end his memoirs at 1964. True, the next 30 year of his life, before the birth of a New South Africa were perhaps less exiting, but he could say a lot, for example, about the crucial SACP Central Committee meeting in Moscow in 1970 or about debatable relations between the Party and the ANC at that time.

 

Two memoir books are devoted to a large extent to prison experience – Convictions. A woman political prisoner remembers by Jean Middleton,[32] and Inside Apartheid’s Prisons. Notes and Letters of Struggle by Raymond Suttner,[33] a prominent representative of the generation of underground activists who joined the liberation struggle in the early 1970s,“in the dark years between Rivonia trial and the Soweto uprising”, at the time when few could have foreseen that in the 1990s South Africa “would be enjoying liberty from apartheid, under a government led by the ANC”. [34]

Suttner in his book in particular strongly disagrees with those who believe that the people engaged in “efforts to overthrow the South Africa state…to create an insurrectionary climate” were naive and, moreover, irresponsible, that they are “captives of an ‘all or nothing…revolution or reform’ mindset” In Suttner’s opinion, those opportunities for reform were, on the opposite, “fully exploited – by the liberation movement, by the labour movement, the UDF and its affiliates”, and the insurrectionary path was taken because “the political space was limited”. He insists that these very “attempts in insurrection” brought the regime to the negotiation table and made “more peaceful transformation” possible.[35] Suttner stops short of inquiring in the motives behind such criticism of the liberation movement fighters, but in my opinion what lays behind it often is an attempt to justify one’s own inaction.

Reflections in Prison, another book written by political prisoners and edited by one of them, Mac Maharaj, is of a different nature.[36] It contains notes made by Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and other prominent fighters against apartheid in the mid-1970s at the Robben Island Prison. It has a specific value because it gives the reader a chance to compare hopes they had for the post-apartheid future with the reality of South Africa nowadays.

 

On the other hand so to say “commissioned” and simply fictitious publications began appearing as well. The first type includes Mbokodo: inside MK. Mwezi Twala, a soldier's story, a book written by a former ANC and Umkhonto member,[37] one of the leaders of the 1984 mutiny in the ANC camps in Angola who later cross over to the Inkatha Freedom Party and co-authored by the IFP prominent member Ed Bernard, and the second – Waiting in the Wings, a book by Joseph Kobo, a leader of an African religious sect, containing boastful stories about his role in the liberation struggle, far away from the truth.[38]

 

Analyses of the ANC

Two publications, directly dedicated to history the ANC history claim to have a more serious and more academic nature – Comrades against Apartheid: The ANC and SACP in Exile by Stephen Ellis and Tsepo Sechaba,[39] and The ANC and the Liberation Struggle. A Critical Political Biography by Dale McKinley.[40] Although they are written by the authors, who stand, it would seem, on the opposite positions, one by the former editor of the British periodical Africa Confidential together with a renegade from ANC and SACP who had hidden his identity under the name “Sechaba” (“People”) he never deserved, and the second by the “leftist” SACP staff member (who was later expelled from the Party) they have one thing in common – a very biased attitude to the ANC and especially to its relations with Moscow.

 

Thus, recognising the dubious nature of the information, supplied by traitors and defectors, Ellis and Sechaba use it and thus draw themselves (as well as poorly informed readers) into trouble. One of many cases: they refer to "unpublished document on the CPSA" written by a undercover police agent that claimed that "the Freedom Charter was sent to Moscow Africa Institute for approval".[41] Personally I would be proud of the Institute’s association with such an important historical document; the only problem is that the decision to form the Institute was taken in June 1959, exactly four years after the Freedom Charter had been adopted!

Ellis and his co-author used anonymous (and highly dubious) sources to describe Soviet intentions and policies after the famous Gorbachev-Reagan summit in Reykjavik in October 1986. The meeting was not the first between the two leaders, as Ellis claims, neither did it “set a groundwork for a comprehensive deal”.[42] There was no “redefining zones of influence” in Reykjavik and, contrary to Ellis’s claims, the Soviet government did not:

“..commit itself to withdraw its forces or to refrain from seeking the overthrow of the existing order [in South Africa], leaving the field to the USA and its allies on the ground”.

