Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
Evaluating the Legacy of Nonviolence in South Africa*
Gail M. Presbey
University of Detroit
[email protected]
Nelson Mandela departed from Gandhian nonviolence when he asserted that apartheid rule made
resort to violence by the African National Congress necessary. Mandela claimed that the antiapartheid movement in South Africa was strengthened by including both violence and
nonviolence. This paper investigates the claims of several authors who claim that South Africa
would have gained freedom from apartheid more quickly if it had remained purely nonviolent. It
finds the claims plausible, when argued carefully. But some historians and nonviolence advocates
have oversimplified the story of the anti-apartheid struggle and give the impression that the
struggle was more nonviolent than it was.
Introduction
As time goes by, historians may increase their knowledge of the historical facts, or details may
blur in forgetfulness. Writers in different times may interpret the same facts according to a new
perspective or new value system. Recently many nonviolence advocates have been commenting
on the successes of the anti-apartheid movement. Some, like contemporary Gandhian N.
Radhakrishnan, breezily chalk up Mandela’s successes to nonviolence. 1 It is not unusual to hear
people praising the ‘relative’ nonviolence of South Africa’s struggle, compared to some other
countries’ bloodier civil wars. Walter Wink and Jonathan Schell count the South Africa case as
proof of nonviolence’s efficacy, but more modestly suggest that nonviolence was one factor
which contributed to apartheid’s demise. 2 Still others like Stephen Zunes, George M.
Fredrickson, and Matt Meyer and Bill Sutherland depart from mere historical interpretation and
indulge in ‘what ifs’ – they go further and suggest that apartheid could have been toppled more
quickly if the African National Congress (ANC) had stuck to nonviolent tactics. 3
*I would like to thank the J. William Fulbright Foundation for sponsoring my research on Gandhi’s ahimsa in 2005,
and for the support of my home institution, University of Detroit Mercy. Thank you to Josef Velazquez and Scott
Couper for help in editing this paper. Thank you to Wiley Publishers and for Erika Kuhlman’s help in securing
permission to re-publish this article from an earlier version that appeared in Peace and Change, 31/2 (April 2006),
141-174.
1
N. Radhakrishnan, Preface to Raghavan Iyer et. al., Gandhi and Global Nonviolent Transformation (New Delhi:
Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, 1994), x.
2
Walter Wink, “Nonviolence Does Work”, in Arun Gandhi, ed., World Without Violence: Can Gandhi’s Vision
Become Reality? (Memphis, TN: M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, 1999), 316-17; Jonathan Schell, The
Unconquerable World (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2004). See also The Center for Study of Conflict,
“Nonviolence Plays a Role in Ending Apartheid in South Africa”, in Robert Holmes and Barry Gan, eds.,
Nonviolence in Theory and Practice (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2005), 328-31.
3
Bill Sutherland and Matt Meyer, Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan-African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed
Struggle and Liberation in Africa. Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press,
2000), 266-67; Stephen Zunes, “The Role of Nonviolence in the Downfall of Apartheid”, in Stephen Zunes, Lester
R. Kurtz and Sarah Beth Asher, eds., Nonviolent Social Movements: A Geographical Perspective (New York:
Blackwell, 1999), 203-30; George M. Fredrickson, The Comparative Imagination: On the History of Racism,
Nationalism, and Social Movements (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 1997), 185-87.
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Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
Why this interest in claiming the success of the anti-apartheid struggle for nonviolence?
Proponents of nonviolence often feel that their approach is neglected or underrated. To claim a
victory would be to bolster nonviolence’s popularity and credibility. And to go further and
suggest that nonviolence could have worked better if it were tried more sincerely is an attempt to
influence future struggles for justice. Indulging in alternative retrospective scenarios has been
done before: for example, in 1839 Charles K. Whipple wrote a book suggesting that the
American Revolutionary War would have been won as quickly, and with fewer casualties, if it
were fought nonviolently. 4
I suggest that to consider South Africa an easy case of nonviolence’s success flies in the face of
many important factors. Mandela was familiar with Gandhian nonviolence and explicitly
departed from it. As he explained, “I followed the Gandhian strategy as long as I could, but then
there came a point in our struggle when the brute force of the oppressor could no longer be
countered through passive resistance alone.” 5 In this quote, which is not atypical, Mandela
clearly expresses a very non-Gandhian idea that nonviolence will only work against mild
oppression. Mandela follows this claim by insisting that Gandhi himself admitted that violence in
a struggle against oppressors could never be ruled out completely. While Gandhi did say that, his
rationale for violence in certain situations is completely different than Mandela’s: for Gandhi, a
person or movement which does not have the courage to face its opponents nonviolently should
resort to violence as a second best option (and preferable to doing nothing). With Gandhi, it is
the character of the activist that dictates whether nonviolence is possible or not, not the character
of the repressive regime. We may never know conclusively whether Gandhi is right in claiming
that nonviolence will always work, even against the worst oppressors, since most imperfect
humans resort to violence and don’t have a chance to test the world’s worst regimes. Whether or
not Gandhi is right, we know that Mandela did not think he was right on this hypothetical point,
and he made decisions that he thought were based on practical considerations.
The ANC organised an armed faction and engaged in acts of sabotage, and over time widened
the scope of violent acts condoned by their organization. South African security forces responded
to nonviolent protest with extreme repression, which contradicts claims often made by
nonviolent proponents that sticking to nonviolence will lessen the chances of extreme repression.
And the suffering of the South African people, while perhaps dwarfed when compared to
genocides in other countries, was extensive and profound. One cannot understand some aspects
of the difficult aftermath of apartheid’s legacy without taking into account the high level of
violence emanating from several parties to the conflict.
4
Cited in Glenn D. Paige, Nonkilling Global Political Science (New Delhi: Gandhi Media Centre, 2002), 60.
Jonathan Schell’s book The Unconquerable World insists that the American Revolution depended extensively on
nonviolent tactics.
5
Nelson Mandela, “The Sacred Warrior: The Liberator of South Africa Looks at the Seminal Work of the Liberator
of India” Time 154, no. 27, 31 December 1999, 124+.
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While I would therefore dismiss some Gandhian commentators as simplistic, there is nonetheless
an important debate going on in the literature regarding the efficacy of nonviolence in
confronting unjust regimes. I will focus on the commentators who have claimed that
nonviolence, if adhered to more resolutely, would have ended apartheid sooner. I will contrast
them to Mandela’s non-Gandhian claim that both violence and nonviolence working in tandem
were needed to bring a speedy and just resolution to South Africa’s crisis of racist governance.
Let me clarify that I am not accusing the anti-apartheid movement of immorality. Certainly the
South African apartheid government used structural and direct violence to harm people of colour.
This paper has no argument with the claim that South Africans of colour had a just cause and
could morally justify using violence according to just war criteria. The United Nations repeatedly
supported the liberation movement in South Africa, even when it took up arms. 6 The authors
evaluated in this paper are making a different point: that the use of nonviolence would have been
more efficacious. Their argument is important here. I claim that Mandela abandoned
nonviolence, to a large extent, because he estimated that his fellow South Africans in struggle
were not willing to take on the levels of self-suffering that Gandhi explains are part of a
nonviolent movement. We can speculate that their reluctance was, in part, a predictable and
common emotional reaction to being hurt and abused by both individuals and a system. But it is
probably in part also due to scepticism that taking on self-suffering will result in an efficacious
program. Certainly people have shown that when they believe that their suffering will really help
the community, their family, or future generations, they are willing to take on the suffering. But
if one is convinced one’s own suffering will be futile, one loses the will to suffer, becomes
defensive, and would rather protect the self and inflict the suffering on others, if possible. So, if
nonviolence theorists can convincingly show that nonviolence could be successful, it could
encourage future people to bear the suffering such a project entails.
To add some clarity to the discussion that follows, I will use Joan Bondurant’s definition of
violence: the wilful application of force intentionally injurious (physically or psychologically) to
the person or group against whom it is applied. In contrast nonviolence is the exercise of power
or influence without injury to the opponent. 7 Obviously there can be lengthy debates over what
counts as violence or not. For the purposes of this paper, nonviolence will cover actions of
petition, boycott, strike, unarmed public gatherings and marches and the like. Sabotage, while
obviously concerned to spare direct harm to individuals, has inflicting harm and suffering of
6
Enuga .S. Reddy, “United Nations and Apartheid–A Chronology” www.anc.org.za/un/un-chron.html Note
especially that Resolution 1881 (XVIII) in October 1963 asked South Africa to drop prosecution of the Rivonia trial.
Security Council’s Resolution 311(1972) condemned apartheid and recognised the legitimacy of the struggle of
oppressed South Africans. The General Assembly’s Resolution 3151 G (XXVIII) said in December 1973 that the
liberation movements in South Africa were the authentic representatives of the majority of South Africans.
7
Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict (Bombay: Princeton University
Press, 1959), 9.
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one’s opponent as its goal, and so is a borderline case rejected by many nonviolent activists. 8
Mandela himself advocated sabotage while declaring that he was departing from nonviolence.
Sutherland and Meyer
The inspiration for this paper came from reading Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan-African
Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle, and Liberation in Africa (2000). The authors, Bill
Sutherland and Matt Meyer, surveyed both activists and heads of State in Africa, and found that
neither group believed in nonviolence as a method of struggle, or that, at best, they considered it
merely an adjunct or supplement to more violent means. But Meyer and Sutherland do not accept
this common judgment. They point to the major gains that nonviolence achieved in South Africa,
and they also point out the obvious drawbacks of violence. This insistence on the ideal of
nonviolence is an inspirational aspect to their book.
