Nongqai_Vol_12B

CHAPTER 3.

THE NATURE AND CONTEXT OF SA’s POLITICAL POWER STRUGGLE 3.1 The nature of the conflict: it was first and foremost armed propaganda.

Allister Sparks, in his: Tomorrow is Another Country, says that Nelson Mandela had told him: “I started Umkhonto We Sizwe … but I never had any illusions that we could win a military victory; its purpose was to focus attention on the resistance movement.”

The ANC’s “armed struggle” was thus classical armed propaganda – what was called in the 19th century (particularly in France) “propaganda by deed”. Or as Brian Jenkins later stated: “terrorism is theatre”. The O’Malley Archives housed at the Nelson Mandela Foundation covers the evolution of the ANC’s struggle. In Chapter 5, titled: Armed Propaganda and Non-Collaboration it is stated (on p. 149) that, in the course of the ANC’s 1978 – 79 internal strategic review, Vietnamese revolutionaries had introduced the ANC to armed propaganda as a formal concept, which the ANC then seized upon.

Revolutionary or armed propaganda typically has different, complimentary focal points. One such is “atrocity propaganda” (aimed at winning the moral high ground in the opinion of domestic and international audiences). Another is “disarming propaganda”, which Maurice Tugwell described in the Spring 1986 edition of Conflict Quarterly as: “Here the aim is to discredit and destroy any method, individual, police or military unit, weapon or policy that, because of its potential effectiveness, threatens the terrorists' integrity and freedom of action. …disarming themes are often argued within the norms of conventional morality. Consequently, fronts are extensively used, and they appear to advance their causes pro bono publico...”

As will be shown when we deal in detail with the doctrines of the protagonists, the asymmetrical struggle against the overwhelming might of the white South African state’s security forces was first and foremost a propaganda-driven struggle for local and international opinion. In it, “atrocity propaganda” and “disarming propaganda” were key elements, which – fortunately for the revolutionaries – could play into a favourable (English-language) media environment locally and internationally and could also count on the support of Cold War era leftist pressure groups that had been established in Western countries by Moscow, the ANC’s main international ally and ideological fountainhead.

The reality that the conflict was dominated by propaganda cannot therefore be ignored, when assessing how the SAP-SB (as the ANC’s major institutional stumbling block) acquired its negative public image among readers of the English-language media – very much distinct from the image created for readers of the Afrikaans media.

3.2 The constitutional and jurisprudential context.

The security or special branch of the South African Police was formed in June 1939, less than three months prior to the outbreak of the 2nd World War. It was modelled on the Special Branch of the London Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard), but had a country-wide remit, since the South African Police was by law the national police force of the entire Union of South Africa.

The SAP-SB was thus the constitutionally ordained national law enforcement body focused on investigating internationally-recognized crimes against the peaceful constitutional order (meaning essentially, the illegal furthering of political aims by violent means).

The unit was created and first served to counter radical internal opposition against South Africa’s war effort against Nazi Germany during the Second World War (when 6,636 opponents of South Africa’s participation in that war were detained without trial in concentration camps). Subsequent to the 1961 conversion of the Union into the Republic of South Africa, the SAP-SB seamlessly carried 27 Nongqai Vol 12 No 12B : SAP-SB / ANC-MK