TRC Final Report

Volume 6

Section 3

Chapter 2

Subsection 14

PART THREE: PERIOD OF TRANSITION: 1 9 9 0 – 1 9 9 4

INTRODUCTION

123. While it was possible to draw a sharp distinction between those involved in the clandestine military operations of MK and those engaged in other forms of protest in the pre-1990 era, such distinctions become far less clear in the early 1990s. During this period, the borders began to blur as MK operatives became involved in community SDU structures and activities and civilians were increasingly drawn into paramilitary activities. The categories described in this section must, therefore, be seen as overlapping, with players moving from one to another and frequently inhabiting two or more simultaneously.

124. The Pretoria Minute between the former government and the ANC was signed on 6 August 1990. It included an announcement that the ANC would suspend its armed struggle with immediate effect, based on the presumption that the negotiations process would, amongst other things, lead to a suspension of ‘armed actions and related activities’ by the ANC and its military wing MK.

1 2 5 . However, in the light of the widespread violence that almost immediately erupted in the Pretor i a - W i t waters rand – Ve reeniging (PWV) area and spread to other parts of the country, the ANC gave its support to the formation of SDUs in order to protect communities from violent attack.

126. In September 1990, Mr Nelson Mandela publicly pledged the support of MK members to help form and train SDUs. The violence was so extensive that the A N C ’s Consultative Conference in December 1990 asserted that, ‘in the light of the endemic violence and the slaughter of innocent people by the regime and its allies, we reaffirm our right and duty as a people to defend ourselves with any means at our disposal’. The Conference resolved ‘to mandate the NEC to take active steps to create people’s defence units as a matter of extreme urgency for the defence of our people.’^{1 4 8}

1 2 7 . The SDUs were conceived as tightly structured paramilitary units with a specific command and control system. Their members were to be highly trained and subject to a high degree of discipline. MK members were envisaged as playing an important role in the establishment of these structures.

128. While the ANC was concerned that formal MK involvement would jeopardise negotiations, it approved the involvement of individual MK members in community defence. MK Military Headquarters (MHQ) was to play a limited and secondary role, although certain members of MHQ were given the task of assisting SDUs with organisation, training and the provision of weaponry. Various clandestine units were set up for these purposes. The general approach, however, was that the overall control of the SDUs was to remain with community structures and that MK operatives were to participate as members of the community.

129. The ANC told the Commission that it had no records of MK’s role in the SDUs, since they were not HQ-controlled structure s :

MR ISMAIL: Senior ANC leaders decided that selected SDUs should be assisted in those areas of the Reef which were hardest hit by destabilisation. Selected members of MK, including senior officials from the Command structures, were drawn into an ad hoc structure to assist with the arming of units and to train and co-ordinate efforts in self-defence in these communities; this was done on a need-to-know basis. (Pretoria hearing 4 May 1998.)

130. Although the conflict in the 1990s took place primarily between the IFP and the ANC, its roots were deeply complex. Ethnicity, age, gender, language and social position played their part in the upheaval and fed into long-standing differences between urban dwellers and rural migrants. Migrants found themselves in conflict with town dwellers. In the reports of the Commission of Inquiry regarding the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation^{1 4 9}, Justice Richard J Goldstone commented at length on the structural, linguistic and social cleavages that fed into the conflicts in the Toko z a^{1 5 0} a rea. The Goldstone report into violence in Tokoza noted that the political rivalry between hostel-dwellers and shack-dwellers, Zulu-speakers and Xhosa-speakers, Zulus and Xhosas, and migrant workers and those who have their families with them, all tend to resolve themselves into a very simple IFP/ANC tension.

131. These deep-seated dimensions of the conflict are a significant feature of the amnesty applications by SDU members (and many applications from all political groupings relating to the 1990s). While inherently a political conflict, testimony by applicants points to a range of complex social and other factors that formed part of the warp and woof of local conflicts.