In fact, Meyer and Sutherland go so far as to speculate about what would have happened in
South Africa after the massacre at Sharpeville, if instead of choosing to abandon nonviolence
and start a subgroup dedicated to violent resistance, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), Mandela and
others had instead devoted themselves to mass nonviolent actions. The country was ripe for the
toppling of apartheid because of a huge economic crisis. A mass nonviolent action could have
blocked the eventual Chase bank bailout, a bailout which was crucial because the government
was broke at the time. Meyer and Sutherland therefore predict that apartheid could have been
toppled more quickly and with less casualties if only people had had more faith in nonviolence as
a method of social change. But such faith in nonviolence was not forthcoming, because people in
the movement were demoralised by the casualties at Sharpeville. 9
One argument often directed at nonviolent activists, and raised again in the context of the
Sharpeville massacre, is that it may have been fine for Gandhi to use nonviolence against the
British, who would stop short of massacre and negotiate with protesters, but that against the
apartheid government nonviolence would not have worked because that government would
neither have negotiated nor shown mercy. 10 Sutherland is not sympathetic with this line of
reasoning. He notes that the British killed more Indians at Amritsar than the South African
government killed at Sharpeville. His point is that nonviolent activists must be trained to
anticipate losses, so that they do not give up if there are casualties. This does not imply a
callousness about the deaths at Sharpeville, but rather a determination, a determination as strong
as in violent resistance, to risk one’s life in the pursuit of a common worthy goal.
And yet Meyer and Sutherland do not rest content with a simple message of nonviolence either.
And their insistence on the complexity of these issues is a second inspirational aspect of the
8
See Robert J. Burrowes, The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996), 233-35.
Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi in Africa, 150-51, 266-67.
10
Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 110-11.
9
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book. Meyer and Sutherland take pains to explain that, while they are advocates of nonviolence,
they are supportive of a wide spectrum of revolutionary actions. They are committed to the idea
that it is up to each group of oppressed people to determine their own ideologies and tactics. As
Sutherland explains, “I identify with any people’s struggle to get a boot off their necks.” 11 In
fact, though Sutherland criticised the strategic decision of some anti-apartheid activists to adopt
violent means, he nonetheless remained committed to their cause. For, as he puts it, “I couldn’t
tell the ANC or PAC to wait until my nonviolent experiment works.” 12
These peace activist authors also provocatively state that more love and creativity can be found
among active violent revolutionaries than among those who refuse violent action yet remain
inactive. And they challenge the “purist” pacifists who enjoy taking the moral high ground to
come and learn from the stories of activists in Africa.
But continuing with their insistence on the complexities of these issues, Meyer and Sutherland
likewise challenge those who too quickly cite “pragmatics” as their reason for abandoning
nonviolence. They insist that all taking of a life has negative consequences, and cannot be seen
as “good” (even in pursuit of the noblest goals) or “cathartic” (as Fanon would say).
Nonviolence, the authors admit, is a slow, necessarily mass-based, and disciplined strategy, but
they argue that it is more likely to succeed. And so Sutherland and Meyer are frustrated with the
extent to which nonviolence is dismissed and “neglected by revolutionaries of all stripes.” 13
Sutherland notes that those who side with violent tactics often say that ‘the only thing the other
side will understand is force.’ But Sutherland cautions that, yes, the other side understands force
very well, and they have enough force to wage a war. Hence, opponents of violence must invent
something else, a new approach, something more logical than using force against an adversary
who is stronger. 14
Gandhi
Could pure nonviolence really have worked in South Africa? One way to think about this is to
ask whether pure nonviolence could work in general. And one way to think about this is to look
at the role of nonviolence in Gandhi’s campaign in India.
Now the results of this case were decidedly mixed. While India won its freedom from British
rule, independence was also accompanied by the religious riots which soon split the country in
11
Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 153.
12
Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 153. PAC is the acronym for the Pan-African Congress, an organization
similar to the ANC.
13
Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 266.
14
Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 83.
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two. What to say about such mixed results? Advocates of nonviolence typically say that if only
the movement had been more purely nonviolent, the results would have been more purely good.
Gandhi himself explained the riots by saying that Indians had not been sincerely nonviolent
before; they had, for the most part, acted nonviolently, but without internalizing its values. 15
Gandhi was led to make a distinction between those who considered nonviolence a policy for a
limited objective, and those who embraced it as a creed applicable to all areas of their lives.
Gandhi held nonviolence as a creed; he was convinced that if even a small group of people acted
bravely and nonviolently, that the effects would be great. 16 But realistically he knew that very
few people would have enough trust in nonviolence to risk their lives in a nonviolent cause. He
admitted that the causes he led were filled with thousands or millions of followers who
themselves were not convinced of nonviolence’s efficacy, but merely agreed to abide by
nonviolent guidelines because of the insistence of their leaders. He admitted that there were also
thousands or millions of others who, though also unconvinced of nonviolence’s efficacy, were in
no position to offer violent resistance, and so participated nonviolently because it was either do
that or do nothing.
At times Gandhi sounded pleased enough to have such a result. He knew it was important to
have the purer kind of nonviolence as an ideal, but he still emphasised that it was better to act in
a less than ideal condition than to wait for the perfect conditions, for perfect conditions, almost
by definition, will never come. 17 At other times though, particularly near the end of his life,
Gandhi seemed more critical of his less than ideal satyagraha [insistence on truth] campaigns, 18
citing the participants’ imperfect adherence to nonviolence as the cause of lingering problems.
While people can use nonviolence as a policy to topple a bad ruler or regime, Gandhi explained
that rulers are “an exaggerated edition of what we are in the aggregate.” People make rulers what
they are, because rulers respond to an environment. So, the root of what rulers are is in the
people themselves. It is not enough, therefore, to topple an unjust ruler. The people have to
reform themselves; otherwise the ‘new’ regime will be just as bad as the one before. 19 Hence
Gandhi criticised those who embraced nonviolence only for temporary goals, saying that one
cannot take nonviolence on and off like a garment; rather, it must reside in the heart. 20 And he
15
Mohandas K. Gandhi, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Government of India Ministry of
Information and Broadcasting, 1988), 88: 336 (July 1947); 88: 356 (17 July 1947).
16
Gandhi, Collected Works 27: 90 (15 May 1925); 42: 394-95 (23 January 1930); 72: 195 (24 June 1940).
17
Gene Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist (Boston, MA: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1979), 91, 96, 104.
18
For example, many satyagraha campaigns broke out into violence despite Gandhi’s exhortations to his followers
to maintain nonviolent discipline. See Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with
Truth, translated by Mahadev Desai (New York: Dover Publications, 1983), 422-23.
19
Gene Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, 52.
20
Gene Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, 90. Interestingly enough, a study by Amrut Nakre based on
interviews with those who participated in Gandhi’s satyagrahas found that most of Gandhi’s followers did believe
in nonviolence as a creed, whereas many of the leaders with higher education who helped Gandhi organise held
nonviolence only as a policy or expedient. See Amrut Nakre, Social Psychology of Nonviolent Action: A Study of
Three Satyagrahas (Delhi: Chanakya Publishers, 1982), 72-73.
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pointed to the violence in newly independent India as proof of what happens when nonviolence
does not reside in the heart. 21
The axioms of nonviolence
One can see why South Africans would be attracted to Gandhi’s analysis of power dynamics in
colonial situations. Gandhi argued that both political and economic exploitation involved the
cooperation of those who were exploited. Commenting on the British occupation of India, he
said, “The spectacle of 300 million people being cowed down by living in the dread of 300 men
is demoralizing alike for the despots as for the victims.” 22 That a small white minority ruled
over millions of black (and coloured and Indian) South Africans certainly gives rise to a similar
frustration. Imagine, if the cowed millions had, instead, simply refused to cooperate: no violence
would have been necessary; merely widespread nonviolent non-cooperation would have been
enough to give the few hundred who tried to control these millions an impossible job.
But then again, if the millions had risen up in arms, the few hundred who controlled them would
have had a similar problem, even if the people’s ‘arms’ were of inferior technology. So it seems
the crucial point is not that the means chosen be nonviolent ones, but simply that the millions do
something (anything) to non-cooperate rather than cooperate. Why then insist that the noncooperation be nonviolent?
Usually nonviolence theorists give two reasons which I will call “axioms” for insisting on
nonviolence. First, there is the argument that the movement has to be broad in order to be
effective. Since only a few people are able to devote themselves to violent resistance, the
movement will only get its necessary breadth (including the elderly and children, for example) if
it insists on remaining nonviolent. Such non-combatant participants will also be scared off from
a movement where they know that some participants will be violent, out of fear that they will
inadvertently be caught up in the government’s reprisals against the violent participants.
Secondly, there is the argument that it would be harder (though clearly not impossible) for
repressive forces to use violence against a nonviolent movement, in part because a nonviolent
movement would hold the moral high ground and thus make the repressive violence aimed
against them seem to be disproportionate to their threat. 23
However, in the South African situation, attempts to stick to nonviolence in large
demonstrations, such as the Defiance Campaign in 1952, seemed to nevertheless draw heavy
repressive measures from the government, which deemed nonviolence to be basically as big a
threat as violent resistance. In such a situation, axiom two actually seems to be false, and the
21
22
Gene Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, 102.
Gene Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, 45.
23
See Walter Wink, Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa: Jesus’ Third Way (Philadelphia, PA: New Society
Publishers, 1987), 38-44. See Burrowes, The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense, 239-44.
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advantage of choosing nonviolent tactics is whittled away. Secondly, as time went on it turned
out that there were more and more volunteers who wanted to engage in organised violence
against the State. The leadership calculated that if such recruits for an armed rebellion could be
organised into a parallel institution (MK), the anti-apartheid movement could benefit from the
effects of their violent acts against the government, while not suffering any significant reduction
in the number of people agreeing to participate in nonviolent parallel movements. And so it looks
like axiom one was false here as well.
One could argue that the anti-apartheid movement actually managed to have it both ways, i.e., it
actually managed to benefit from both a large nonviolent movement as well as from a small
armed insurgency. Just as a boxer can have more success if he jabs mostly with the right fist, but
sometimes with the left, than if he always predictably jabs only with the right fist, the ANC
decided to keep their opponent more off balance with a mixed approach to resistance. Or to use
another metaphor, a group might decide that playing “good cop, bad cop” will bear more fruit
than merely playing “good cop.” The ANC’s seeming success is therefore more problematic
from a Gandhian point of view than some nonviolent activists want to admit. To argue that a
mixed approach is more successful tears at the heart of the two axioms mentioned above.