Ellis and Sechaba allege that South Africa was included in Reykjavik “in the category of countries where the USSR would henceforth refrain from aggression” and that the Soviet Union agreed it would no longer “throw its weight behind the effort by the ANC and the SACP to ferment a revolution in South Africa”.[43] In fact the minutes of the Reykjavik summit published in Moscow show that South Africa was not mentioned there at all, neither by Gorbachev, nor by Reagan![44]

 

McKinley’s book deserves a special attention because he claims to cover “the cumulative history” of the ANC – over eight decades.[45] McKinley writes in the preface that his book “does not attempt to look objectively at the liberation struggle” and that it was born of his desire “to make a critical contribution to the ongoing struggle”.[46] Every author is subjective in one or another way, but I am afraid, if somebody does not even attempt "to look [and write] objectively", he/she has the chance of doing a disservice rather than “to make a contribution”, to “the ongoing struggle of workers and the poor (not only South African)” McKinley is so concerned about.[47]

McKinley is eager to prove that the present policy of the ANC government is a logical continuation of its traditional “policy of accommodation”. But in doing so he makes at least two mistakes. McKinley writes:

“...there have been many times when this [ANC and SACP] alliance – especially after the incorporation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in 1986 – has proposed the ultimate goal of socialism for South Africa”.

He insists that although “this goal is associated more with the SACP and COSATU than with the ANC itself” because of the overlapping membership, “to disassociate the goal of socialism from the ANC is a misdirected and convenient emission”.[48] No reference is given, however, both public statements and recently “disclosed” internal documents of the Congress show the opposite. For example the 1979 “Green Book” says:

“On the light of the need to attract the broadest range of social forces amongst the oppressed to the national democratic revolution, a direct or indirect commitment at this stage to a continuing revolution which would lead to a socialist order unduly narrow this line-up of social forces”.[49]

So, why did the author make such a detour from the historical reality? Is it because by ascribing to the ANC the goal it had not put for itself, it becomes easier for McKinley to criticise it for abandoning it?

Secondly, McKinley looks to be obsessed with “Stalinism” and for him anything originated (or allegedly originated) from Moscow, whether it is the strategy of popular front in the mid-1930s or the idea of political settlement in the late 1980, is a sin. However, it was the defeat of (in his terminology) "Stalinist" forces in the USSR, the disappearance of the state which could provide (and did provide) valuable support to the developing countries and, more important, served as counterbalance to the Western imperialist policy, that became one of the reasons for slowing down socio-economic transformations in South Africa.

Moreover, if to use this controversial term the way it is used by McKinley (and by most of the Western academics), his methods can be exactly called “Stalinist”. His style sometimes resembles the style of a prosecutor rather than of an academic. McKinley accuses leaders of the ANC of all kind of sins:

“...the ANC-led struggle for the liberation of South Africa has ignored the very people in whose name that struggle was”…“the ANC once again found itself lagging behind the militancy of the masses”…“ANC’s narrow view of national liberation”…“The leadership of the ANC...did not trust the capabilities and potential of grass root struggle”…“the ANC leadership was not being honest – either to itself or to those it was leading”…“the ANC‘s strategic approach to the liberation struggle had also precluded the building of...internal structures”. [50]

And when the success of the movement is undeniable, McKinley is trying to question the motives:

“Whatever gains Operation Vula had managed to secure... it is questionable what commitment the externalised ANC leadership had to utilise those gains”.[51]

Another reason of McKinley’s failure lays in the fact that he bases his writings to a large extend on secondary or even further remote sources. It is hardly believable that a political scientist or an historian would write:

“Because of the incredibly close relationship between the SACP and the ANC since 1950 (when the SACP was banned) it should be noted that I will not always distinguish between the two, but rather use the term ANC to encompass the SACP as well...”

He will refer specifically to the SACP only “where there is a specific need to demarcate the policies and activities of the two”.[52] First, it was the CPSA and not the SACP that was banned, then, Communist Party was resurrected as the SACP only three years later and even its existence was not publicly known until 1960. On the contrary, one can hardly speak about any institutionalised “relationship” between the two organisations in the 1950s and most of the 1960s , though some prominent communists were members of the ANC leadership. In fact according to the archive documents the first official bilateral meeting took place as late as 1969![53]

McKinley’s book contains a number of historical errors and since no references are given, we have to put the responsibility for them on the author. For example, McKinley writes that “in 1959 the former CPSA had reconstituted itself as an independent part of the ANC Alliance”, but doesn’t explain why this very year is chosen by him and why he prefers to speak about the ANC Alliance instead of Congress Alliance.[54] He states that the Morogoro conference in 1969 took a decision “to open the ANC membership to all races”,[55] though it happened 16 years later at the Kabwe conference and in Morogoro “open membership” was approved only for the ANC organisations in exile. He sympathises with the notorious “Gang of Eight” in their complains of a “general Stalinist atmosphere” in the ANC, but doesn’t give any reference.[56]