Zunes
Stephen Zunes presents the only possible argument in favour of the nonviolent position, which is
that MK was for the most part ineffective and/or counterproductive. 24 To use the boxing analogy,
what if the boxer’s left jabs were so weak, that the boxer would have had more success focusing
instead only on an unremitting attack with his right fist? Zunes’ position is, of course,
controversial. Some agree with Zunes; many (including Mandela himself) disagree. 25 For this
reason, it becomes important to go back through the history of the anti-apartheid movement, and
to try to appraise what role violence and nonviolence each played in the success of that struggle.
It also becomes important to go back through Zunes’s argument to appraise how cogent it
actually is. This paper will therefore now turn to these two issues: the history of the antiapartheid movement first and Zunes second.
To anticipate a bit, the conclusions that will be reached are as follows: (i) the history of the
struggle against apartheid is extraordinarily complex, and the advocates of both violence and
nonviolence do have good arguments; (ii) there is, on balance, reason to suppose that a purely
nonviolent campaign would have succeeded in South Africa, if only the South African people
would have been able to retain their confidence in the method and use nonviolent tactics that
would have been strategic for their situation; (iii) Zunes’ own argument, however, oversimplifies
the historical record; it achieves its conclusion in favour of nonviolence with such ease and
confidence only because it ignores large stretches of troubling fact.
24
25
Zunes, “The Role of Nonviolence in the Downfall of Apartheid”, 203-30.
See Burrowes, The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense, 233-34; Mandela, “The Sacred Warrior”, 124.
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Historical Review: Phase One: Early Nonviolence Campaigns and the Defiance Campaign
The story begins with Mohandas Gandhi who moved to South Africa in 1893, where he practiced
as a barrister until returning to India in 1915. He helped to establish the Natal Indian Congress in
1894 to advocate for Indian interests, and spent years devoted to legal work to improve Indians’
status. 26 Gandhi devised a technique of nonviolent resistance, drawing on his knowledge of
British law, and exposing the gap between British principles and laws and current practices. 27
Gandhi’s experiments in nonviolence in South Africa met with mixed success, and happened in a
larger context of violent protest. In April 1906 Gandhi reported with concern the results of a poll
tax protest undertaken by black South Africans. He noted that two British sergeants were killed,
and in response martial law was declared. Twelve people were rounded up and convicted of the
killings. The public was invited to observe those convicted being blown up by cannon fire.
Gandhi considered the loss of twelve lives for two quite unfair, and cautioned that such actions
were warnings to the coloured and Indian communities. 28 The first satyagraha nonviolent action
began on 11 September 1906, when Gandhi convinced all attending a large meeting to vow to
resist the “Black Act”/Registration Ordinance and to do so nonviolently. 29 Perhaps the
inspiration to decide to make the fight nonviolent had to do with his sizing up his opponent and
noting that violent resistance incurred heavy repression. At the same time, another factor was his
growing spiritual conviction that nonviolence was the correct means for any struggle for
justice. 30 On 18 August 1908, Gandhi had collected about 2,000 registration passes which were
then publicly burnt. Gandhi was not beaten by the police at this demonstration (despite the
dramatization of such a scene in Attenborough’s film on Gandhi). 31
The ANC was founded in 1912 and patterned itself after Gandhi’s earlier Indian Congress of
Natal. The ANC committed itself to Gandhian nonviolence. Its long range goals were franchise
and equal rights, but in the short run it devoted itself to removing special disabilities and
discriminatory laws. In 1913 it sent a delegation to Britain to protest the new land ownership
laws. But Britain said it would not get involved in the country’s “internal affairs.” 32
In 1930 activists decided to re-enact Gandhi’s earlier 1908 protest of the Pass Laws. Most cities,
however, were too intimidated to protest. But in Durban, 4,000 passes were collected. As the
crowd gathered to burn them, police opened fire, and attacked protestors with batons,
26
Mohandas K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa. Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 2 Translated by Valji
Govindji Desai (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishers, fifth rev. ed., 2001), 48-49.
27
Brian Lapping, Apartheid: A History (New York: George Braziller, 1987), 49.
28
Gandhi, Collected Works 5: 266-67.
29
Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, 111-17.
30
Prakash N. Desai, Hyman L. Muslin, Triumph and Tragedy: Psychohistorical Decisions of Mahatma Gandhi
(New Delhi: Har-Anand Publishers, 1998), 76-78, 106.
31
James D. Hunt, “Gandhi in South Africa”, in John Hick and Lamont Hempel, eds., Gandhi’s Significance for
Today (London: Macmillan, 1989), quote 63. See also Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, 216-20.
32
Ian Liebenberg, “Resistance by the SANNC and the ANC, 1912-1960” in Ian Liebenberg et al., eds., The Long
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Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
“knopkieries and assegais” [Southern African weapons, the first being a club with a large knob at
the end, and the other being a spear or lance] and killed the leader of the protest, Johannes Nkosi
(a member of the Communist Party of South Africa as well as the ANC), and two others.
Twenty-seven more were sentenced to many years of hard labour. The repression was more
severe than what Gandhi had faced, and it stifled any further protest. 33
In the 1940s, the ANC Youth League was “reformistic,” according to M. Motlhabi. But once the
National Party came into power, the emphasis changed from words to deeds. They wanted
action, and called for non-collaboration with the government through strikes, boycotts, and civil
disobedience. But this new radicalism was kept within a nonviolent framework. Albert Luthuli,
who was the leader of the ANC at the time of the 1952 Defiance Campaign, agreed that a plan of
action was needed, but he stipulated that the ANC’s aim was “to bring the white man to his
senses and not to slaughter him. Our desire has been that he should co-operate with us, and we
with him.” 34
The Defiance Campaign was begun soon after the National Party was voted in, in 1948, and after
the new government had instituted many new laws to enforce racial segregation. The ANC
requested that Prime Minister Malan repeal the Pass Laws, as well as the Group Areas Act of
1950, and the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951. When Malan refused, the campaign began.
Volunteers went through extensive training in nonviolence, and took an oath not to retaliate if
they were handled roughly during arrest. Gandhi’s son Manilal, who still lived in Natal, lent his
support. The goal was to fill the prisons; the ANC sent notice to the police ahead of time,
including lists of those who would come to protest and be arrested. Nelson Mandela also
participated, leading a group of 52 men through an area off-limits to them at 11 p.m. at night
without their passes. All were arrested, the total number of detainees from the Campaign
reaching around 8,000. 35
Was this campaign really a nonviolent one? Outwardly, the answer is yes, but inwardly, just as
was the case with Gandhi’s campaign in India, the answer is not so clear. George M. Fredrickson
notes that the nonviolent tactics of the ANC were “not based to any significant degree on a belief
in the power of love to convert enemies into friends or the higher morality of nonviolence.
Indeed the very use of the term ‘defiance’ suggests that anger more than agape [unconditional
March: The Story of the Struggle for Liberation in South Africa (Pretoria: HAUM, 1994), 8-21, reference 10-11.
33
Lapping, Apartheid, 58; “Johannes Nkosi,” South African History Online, accessed 27 November 2013,
http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/johannes-nkosi-0
34
Motlhabi quoted in Liebenberg, “Resistance by the SANNC and the ANC” 13. Primary source: Mokgethi Buti
George Motlhabi, The Theory and Practice of Black Resistance to Apartheid: A Social-ethical Analysis
(Johannesburg: Skotaville Publishers, 1984), 42. Luthuli quoted in Liebenberg, “Resistance by the SANNC and the
ANC,” 13.
35
Lapping, Apartheid, 119-20; Fredrickson, Comparative Imagination, 173.
148
Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
love] was the emotion being called forth.” 36 And the Campaign’s chief planner, Walter Sisulu,
seemed to see nonviolence not so much as an absolute ideal, but as an effective tactic. He saw it
as a way of escalating resistance by bringing masses of aggrieved people into the streets. Its
point was to provoke revolutionary upheaval. 37
Was this campaign successful? It seems that it was not. The Campaign did not result in the repeal
of the Pass Laws. It degenerated into violence in 1953. And it was followed by repressive laws
which made such nonviolent civil disobedience actions serious crimes. 38 However, even though
it failed to repeal the Pass Laws, there were other ways in which the Campaign was a success. As
Lapping points out, the Campaign attracted new members to the ANC. After the Campaign, its
paid membership rose from 7,000 to 100,000, and the number of active branches rose from 14 to
87. Not only that, but the Campaign caught the attention of India, who raised the issue in the
United Nations. The U.N. created a commission to scrutinise apartheid, whose meddling was
highly resented by the National Party. 39
Moreover, the degeneration into violence needs to be looked at more closely. Lapping explains
how the clashes began. Police tired of arresting large numbers of protesters, and turned instead to
attempts to prevent protests, using force. Even if trained nonviolent protesters refrained from
retaliating, those who came to watch sometimes jumped in and attacked. 40 And Zunes makes the
point that it was later proven that the violence was also caused, at least in part, by agent
provocateurs, a sign that the government sought to undermine the massive nonviolent
resistance. 41
This last point—the point about agent provocateurs—bears on the second axiom of nonviolence.
This axiom states that nonviolence is a good strategy because its peacefulness discourages overly
repressive counter measures. And this axiom was actually proved true in the present case. For
the police were afraid to attack the nonviolent protesters—which is why they had to first make
the protesters seem violent before they attacked. In other words, it’s not that the second axiom is
wrong; rather, the police found a way to get around the “roadblock” thrown up by nonviolent
resistance.
The next question is whether the change from nonviolence to violence was a useful change?
Here the answer is fairly clearly no. Zunes argues that when the Defiance Campaign, intended to
be nonviolent, broke out into riots, this helped the government justify its clampdown. Even
36
Fredrickson, Comparative Imagination, 179.
Fredrickson, Comparative Imagination, 178-79.
38
Fredrickson, Comparative Imagination, 173.
39
Lapping, Apartheid, 120.
40
Lapping, Apartheid, 120.
41
Zunes, “The Role”, 213-14.
37
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Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
Albert Luthuli (the ANC leader) argued that violence gave the initiative back to the government,
harming the movement for change. What followed the Defiance Campaign was a period of
increased repression. Very quickly, Mandela and other planners of the Campaign were
imprisoned. Many ANC leaders who were not arrested were placed under banning orders which
limited their ability to speak publicly and organise politically. New restrictive laws were
passed. 42
Despite these setbacks, a Congress of the People formed and met in Johannesburg in June 1955,
and they drafted the Freedom Charter—a Charter which outlined their vision of a free South
Africa, a South Africa without racial discrimination. The ANC ratified the Charter at their 31
March-1 April 1956 meeting. 43 The government responded by arresting 156 of the participants,
charging them with conspiracy to commit treason.
Their trial lasted from 1956 to 1961. While creating great hardships for those arrested, the trial
brought international attention and financial support to the ANC. It also inadvertently helped the
ANC leadership to organise, since many were kept in adjacent cellblocks. In the end, the
government could not make their case, because, in the words of the court, “they had failed to
prove a policy of violence,” and charges were dropped. 44 While it was important during the trial
for all the accused to state that they believed in nonviolence, already Mandela and others began
to consider nonviolence as a tactic which, in some circumstances, would have to be abandoned. 45
Historical Review, Phase Two: Sharpeville and Mandela’s Decision
The demonstration at Sharpeville was not organised by the ANC, but rather by the PanAfricanist Congress (PAC), a group that, under the leadership of Robert Sobukwe, had broken
away from the ANC in 1958. Sobukwe distrusted the white Communists in the ANC; he
considered Marxism to be a European ideology inappropriate for Africa. Sobukwe announced
that 21 March 1960 would be a day of protest against the Pass Laws. He planned the protest
according to the pre-existing models provided by Gandhi, Luthuli, and the Defiance Campaign.
Demonstrators should prepare to be arrested and offer no resistance. However, the demonstrators
were not trained; Sobukwe believed in a spontaneous uprising of the masses, and did not think
that training was necessary. This departed from the ANC practice which confronted the apartheid
regime only when people at the grassroots had been educated and organised. 46
On 21 March 1960 at 10 a.m. about five thousand people showed up at the police station to turn
in their passes and be arrested. The police officers were surprised and did not know what to do,
42
Zunes, “The Role”, 213-14.
Scott Couper, Albert Luthuli: Bound by Faith (Scottsville, S. Africa: University of KwaZulu Natal Press, 2010),
69-72.
44
Lapping, Apartheid, 123-27, quote 127.
45
Anthony Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized Biography (London: Harper Collins, 1999), 149.
46
Lapping, Apartheid, 137-39; Fredrickson, Comparative Imagination, 165-66.
43
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Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
since they could not arrest them all. The crowds did not disperse. Low-flying Sabre jets did not
scare off the crowd. Police reinforcements came in, so that by 1:15 p.m. their number grew to
300. A small scuffle broke out, and police said that protesters threw stones at them. The police
opened fire, shooting and killing 69 people, wounding 180. Almost all were shot in the back. 47
One could perhaps wonder if the slaughter were more a result of jittery police than of policy.
However repressive policy soon followed. Both the ANC and the PAC were banned, and the
government detained 18,000 people. Lapping describes the impact of these actions on the South
African economy: “Foreign investment in South Africa halted. A sharp outflow of capital hit the
value of the South African currency, the rand. House prices and the share market slumped. The
country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves fell, over the following year, by more than half.” 48
Was the slaughter at Sharpeville, and the following repression, proof that nonviolence had
failed? Proof that the time had come to adopt violent means? Well, when confronted with a
similar situation, the massacre of protesters at Amritsar in India, Gandhi did not give up on his
method of nonviolence. If anything, that massacre was even more horrific than the one at
Sharpeville, for at Amritsar the shooting happened in a walled square so that the people
assembled there could not flee the shooting. Casualties at Amritsar (379 killed, 1,2000 wounded)
were higher than Sharpeville (69 killed, 180 wounded). 49
Yet, Amritsar cannot really be thought of as a victory for the British. The courage of Gandhi and
his followers insured that it did not stop their campaign for independence. Despite this atrocity,
Gandhi still succeeded in convincing his followers to try nonviolence again. While some
individuals like Bhagat Singh became disillusioned with Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement
and turned to violence, it can nevertheless be said that nationwide the majority were willing to
continue with mass nonviolence and in general did not lose their confidence that it was the right
way to proceed. 50 The commander Reginald Dyer at Amritsar later embarrassed Britain before
the world when he could not give a good reason for continuing to fire upon defenceless people
trying to flee the bullets.
The issue of adequate training comes up here again. For Gandhi suggested that the massacre had
47
48
Lapping, Apartheid, 138.
Lapping, Apartheid, 139.
49
Richard Cavendish, “The Amritsar Massacre” History Today 59, no. 4 (2009), accessed 28 November 2013,
http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/amritsar-massacre
50
Bhagat Singh is an example of someone who, having witnessed the blood-soaked Jalianwala Bagh square after the
massacre in Amritsar, was impacted by that experience and subsequent ones to engage in bomb-making and
assassination in order to end British rule in India. He was not the only one to opt for violence, but I think it is still
fair to say that most Indians consider Gandhi’s satyagraha actions as the key factors in gaining independence. See
Jatinder Sanyal, Sardar Bhagat Singh, Prof. Jagmohan Singh, ed. (1931/2006), accessed 28 November 2013 at
http://www.shahidbhagatsingh.org/index.asp?linkid=34.
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Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
been made more likely by the people’s response of running away:
If the message of nonviolence had reached them, they would have been expected when fire was opened on
them to march towards it with bare breasts and die rejoicing in the belief that it meant the freedom of their
country. Nonviolence laughs at the might of the tyrant and stultifies him by non-retaliation and non-retiral.
We played into General Dyer’s hands because we acted as he had expected. He wanted us to run away from
his fire, he wanted us to crawl on our bellies and to draw lines with our noses. That was part of the game of
‘frightfulness.’ When we face it with eyes front, it vanishes like an apparition. . . The might of the tyrant
recoils upon himself when it meets with no response. 51
But to ask people to walk calmly toward the source of flying bullets is to ask an enormous
amount. The protesters at Sharpeville do not seem to have been ready for that. In fact, many do
not seem to have been ready even to vigil at all, let alone to face bullets. According to Philip
Frankel, eyewitness accounts claim that, on the morning of 21 March, the usual buses that took
commuters to work were stopped, making attendance at work impossible. Peer pressure and
threats were used to ensure that people came to the protest, with Carlton Monnakgotla recalling
that “people were lifted from their beds by the PAC” and brought to the street protest. 52 Perhaps
the seeming tenacity of the crowd’s reluctance to disperse from in front of the Sharpeville police
station was due more to fear of “thuggery within the PAC ranks,” or belief in rumours spread by
some PAC members that they might be shot by white policemen if they left, than any fearless
commitment to nonviolence. 53 Such accounts show just how large is the chasm between actual
participants in demonstrations and Gandhi’s “ideal” of those fearless in the face of bullets.
However this criticism of “actually existing protesters” is tempered by Gandhi’s admission that
the ideal is only an ideal, and his commitment to working with a less than ideal situation. 54
There were many things that could have been doing through training and preparedness that could
have reduced the chance of casualties at Sharpeville. Frankl, after extensive research on the
massacre, decided it was “leadership failure” on the part of both sides – the police and the PAC –
that led to the slaughter. 55 One could therefore argue that it would be erroneous to conclude that
a violent response from the South African police was inevitable. Nonviolent strategists like
Robert Burrowes have suggested that in situations where protesters know that police and army
forces rallied against them may resort to brutal oppression, there are certain tactics that can be
used that would likely minimise casualties. By running away, people at Amritsar and Sharpeville
created a chaotic scene. Protesters who sit motionlessly and silently are less likely to be shot. If
51
Mohandas K. Gandhi, Nonviolent Resistance (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), 57.
52
In Philip Frankel, An Ordinary Atrocity: Sharpeville and Its Massacre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001),
84.
53
Khadija Magardie, “‘They Didn’t Have To Die:’ The 1960 Sharpeville Massacre Was a Mistake for Which the
PAC Is Partly To Blame, According to a New Book”, Mail and Guardian 3-9 August 2001, 6; Philip Frankel, An
Ordinary Atrocity, 103-04.
54
Gene Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, 37.
55
Philip Frankel, An Ordinary Atrocity, 172-73.
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Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
large public gatherings are still considered too dangerous, a nonviolent movement can change
their tactics to dispersion rather than concentration. During the 1961 “stay at home” South
African police went from house to house beating up Africans and driving them to work, but
Burrowes insists that “this method still offered less opportunity for direct repression than did
public gatherings.” 56
While the ANC had not planned the Sharpeville protest, Luthuli called for a stay-at-home in
honour of those killed and wounded. In the tradition of Gandhi’s hartal [day of mourning], it is
estimated that about 95 percent of Africans in the Cape and many Coloureds refrained from
going to work on that day, and work strikes continued for two weeks, making it “the first ever
national strike in the country’s history.” 57 Ninety percent of buses that usually carry workers to
Johannesburg had been empty the morning of 29 May, with overseas news sources reporting that
over half of Johannesburg’s work force had not shown up for work. By 30 May seventy-five
percent of Port Elizabeth workers were staying away. According to Couper and Landau,
Mandela oversaw the stay-at-home (“general strike”) but after the second day called off the
action prematurely, based on believing Radio South Africa news broadcasts claiming that
workers were not participating in the stay-at-home. In a published post-strike analysis, Mandela
admitted he had naively been taken in by the negative press coverage. 58
And so it was on this day of calling off the stay-at-home that without any permission from the
ANC executive, Mandela took the opportunity to voice his position during an interview with
British reporter Brian Widlake, thinking that by doing so he could push a reluctant ANC to
embrace a new approach. According to biographer Anthony Sampson, Mandela appeared weary,
glum and depressed when he stated, “If the government reaction is to crush by naked force our
nonviolent demonstration, we will have to seriously reconsider our tactics.” 59 While Mandela
sounds here, like he often does, as if it is the apartheid government’s intransigence that forces his
hand so as to pursue a violent response, in fact the other factor that forces his hand is that the
youth will no longer commit themselves to nonviolent discipline. In the face of their lack of will
to be nonviolent, Mandela can no longer realistically lead a nonviolent movement.