The main problem of McKinley apparently lays in his methodological approach to the theme of the study. He uses the method often applied in the West (and in South Africa for that matter), when a researcher is required to present a “hypothesis” even before he studied materials, and that makes him a captive of that “hypothesis”. So McKinley is doing his best to prove something he decided in advance: misfortunes in the liberation movement are the result of the ANC (incorporating SACP in his version) leadership's policy and actions. And, in their turn, they heavily influenced by the (alleged) fact that the SACP:

“..had always followed the directives coming from Moscow…a tradition that proved both ideologically and organisationally debilitating”.[57]

 

This is not to say that the ANC leadership have not committed mistakes. In fact some of them were pointed to in my book on the ANC‘s history, such as the delay in convening conferences in Morogoro and Kabwe or the lack of attention to the mass political struggle inside the country prior to the 1978 trip to Vietnam by an ANC delegation headed by Oliver Tambo.[58]

Other faults were analysed in African National Congress and the negotiated settlement in South Africa by Johannes Rantete, a much more balanced and much better documented work than McKinley’s book.[59] It is a product of strenuous efforts to go into details of the ANC "relaunching" as a legal organisation after 30 years of banning and exile. Like McKinley, Rantete also tries to make a theoretical contribution, but he is modest enough not to claim its exclusive and unique character. Instead he makes efforts to apply critically two popular concepts – “the transition to democracy theory” and “the decolonisation model”[60] and through his research rightly finds their limitations and inadequacy for the South African situation in the early 1990s.

 

The book analyses structure and policy development of the ANC in the early 1990s, determines factors which influenced the ANC position during the negotiations. It is well documented, however as soon as the author forgets to look for proper references, he also finds himself in trouble. Rantete claims that the ANC “had not expected a sudden unconditional unbanning”,[61] but it was far from being “unexpected” at least for the leaders of the liberation movement. It was exactly an “unconditional unbanning” that the ANC leadership demanded from Pretoria and that Pretoria finally had to agree upon. Moreover prior to 2 February 1990, at the final stage of “talks about talks” between the ANC and the Pretoria government representatives of both parties discussed in detail the modalities of the that unbanning and of Mandela’s release from prison.

Rantete sometimes also rely on doubtful sources, such as Ellis and Sechaba’s book, for example when he says that the Kabwe conference in 1985:

“..was dominated by [Communist] party members. Jack Simons was the overall chairman and politbureau members John Nkadimeng and Dan Tloome chaired several sessions”.[62]

But the election of Jack Simons was a confirmation of admiration the ANC activists had to him as a person of fair judgement (besides, he rejoined the SACP structures just some years before Kabwe). As to John Nkadimeng and Dan Tloome they both were members of the ANC National Executive Committee from the days when the Congress was still a legal organisation in South Africa and enjoyed high respect of its members. Besides, if to be exact, at the moment Dan Tloome was not a member of the SACP Politbureau. Furthermore, Rantete uncritically refers to the report of the Douglas Commission on the situation in the ANC camps in Angola sponsored by the so called International Freedom Foundation, a front for Pretoria’s Military Intelligence. Surprisingly enough, he calls this organisation “centre-right”.[63]

 

The book South Africa. Limits to Change. The Political Economy of Transition by Hein Marais constitutes a genuine attempt to examine “limits to change” in South Africa but this paper will look into those parts of the book which concern the years of the liberation struggle.[64] Though Marais is seeking an objective picture of the ANC’s achievements and failures but he is hardly objective when he sides with Stephen Friedman in insistence that:

“..the symbolic strength of the exile movement often weakened attempts to build grassroots power within the country”.[65]

Marais, unfortunately, doesn’t see the contradiction in Friedman’s approach, who, while advocating “grassroots power” at the same time criticises the United Democratic Front national leadership for lack of “control of events on the ground” and for not converting the Front into “a disciplined and organised national movement...”,[66] that is for allowing initiatives on the grass-root level! He rightly states that “the insurrectionist line” was not merely “imposed by the exile ANC and SACP leadership”,[67] but combined it with an unfair assessment of the ANC’s call for ungovernability as “an opportunistic attempt to slipstream behind the militancy erupting in townships”.[68]