In fact other groups in South Africa had already begun organizing for a violent struggle. White
liberals organised the African Resistance Movement (ARM) which planned to target buildings.
The Communist Party had units which cut power lines. Soon the PAC would launch Poqo
[meaning "alone"], which would assassinate whites in retaliation for repression. Neville
Alexander, who was a founding member of the National Liberation Front and was arrested in
56
Burrowes, Nonviolent Defense, 241-44, quote 242.
“Aftermath: Sharpeville Massacre”, South African History Online, accessed 28 November 2013,
http://www.sahistory.org.za/aftermath-sharpeville-massacre-1960
58
Couper, Albert Luthuli: Bound by Faith, 108-111; P.S. Landau, “The ANC, MK, and ‘The Turn to Violence’
(1960-62)”, South African Historical Journal 64, no. 3, 2012, 538-63, 549.
59
Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized Biography, 148.
57
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Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
1964, later stated, “All of us, regardless of political organizations or tendency, we were all
pushed, willy-nilly, across this great divide, towards the armed struggle, from a nonviolent
background, totally unprepared.” 60 With this groundswell, Mandela felt compelled to become
involved in violent resistance, with hopes that the ANC could control and direct the various
violent movements springing up. 61
Mandela therefore went underground and began to organise “Umhkonto we Sizwe” (MK), a
Xhosa phrase meaning the Spear of the Nation. The South African Communist Party (SACP)
worked with Mandela in forming MK. The SACP developed a theory called “Colonialism of a
Special Type” which justified the armed struggle by arguing that it was actually an anti-colonial
struggle. White South Africans treated the rest of the country as their colony, and therefore an
anti-colonial war was justified. SACP members Joe Slovo and Yusuf Dadoo joined and helped
lead MK. 62 Recent research has bolstered the claim that the ANC leadership did not hatch the
plan but only belatedly approved the formation of MK, which would be connected to the ANC
but kept at arm’s length. Luthuli basically agreed to not condemn MK; he was not enthusiastic
about the decision to take up violent means but he felt helpless to prevent it. Couper therefore
argues that it is most accurate to say that Luthuli “accepted” or was resigned to the turn to
violence. In March 1962 Luthuli clarified that despite police repression of nonviolent methods,
“I WOULD URGE OUR PEOPLE NOT TO DESPAIR OVER OUR METHODS OF
STRUGGLE, THE MILITANT, NONVIOLENT TECHNIQUES. SO FAR WE HAVE FAILED
THE METHODS–NOT THE METHODS US.” 63 However, after the ANC confirmed relations
with MK at the Lobatse, Botswana conference in 1962, the MK members were soon telling the
ANC that “MK was a ‘child’ of the ANC.” 64
Mandela, in a speech to MK in 1991, after the apartheid regime’s fall, explained MK’s
beginnings. First, he explained that the decision to embrace violence was an “agonizing” one,
taken only because it was realised that “there was no other way forward other than by taking up
arms.” 65 He said MK was founded “in order to give coherence to the spontaneous revolutionary
violence our people were beginning to assert in response to the repressive violence of the South
60
Quoted in Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized Biography, 149-50.
Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized Biography, 150. One should note, however, that Gandhi pushed forward his
commitment to nonviolence in the Indian independence struggle despite a context in which other groups in India
were actively using terrorist tactics and other violence. See Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, 6.
62
Dirk Kotze, “The Role of the South African Communist Party in the Struggle for Liberation” in Liebenberg et al.,
eds., The Long March, 42-51, reference 48-49.
61
63
Albert Luthuli, “Our Way Is Right–We Must Keep On”, Golden City Post, 25 March 1962 (emphasis in the
original), quoted in Scott Everett Couper, “Emasculating Agency: An Unambiguous Assessment of Albert Luthuli’s
Stance on Violence”, South African Historical Journal 64, no. 3, 2012, 564-86, quote 567-68; see also 571.
64
Landau, “The ANC, MK, and ‘The Turn to Violence’”, 551-52, 561.
65
Nelson Mandela, “The Oppressed Will Be and Must Be Their Own Liberators” in Steve Clark, ed., Nelson
Mandela Speaks: Forging a Democratic, Nonracial South Africa (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1993), 129-45, quote
130.
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Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
African racist state.” 66 According to this explanation, the necessity of switching to revolutionary
violence was due to the insistence of grassroots participants. Howard Barrell emphasised the role
of emotional desire to retaliate and avenge humiliation present in the new generation of ANC
and SACP members as a key factor in the changed strategy. Since violence could not be stopped,
it could at least be channelled toward economic targets, and away from the direct targeting of
human lives. 67 In this way, it differed greatly from those terrorist tactics that purposely target
people, as were practiced, for example, in Algeria’s liberation movement and defended by Frantz
Fanon. 68 Barrell also pointed out that government repression after Sharpeville had the effect of
drawing the ANC and SACP closer. Since SACP had been banned earlier and learned how to
survive underground, as soon as the ANC was banned during the April to August 1960
Emergency, the SACP helped ANC leaders evade police and move to safe houses. It was in one
of these safe houses in April or May 1960 that Ben Turok recalls the SACP broaching the topic
of the switch to violent means. 69
MK, at least at first, was successful. It did succeed in organizing the various violent factions into
a coherent, and therefore controllable, whole. MK member Rocky Williams notes that MK
quickly achieved a high level of legitimacy in the community, based partly on myth and partly
on popular sentiment. 70 MK, interestingly enough, also brought benefits to the main body of the
ANC, which remained nonviolent. For MK’s violent actions inspired others to mass nonviolent
resistance. The ANC became more popular and its membership increased.
The first MK explosions occurred on 16 December 1961, and were accompanied by a manifesto
which argued that there were only two choices facing the resistance: submit or fight. MK vowed
to hit back “by all means.” Yet they also promised to follow a political program, serving the
masses in their political struggle. The initial campaigns projected strong moral restraint and
emphasised minimizing the loss of life. Chris Hani explained that the aim of the campaign was to
“bring the government to its senses,” so as to avoid war. 71
And yet, underneath this outward face of restraint, there were plans to expand the role of
violence if necessary. For example, Mandela had already outlined, even at this early stage, four
phases of armed struggle, beginning in sabotage, but moving on to guerrilla war, terrorism, and
66
Mandela, “The Oppressed Will Be”, 132.
Lapping, Apartheid, 142; Howard Barrell, “Old Battle Cries and Borrowed Language”, chapter one of Conscript to
their Age: African National Congress Operational Strategy, 1976-1986, Pretoria, South Africa, 1993: South African
History Online, http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/chapter-1-old-battle-cries-and-borrowed-language
68
See a fuller discussion in my article, "Fanon on the Role of Violence in Liberation: A Comparison to Gandhi and
Mandela" in Lewis Gordon, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting and Renee White, eds., Frantz Fanon: A Critical Reader
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 282-96.
67
69
Howard Barrell, "Old Battle Cries".
Rocky Williams, “The Other Armies: Writing the History of the MK” in Liebenberg, et
al., eds., The Long March, 22-34, reference 24.
71
Williams, “The Other Armies”, 24-25.
70
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Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
revolution. 72
Over the course of the next eighteen months, MK launched 200 fire bombs, targeting post
offices, electrical stations, and government offices. In March 1963 they blew up a main railway
line between Johannesburg and Durban. The government countered with a network of black
informers and used torture to get information. In July 1963 they located the headquarters of MK
in a house on Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, where the leaders, including Mandela, were captured.
Plenty of handwritten documents were found which implicated Mandela as the commander of
MK. 73 Williams argues that the fact that they were amateurs played a key role in their early
capture. South African police were able to catch saboteurs and would-be saboteurs. The police
were then motivated to create a directorate of Military Intelligence so as to more closely monitor
and capture the rebels. 74
Police eventually found a plan, drafted by Joe Slovo, called “Operation Mayibuye,” which
explained that the white government had left them with only one choice: to rebel using violence.
Looking back at the contents of the “Operation Mayibuye” document years later, Slovo said that
their plan had been unrealistic. “We had a completely euphoric view of what black independent
Africa could do and not do,” he admitted. 75 Indeed, at the time of Mandela’s stated embrace of
armed struggle, there was widespread admiration for the success of the Cuban revolution in
1959. Mandela studied the successes of Mao in China and Ben Bella in Algeria. 76 The Cuban
revolution was successful within two years. Many South Africans thought if they would only
choose armed struggle, they would win the struggle within six months. A popular song said:
“One stick, two sticks, six sticks of dynamite, we’ll take the country the Castro way.” 77 Landau
and Barrell both explain that the new theory based upon the Cuban success was that there would
be no need to wait for all the conditions of a revolution (such as widespread political education)
before beginning the guerrilla phase, since the guerrilla struggle would itself kick-start the
conditions for revolution. According to Barrell this was called the “detonator theory” of
revolution, and Mandela and other MK members stuck to this theory years after it had failed
them. 78
The leaders captured in Rivonia were soon tried, found guilty, and imprisoned for life. Mandela
spoke at his trial (24 April 1964), reciting a list of the peaceful measures that had been met with
72
Williams, “The Other Armies”, 30.
Robert Kinloch Massie, Loosing the Bonds: The United States and South Africa in the Apartheid Years (New
York: Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, 1997), 163.
74
Williams, “The Other Armies”, 26.
75
Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized Biography, 183-84.
76
Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized Biography, 153.
77
Joe Richman and Sue Johnson, Mandela: An Audio History. Radio Diaries, 2004. See
www.radiodiaries.org/mandela/ Broadcasted on All Things Considered, National Public Radio, 30 April 2004.
73
78
Landau, “The ANC, MK, and ‘The Turn to Violence’”, 555; Barrell, “Old Battle Cries”.
156
Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
repression by the government for the last thirty years. Though witnesses testified at Mandela’s
trial that the defendants had stipulated that acts of sabotage should avoid loss of life, nevertheless
Prosecutor Percy Yutar “repeatedly asserted that the defendants plotted the murder of
innocents.” 79 Justice de Wet in his verdict did note that Mandela and others had not intended the
loss of life, but added that “they should have anticipated that the effort might get out of hand,” 80
hence the convictions and long sentences.
After the capture of Mandela, MK began training in other countries. However, its soldiers could
not get back into South Africa due to lack of friendly governments bordering it. This led to
demoralization among the troops. In 1967, when MK did try to cross into South Africa through
Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), they got pinned down by Rhodesian forces who then called
upon the South African army to aid them in finishing MK off. 81 Lapping says that by 1965 MK
was “crushed.” Mandela and others consider MK to have survived the entire duration of the fight
against apartheid, but this was only in the sense that it still survived in other countries—not in
South Africa. The PAC’s violent wing, Poqo, was less organised and more violent than MK. By
1964, its leaders were also jailed. Verwoerd’s government crushed these organizations, and
whites regained their confidence in the state’s abilities, leading to a growth spurt in the
economy. 82
This ability of the government to quickly suppress violent movements has led some
commentators to suggest that it was a mistake to turn away from nonviolence. Tom Lodge
suggests that the South African Congress of Trade Unions (COSATU), which had not been
banned, could have served as the organizing force for continued nonviolent actions, particularly
strikes. Lodge argues that the sabotage campaign of the ANC turned out quite badly because it
resulted in all the top leadership being jailed. 83 Fredrickson notes that “it would be hard to
establish from its record of achievement in the 1960s and 1970s that the resort to violence,
however justifiable in the abstract, represented a more effective method of struggle.” 84
Of course, hindsight gives historians the advantage; to make judgments like this now does not
mean that historical actors were not doing the best with what they knew at the time. Also,
Williams notes that while MK did not have the opportunity to battle South African forces, many
of its troops helped the liberation forces fighting for independence in Mozambique and
Zimbabwe in the 1970s. 85
79
Massie, Loosing the Bonds, 164-65.
Massie, Loosing the Bonds, 167.
81
Williams, “The Other Armies”, 26.
82
Lapping, Apartheid, 142-43.
83
Tom Lodge, in Fredrickson, Comparative Imagination, 185.
84
Fredrickson, Comparative Imagination, 186.
85
Williams, “The Other Armies”, 31.
80
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Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
It has been argued that nonviolence did not seem a viable option at the time because the mood of
rebellion in the country was too angry and too full of hate for people to accept a purely
nonviolent response. Psychologically, it’s easier to hate one’s oppressors than to separate the sin
from the sinner, directing one’s hate toward the system rather than the race in power. And yet,
plausible as it might sound, this argument seems to be factually false. For, to a large extent, the
movement in South Africa did avoid this slide into hating whites, and did direct its anger at the
system. The emphasis on a future non-racial South Africa, which had roots in both Christian
humanism and Marxism, seems in fact to have been stronger than the voices of hate. 86
Martin Luther King kept abreast of the developments in South Africa, and in December 1964
implored South Africa to consider nonviolence once again. He began by stating that he
understood why people would abandon nonviolence when they felt so desperate due to the
government’s extensive repression. He then suggested that others around the world could engage
in nonviolent action that would help South Africa: they could engage in economic sanctions.
This would be an international version of nonviolent action which had not yet been tried, but
should be advocated in the South African context. And as Fredrickson says, “It is now possible
to argue that the breakthrough that came with the release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning
of the ANC was as much, if not more, the result of international nonviolence as the fruit of a
strategy of violent resistance inaugurated by the Congress in the 1960s.” 87
The ANC divergence from strict nonviolence posed a problem for solidarity work by peace and
justice groups committed to nonviolence. David Hostetter remembers that Jim Bristol who
worked with American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) offices in the 1970s was criticised
for merely explaining (and not necessarily condoning) Mandela’s decision to turn to armed
struggle. Bristol argued, as did Sutherland, that privileged first-world pacifists did not have a
right to dictate to third world liberationists the means they could choose in struggle. 88
Nevertheless Gene Sharp (in a reply to Bristol in 1975), and Walter Wink in his Violence and
Nonviolence in South Africa offered arguments that a nonviolent movement would be more
effective than Mandela and the ANC had estimated. 89
Historical Review, Phase Three: After Sharpeville
There was a close connection between the civil rights movement in the United States and the
struggle against apartheid in South Africa. And some of the voices from America which were
influential in South Africa were voices which advocated violence. For example, American
theologian James Cone was a large influence on South Africa’s liberation theology. Cone argued
86
Fredrickson, Comparative Imagination, 137, 139.
Fredrickson, Comparative Imagination, 187.
88
David Hostetter, “Liberation in One Organization: Apartheid, Nonviolence, and the Politics of the AFSC”, Peace
and Change 27, no. 4, October 2002, 572-99. Reference 579-80.
89
Gene Sharp, quoted in Hostetter, “Liberation in One Organization”, 580; Walter Wink, Violence and Nonviolence
in South Africa, 38-44.
87
158
Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
that Malcolm X’s views on the separation and self-reliance of blacks, as well as on the
sanctioning of violence in self-defence, appealed to the emotions of urban blacks in a way that
nonviolence could not, and gave them “the only basis for pride and positive identity that was in
fact available to them.” 90 Malcolm X referred to the ANC’s abandonment of nonviolence after
Sharpeville as an illustration that King’s nonviolent movement was “bankrupt.” 91
The Soweto uprising of 1976 was an example of this “crossover” from the States. The uprising
was spontaneous, and drew its inspiration from the South African Black Consciousness
Movement—a movement which in turn drew much of its inspiration from the Black Power
movement in the United States. The uprising was triggered by the government’s decision to
require that Afrikaans be the official language of instruction in all the schools in the country. To
protest this decision, thousands of students—from university students to grammar school
children—refused to attend classes. They also destroyed schools and other buildings.
What were the effects of this uprising? On the negative side, it did not succeed in getting the
government to change its mind. Many of the protesting students were brutalised by the police.
Steven Biko, was beaten to death while in detention. On the positive side, though it’s not really
appropriate to call this positive, the murder of Biko finally drew international attention to the
extreme harshness and unaccountability of the apartheid system. 92 And the uprising did succeed
in stopping “business as usual”, at least for a while. But even here there was a negative side
attached, for by stopping business as usual the uprising also had the effect of stopping the
education of thousands of students. Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall argued that “fighting police
in the streets was a ferocious but futile way to resist white rule.” 93
While neither the ANC nor the SACP had organised the Soweto uprising, they stood to benefit
from it when thousands of youths who had been expelled from school streamed into exile to join
MK. 94 The release of some MK commanders in 1975 and 1976, who then joined the uprising,
helped popularise MK. Moreover, now that Angola was independent, MK was able to set up
camps there which could offer specialised courses as well as emphasise political education. 95
Oliver Tambo went to Angola to oversee the organization and training of MK.
Unfortunately, though, MK still could not get back into South Africa. The problem was still the
same: the South African military continued to intimidate its neighbours, forcing them to disallow
90
Fredrickson, Comparative Imagination, 154.
Fredrickson, Comparative Imagination, 151.
92
Fredrickson, Comparative Imagination, 146.
91
93
Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict (New York:
Palgrave, 2000), 341-43.
94
Kotze, “The Role of the South African Communist Party”, 45.
95
Williams, “The Other Armies”, 27-28.
159
Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
ANC troops on their territory. Even newly independent Mozambique, which was very
sympathetic to the ANC, was reluctantly forced to comply. 96 As of 1976 MK had still “not fired
a single shot within the country’s borders.” 97
Despite MK’s seemingly small amount of actual fighting, Nelson Mandela in 1990 praised
Oliver Tambo for organizing “the people’s army,” which “fought the enemy in deeds and not in
mere words.” He argued that the key contribution of these armed forces was to boost the morale
of those in the resistance movement, “providing the inspiration for the political upsurge which
developed with increasing intensity during the decade of the 1980s.” 98 However it is important to
remember, as Sampson notes, that Mandela “never imagined that the armed struggle would in
itself, without sanctions or other pressures, have compelled white South Africa to change its
policies.” 99
Besides the creation of an army in Angola, MK also conducted sabotage operations within South
Africa. The history of these operations is the history of a gradual increase in ferocity. During the
1970’s and early 80’s, recruits to MK were told to limit their actions to “armed propaganda” and
attack only symbols of apartheid. In June 1980 MK hit the Sasol oil refinery, causing R 66
million in damage. In 1982 they attacked the Koeberg nuclear power plant. But in 1983 MK
announced a shift away from symbolic actions and an increase in the range of acceptable targets.
Chris Hani stated that they could no longer guarantee the safety of civilians, even though they
would continue their policy of not targeting civilians. 100
Then in 1985, at the Second National Consultative Conference of the ANC at Kabwe in Zambia,
the ANC again revised its policy. This time they decided to attack white civilians. The
distinction between hard (military) and soft (civilian) targets was dropped. 101 And the definition
of what constituted a military target was extended. While the conference decided to still
concentrate on sabotage, they also agreed to aim for direct military engagement. In response, the
South African government called a State of Emergency, and detained over 10,000 activists from
1985-1987. 102
Were these violent tactics effective? Archie Gumede, Chair of the United Democratic Front,
estimates that the violent attacks on the South African economy were on the scale of “flea bites,”
96
Lapping, Apartheid, 173.
Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized Biography, 264-65.
98
Nelson Mandela, “The Oppressed and Exploited Must Lead South Africa out of Apartheid” in Steve Clark, ed.,
Nelson Mandela Speaks: Forging a Democratic, Nonracial South Africa (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1993), 53-67,
quote 55.
99
Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized Biography, 179.
100
Williams, “The Other Armies”, 28-29.
101
Hennie Lotter, Injustice, Violence, and Peace: The Case of South Africa, Value Inquiry Book Series 56
(Amsterdam, Netherlands and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1997), 65.
102
Williams, “The Other Armies”, 29.