More crucial, however, is his assessment of the balance of forces in South Africa on the threshold of the 1990s. He writes about a “stalemate”,[69] and having discussed the factors which influenced positions of the National Party and the ANC he comes to the conclusion that:

“While neither side could claim to have triumphed, the balance of forces still favoured the incumbents”.[70]

However, if the first part of this sentence is correct, the second is hardly so: in fact, the balance of forces was not stable, it was tilting (albeit slowly) in favour of the ANC; after all, as Marais admits, it was the government who:

 “..was meeting, steadily though stealthily, many of the preconditions set by the ANC for ‘genuine negotiations’”.[71]

Marais thinks that:

“..the success of a liberation struggle tends to insulate from scrutiny the strategic frameworks, principles and decisions that steered the struggle towards victory”.

In his opinion:

“..some of the conundrums and handicaps [as well as successes, one should add] of the post-apartheid era have their origins in past decisions taken or shirked”.[72]

One can not but fully agree with this declaration of the necessity of the comprehensive and non-biased study of the history of the ANC and its allies.

 

A valuable contribution to these studies was made by the publication of several books which describe the role of whites in the fight against the apartheid regime. Stephen Clingman’s Bram Fischer. Afrikaner Revolutionary shows a great affection the author has for his hero, it is an extremely well-documented and well-written story of the life of Bram Fischer, an Afrikaner, who, being a son of the Judge-President of the Orange Free State and a grandson of Prime-Minister of the Orange River Colony sacrificed his carrier and in fact his life for the cause of equality and social justice in the ranks of the Communist Party.[73]

It is worth noting how Clingman explains Bram Fischer’s changing attitude to Africans. He quotes from Fischer’s letter to his parents in which he referred to CP leader, Moses Kotane’s words:

“In the last analysis the alliance required to abolish oppression in the country is an alliance between Afrikaner and African”.[74]

In fact, the eradication of the institutionalised apartheid by political means (at the final stage of the struggle) was indeed achieved if not by alliance, at least by understanding between “Afrikaner and African”, that is between the NP Party and the ANC, and nowadays this trend finds its expression in growing co-operation between the ANC and NNP at national and provincial level.

 

Much less original is ‘Rivonia’s Children’. Three Families and the Cost of Conscience in White South Africa by Glenn Frankel.[75] It is an account of the life of three families, written by a renown journalist and based to a large extent on the secondary sources, so much that many pages of it looks like a “remake” of the books published earlier by the actors or their relatives, though the author, to his credit, does give the full reference for each book he used. The very title of his book is rather strange: if by Rivonia the author means the political and military headquarters of the liberation movement in 1962-1963, the heads of the families Frankel writes about – Joe Slovo, Lionel Bernstein and Harold Wolpe – should be called rather “Rivonia parents” than its “children” because they took part in the creation and running of this centre.

Frankel should be commended for his genuine attempt to explain that the membership in the CP helped many to“find courage to act” against racism and quotes the words of one of them: “We loved the certainty that Marxism gave us”.[76] He even writes that he:

“..could draw no moral distinction between a dedicated communist like Rusty Bernstein and a pragmatic liberal like Helen Suzman”.[77]

If he could not, somebody else can: Helen Suzman’s role in improving the plight of political prisoners and her visits to Robben Island are lauded today, but it is worth recalling what Mac Maharaj wrote soon after his release from Robben Island. When Nelson Mandela reminded Helen Suzman that:

“..white political prisoners who had taken to arms [Afrikaners in 1914]…had been released before they had even served as much as a third of their sentence and we demanded the same”.

Then this “heroine” of liberals, according to Maharaj, replied:

“The difference, Nelson, is: are you prepared to say you’ll abandon violence and the armed struggle?...True, the rebels of 1918 [sic!] were released…but their struggle had been defeated, now yours is ongoing, it weakens your case and I cannot demand your release” [78].

 

Finally, historians should not miss works published in a specific form, still alien to many – as files in Internet. The ANC web site not only has a special division – Historical Documents – but contains also texts of several books which as a rule have not been published as hard copies, for example,[79] To Change the World! Is Reason Enough? an autobiography of Ron Press and Talking to Vula. The Story of the Secret Underground Communication Network of Operation by Tim Jenkin.[80]

 

“Rusty” Bernstein dedicated his memoirs to

“..all those who resisted apartheid and finally laid it low, but whose courage and sacrifices are now in danger of being forgotten”.[81]

Indeed, such a danger do exist and it is a common duty of historians of the liberation struggle is to remove it.