97
160
Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
and the down side of the manoeuvre was that many young people went to the bush and became
bored there, and some left the country for good. On the positive side, he agrees that the decision
to use violence boosted morale. 103 Emma Mashinini, active in the labour movement and later the
Anglican Church’s Justice, Reconciliation and Peace Coordinator for the whole South African
region, also notes that many children did not go to school during the struggle, and that this lack
of education is now exacerbating the problems of homelessness and AIDS. 104
In the 1980’s, two new groups began to push a nonviolent agenda. The United Democratic Front
was a multi-racial coalition. In 1983, the UDF decided to emphasise nonviolent actions,
especially boycotts and strikes. COSATU, founded in 1985, was a coalition of labour unions.
And COSATU, too, emphasised nonviolent protest. Nor was the ANC quiet on the nonviolent
front. While it is often noted that the ANC decided to abandon complete nonviolence and take up
the limited use of violence in the 1960s, nonviolent actions continued. The list of such actions is
impressive: national campaigns against the resettlement of District Six in Cape Town, against
racist evictions in Pageview outside of Johannesburg, and Ventsdorp; bringing wives into single
sex housing for mine workers; Ciskei Bantustan commuters protesting raises in bus fares, and
more. 105
The apartheid government was clearly worried by these nonviolent actions. In fact, nonviolent
demonstration was seen by the government as being so dangerous, that engaging in it could get
one ten years’ imprisonment. When the government called a State of Emergency in 1984,
clamping down on all dissent and unarmed resistance, it galvanised European and American
elites into imposing economic sanctions upon South Africa. General strikes continued in 198789. Much of the nonviolent activism engaged in was in the form of solidarity work outside the
country. Such work was finally able to bring pressure to bear on the apartheid state, which
depended on its relations with the industrialised West in order to maintain its economy.
Finally, in 1989 a new Defiance Campaign was launched. This campaign did not, perhaps,
“approach Gandhian refinement and control,” 106 but by 1990 the nonviolent mass demonstrations
had finally pressured the government into negotiations: the beginning of the end of apartheid. 107
The history of this period would not be complete, however, without mention of another type of
violence which appeared in the 1980’s: violence against collaborators. 108 Allan Boesak had made
103
Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 163.
Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 170.
105
Zunes, “The Role”, 213.
106
Zunes, “The Role”, 221-25.
107
Lapping, Apartheid, 160-1.
104
108
This period also saw the violent clash between the ANC and Inkatha. For reasons of focus, however, the history
of this clash is omitted here. The interested reader is directed to Rob Nixon, Homelands, Harlem, and Hollywood:
South African Culture and the World Beyond (New York: Routledge, 1994), 238-39; and Nelson Mandela, “The
161
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a speech telling people they should not cooperate in the apartheid system by holding positions in
the government or in the police, saying: “Working within the system for whatever reason
contaminates you.” 109 Gandhi had also explained earlier that a key step in nonviolent action is
for people in government posts (in his case, in colonial India) to resign. However, Gandhi
stipulated that the “intermediate class” of cooperationists should not be destroyed by violence,
since they were merely creations of circumstance, and “the purest man entering the system will
be affected by it.” 110 In South Africa, however, the movement went beyond appeals for
resignation. By now there was a large black police force, and undercover agents were placed
throughout the community. There were also many informers. The responses of the community
included “necklacing”—setting fire to a gasoline and rag-filled tire put around the person’s
neck—and murder.
Even the supposedly nonviolent tactic of boycotts frequently turned to violence when
neighborhood youths decided to punish any who broke the boycott. 111 Boycotts are only
effective if widely respected. So violence was used on those who would dare break the boycott.
Protesters felt such violent coercion was justified because of “the cause.” For example, some
forced old people to eat the raw meat, or to drink the detergent or cooking oil that they had
bought in defiance of the boycott. They also shaved the heads of women who visited
hairdressers. 112
Whether justifiable at the time or not, these actions had a long term corrupting effect on the
youth who performed them. Engaging in vigilante violence is not the most appropriate form of
moral education for a young person. Looking back, Graca Machel speaks of her regret over how
the struggle criminalised the children. It turned eight- and nine-year-olds into killers, with no
regard for human life. What human values are left now, she wondered, and how does one rebuild
values? 113
Moreover, the ANC established “people’s courts” in many neighbourhoods. On the one hand,
these courts were justified in context as necessary to protect the movement from ruthless
opportunists. On the other hand, though, letting people take justice into their own hands like this
led to wrongful accusations and vengeance on scapegoats. And once such violence was
unleashed, it was hard to moderate. For the courts, anyone who is not openly “with us” is
considered to be “against us,” and therefore fair game for judicial attack. 114 Even today, people
Violence Has Assumed a More Organized and Systematic Character,” in Steve Clark, ed., Nelson Mandela Speaks:
Forging a Democratic, Nonracial South Africa (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1993), 85-91.
109
Allan Boesak, quoted in Lapping, Apartheid, 171.
110
Gene Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, 48-49, 56.
111
Lapping, Apartheid, 173-75.
112
Lotter, Injustice, 63-64.
113
114
Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 119.
Clifton Crais, “Of Men, Magic, and the Law: Popular Justice and the Political Imagination in South Africa”,
162
Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
are swift to use violence to punish suspects outside of legal structures, and there continue to be
practices of vigilante violence as well as a widespread sense of acceptance of such actions. 115
Perhaps the best summary of this whole period—or, more accurately, of the various violent
activities of this period—is provided by Hennie Lotter. He catalogues the effects of the ANC’s
turn to violence in three areas. For individuals, there were injury, fear, damaged relationships,
and post-traumatic stress. Secondly, for groups, there were intergenerational conflict, and loss of
leadership. Thirdly, for politics, there was the lesson of becoming intolerant of political criticism.
There was widespread acceptance of violence, even among Christians. 116 However, if violence
brought such negative effects, while nonviolence had such successes, one must ask why more
South Africans did not propound nonviolence?
The Complexity of Truth
One’s interpretation is, of course, influenced by one’s commitments. And this is a good thing, for
it is one’s commitments that give an interpretation its heart or soul. And yet there is a risk
involved here too. For this process of influence can go too far and reach the point where the
historical record gets oversimplified so as to make it fit more neatly into those commitments.
And this seems to have happened to some of the advocates of nonviolence who have been
writing about South Africa.
While the book A Force More Powerful describes in detail the push and pull between violent
and nonviolent tactics in South Africa, the PBS video series based on the book reduces the South
Africa story to one half hour. It follows the story of a successful nonviolent struggle (the
consumer boycott in Port Elizabeth in 1986) while dropping out the larger context. Thirty
minutes is certainly a constraint to any serious discussion of a topic; but perhaps the choice of
focus was meant to send a message that nonviolence was victorious in South Africa. The episode
then shows President P.W. Botha declaring a state of emergency, making reference, as he does
so, to armed insurgents intent on the violent overthrow of the government. And there were in fact
such insurgents, and these insurgents were active in Port Elizabeth in 1986. But since the episode
does not mention these insurgents, Botha’s reference to them might strike the viewer as either a
paranoid fantasy or official excuse. The episode then goes on to suggest that Botha was actually
engaged in a futile response to the nonviolent efforts of the boycott, because nonviolent efforts
Journal of Social History 32, no. 1, Fall 1998, 49-72.
115
F. Brinley Bruton, “ 'Out of Control': Vigilante Justice Grips Impoverished South African Slum," NBC News, 30
June 2013, http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/30/19073793-out-of-control-vigilante-justice-gripsimpoverished-south-african-slum; Ginny Stein, “Vigilantism on the Rise in Cape Town,” ABC News
Correspondents
Report,
31
March
2013,
accessed
28
November
2013,
http://www.abc.net.au/correspondents/content/2013/s3726705.htm; “Useless Police Blamed for Vigilantism,” City
Press, 14 March 2013, accessed 28 November 2013, http://www.citypress.co.za/news/useless-police-blamed-forvigilantism/
116
Lotter, Injustice, 66.
163
Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
were finally able to hurt the white community in a way that violence in the townships could not.
This is in fact Ackerman and Duvall’s interpretive claim (also present in their book) which
argues that successful nonviolence was so powerful that it was seen to be very dangerous by the
government, so much so that the government declared a state of emergency to stop the
nonviolence (while, it seems, merely stating that their main fear was insurgents as a decoy to
disguise their real fear). 117 If they are right, this wreaks havoc with the claim that nonviolence
will generally lessen the extent of state repression.
The episode then fast-forwards to Mandela’s release from jail, and the receipt of the Nobel Peace
Prize by Mandela and de Klerk. Such quick cutting to the “happy ending” is the style of all its
episodes. The brief exposure to the use of nonviolence in South Africa that the video series
offers is no substitute for a more in-depth study. It seems that the goal of the video series is not
to get South Africans to rethink the roles of violence and of nonviolence in their own liberation,
but rather to make a general case for nonviolence in the future, with South Africa being just one
more example, just one more success story commandeered by the nonviolence movement.
Gratefully, the video’s companion website delves more deeply (and more realistically) into the
murky situation of the co-existence of violence and nonviolence in the same movement. Quoting
from the companion book, the website more meekly suggests that freedom for South Africa was
won “in part” through strikes, boycotts, and other Gandhian methods. It clarifies that while
nonviolent sanctions were “indispensable,” they did not alone bring down white rule. It even
suggests that it was not the nonviolent actions themselves, but just the fact that the government
and the opposition were at a stalemate, which made a political rapprochement possible. 118 The
documentary and book include parts of an interview with scholar and ANC activist Janet Cherry,
in which she asserts that it was UDF and not armed struggle that brought down apartheid. She
has subsequently published a book based on her research. 119
A stronger claim is made in Stephen Zunes’s article, “The Role of Nonviolence in the Downfall
of Apartheid.” Zunes argues that the struggle against apartheid in South Africa was primarily a
nonviolent struggle, and so the success of the transition to a popularly elected, non-racial
government, belongs to nonviolence. Zunes admits that the popular imagination believes that the
success belongs to violence. But he argues that the popular imagination is, on this point, wrong,
and that its praise of violence is mere “romantic rhetoric.” Zunes explained that the “armed
struggle was a means of providing moral support for the unarmed resistance.” 120 At most,
117
Ackerman and Duvall, A Force More Powerful, 358.
“A Force More Powerful” website, www.pbs.org/weta/forcemorepowerful/analysis Book: Ackerman and DuVall,
A Force More Powerful, 367.”
119
Ackerman and Duvall, A Force More Powerful, 368; Janet Cherry, Spear of the Nation: Umkhonto we Sizwe,
Ohio Short Histories of Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012); Janet Cherry, "The Intersection of Violence
and Nonviolence Strategies in the South African Liberation Struggle”, in Southern African Liberation Struggles:
New Local, Regional and Global Perspectives, ed. Hilary Sapire and Chris Saunders (South Africa: University of
Cape Town Press, 2013).
120
Zunes, “The Role”, 211.
118
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Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
violence would be used as “armed propaganda.” (Imagine the surprise on the face of a Gandhian
activist, who is told that nonviolent activists need their morale raised by the success of their
movement’s fighting wing!). Zunes insists that on a practical level, by the 1980s, opponents to
apartheid had “reached a clear consensus” that liberation would be pursued primarily by
nonviolent means. 121
But such estimates of the level of embrace of nonviolence by the ANC in the eighties just do not
seem factual. They jar with Wink’s experience when visiting South Africa in 1986, for Wink in
fact thought that nonviolence was being dismissed. 122 Zunes’ account also jars with the report of
the above-mentioned 1985 ANC conference in Zambia where the ANC decided to target white
civilians. And Ackerman and Duvall note with chagrin that riots in the mid 1980s were signs that
“the initiative in opposing authority seemed to pass from nonviolent groups to the clenched fists
of young African men.” 123
Zunes argues further that even when the ANC espoused violence, it did not engage in much
violence. At its height, according to Zunes, bombings averaged 3-4 per month. But these
statistics also seem inaccurate. 124 They are challenged by Lotter who says the ANC guerrilla
attacks were between 225-300 per year during 1986-89. 125
Despite these shortcomings, there are some immensely valuable points in Zunes’ treatment, such
as how violent tactics often became counter-productive, hardening resistance and alienating
potential friends of the movement. Another point was his detailed military analysis proving that a
full scale guerrilla war could not have succeeded in the conditions then existing in South
Africa. 126 Echoing Wink, Zunes notes that the South African army, and the white population in
general, was heavily armed and well-trained in the use of weapons. ANC military strength
abroad never amounted to more than 14,000 troops. Additional factors would be the open plains
which made guerrilla warfare more difficult. Townships were purposely set up on grids, making
it difficult to flee police in pursuit, similar to the Casbah of Algiers. Bantustans were
geographically fragmented, and the population there was mostly comprised of women, children,
and the elderly. 127 Under these conditions, Zunes argues, a successful guerrilla army was not
feasible.
While guerrilla movements in Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe showed that one did not
121
122
Zunes, “The Role”, 205, 211-12.
Wink, Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa, 15, 23, 53.
123
Ackerman and Duvall, A Force More Powerful, 351.
Zunes, “The Role”, 213-14.
125
Lotter, Injustice, 66.
124
126
127
Zunes, “The Role”, 207.
Zunes, “The Role”, 207.
165
Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
have to win militarily, for a war of attrition would be enough to achieve liberation from a white
regime, the context in South Africa differed from the other countries in many key respects. In the
other countries mentioned, white population was below five per cent, while in South Africa it
was fifteen per cent. South Africa did not have to worry, like the others did, about satisfying the
citizens of a mother country who might be appalled by atrocities or reluctant to pay for a colonial
war. Since many white families had been in South Africa for over two hundred years, many felt
they had nowhere to go, and could not easily flee to a European motherland. This gave them
resolve to stay and fight, even at high cost. 128
The ANC bombings backfired politically, Zunes argues. While the ANC explicitly directed their
attacks toward property, when they bombed the houses of some pro-government Blacks, people
were killed, and public opinion turned against the tactics. When the ANC used a car bomb, such
as the one detonated in Pretoria in 1983 in front of Defence Force headquarters, the media
fixated on the event, and white South Africans thought the ANC was now committed to
terrorism. The fact that the bomb was aimed at military personnel was not emphasised. In
contrast, the shift to nonviolence convinced many whites that they would not have to fear black
majority rule, and would be less likely to fear reprisals upon seizing power. 129 The careful
military and political strategic points covered by Zunes are part of an argument that forwards a
reasonable defence of the proposal that violent struggle was counterproductive, and nonviolence
could have won the political battle sooner.
Conclusion
This paper, after consideration of the facts as well as the myriad viewpoints on this topic, cannot
easily resolve the question of which of the commentators is correct in their estimation of the
relative importance of violence and nonviolence in South Africa’s liberation struggle. The goal
of this paper has instead been to problematise the “easy” answer. The statements of Mandela as
well as many members of the general public in South Africa attest to the fact that South Africans
themselves saw the military aspect of their struggle as essential to its success. But none of them
ever claimed that it was violence alone that brought results; MK always saw its role as working
in tandem with a larger mass movement using methods of nonviolent non-cooperation. None of
our commentators argue that violence alone won the struggle. But several commentators,
Mandela among them, argue that the resistance to apartheid had to include at least some forms of
violence (sabotage, for example) along with mass-based nonviolent tactics in order to succeed.
Others, like Zunes and the authors of A Force More Powerful, note the mixed nature of the
struggle but argue that it was nonviolence that was decisive in the victory. Sutherland and Meyer
went further to argue that the anti-apartheid movement would have had an earlier victory with
fewer casualties if the ANC did not turn to armed struggle.
128
129
Zunes, “The Role”, 207.
Zunes, “The Role”, 225.
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Journal of Natal and Zulu History Vol. 31, 2013
One can look at the facts of the historical situation and find evidence for each of these views.
The mishaps, miscalculations and roadblocks faced by MK, not to mention the repressive
government retaliation it inspired, can certainly give rise to the speculation that a purely
nonviolent movement might have avoided some of the high costs of repression. That the
nonviolent movement played such a vital role in pressuring the government, as well as forcing
whites to reconsider their allegiance to the apartheid government, can add to speculations that
perhaps, by itself, it would have been powerful enough.
On the other hand, one cannot deny that MK experienced a high level of support and legitimacy
in South Africa. Part of the goal of this paper has been to show that by exploring the details of
their fight, the ANC decision to turn to violence can be better understood, even among those who
will ultimately disagree with the position. To credit the armed resistance with winning the
country’s liberation, however, might fall into too easy a mind-set which presumes that violence
is always more powerful than nonviolence. Openness to nonviolence’s efficacy will be harder if
the prevailing myths of the hero who triumphs using violence are unquestioningly propped up.
This “romanticism” of violence continues to blur the real picture of violence’s limitations and
nonviolence’s abilities. But such myths are not easy to discard. They are constructed not only in
South Africa, but around the world, and especially in the United States today. Nuanced
explorations of violence and nonviolence will debunk the stereotypes on both sides.
Likewise, images of nonviolence as passive play a role in its continuing denigration by those
people who consider themselves serious advocates of change. Walter Wink noted with
frustration in South Africa in the mid 1980s that many people could not recognise examples of
nonviolent action in which they were currently engaging, such as boycotts. They equated
nonviolence with humble petitions to the government. Wink thought that if people had an
expanded view of nonviolent tactics they could more readily recognise its efficacy. 130
Confidence in nonviolence’s ability to resolve problems, and scepticism regarding the “hero”
with the gun, could also help in challenging and resolving South Africa’s current high murder
and armed robbery rates. From 1994-2000, murders in South Africa had been more than 22,000
annually, a rate incredibly high for a country with a population just over 40 million. A recent
report from the South African Police Service covering April 2012 to March 2013 reported
16,425 murders. 131 Nonviolence theorists like Walter Wink, and nonviolent organizations like
the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, are working to pass gun control legislation, but
130
Wink, Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa, 15, 23, 53.
Statistics from Gun Free South Africa, www.gca.org.za; see “Gun Free South Africa’s Response to Release of
2012/13 Crime Statistics: ‘Increase in Violent Crime Not Surprising,’” September 2013, accessed 28 November
http://www.gfsa.org.za/gun-free-south-africas-response-to-release-of-201213-crime-statistics-increase-in2013,
violent-crime-not-surprising/
131
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continue to be handicapped by a widespread nostalgia for the days when (or so the myth goes)
guns were used to overthrow the oppressor. The fact that current President Jacob Zuma won
elections in 2009 using as his theme song “Awulethu’ Mshini Wami (Bring me my machine
gun)” is one small sign of the continuing romanticisation of the power of weapons. 132
The recent emphasis on recognizing the extent of the role of nonviolence in toppling apartheid is
constructive insofar as it teaches us to have an expanded and more active concept of
nonviolence. Challenges like that of Sutherland and Meyer, while retrospective, affect the future
in this way: the next time a situation arises, people will have an expanded concept of what their
options are. Those who presume that nonviolence cannot succeed tactically will have to think
twice. Those who think that nonviolence is alright as a tactic but not as a principle may also
question themselves. This pondering in itself cannot determine the future debate, but it can
broaden it. Sutherland and Meyer conclude their book bemoaning the rigid debate between the
purist and the tactician. They look instead for an approach that is both spiritual and strategic as
well. 133 But we cannot learn the lessons of history if we do not know each other’s history. The
story of South Africa’s path to freedom holds lessons for us all.
132
Christi van der Westhuizen, “100% Zulu Boy”: Jacob Zuma and the Use of Gender in the Run-up to South
Africa’s 2009 Election”, Heinrich Böll Foundation Southern Africa, 20 April 2009, accessed 28 November, 2013,
http://www.za.boell.org/web/publications-364.html. In 2012 elections the ANC refrained from using Julius
Malema’s popular song “Shoot the Boer”. It had been banned as hate speech by a September 2011 High Court
ruling. See David Smith, “ANC promises to stop singing Shoot the Boer: But Does Decision To Drop Antiapartheid Song Have More To Do with Upcoming Leadership Contest Than Racial Reconciliation?,” Guardian
Africa
Network,
1
November
2012,
accessed
28
November
2013,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/01/south-africa-spear-machine-gun
133
Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 267.
168