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Extra-military Armed Formations and Civilian Political Violence*
INTRODUCTION
The government elected in April will confront four principal sources of potential armed rebellion. These are, respectively, the militarised sections of white conservative opposition, the remnants of anti-apartheid guerrilla armies, forces loyal to homeland leaders currently opposed to the constitution, and finally, smaller and less well organised bands of disaffected civilians with access to firearms. This paper will consider the nature of the security threat each of these groupings represents and the strategies which it may be necessary for the new administration to adopt in order to confront them.
THE PARAMILITARY WHITE RIGHT
In the last three years, threats or warnings of civil war which were confined to the extreme fringes of the white right have become quite commonplace in the milieu of Afrikaner conservative politics. Though there is no evidence to suggest that recent right wing terrorism has been the work of anything other than small isolated conspiracies, it is increasingly evident that sabotage and assassinations, as well as more random racial killing, evoke tacit acceptance, if not approval, amongst the leadership and rank and file of 'mainstream' organisations such as the Conservative Party (CP) and the Afrikaner Volksfront (AVF)1. The Volksfront itself indicated at their meeting in January a preference for the military option (Business Day, 18 January 1994)2. Both the Conservative Party and the Volksfront called on their followers in late 1993 'to stockpile for a siege' in the event of a government of national unity acceding to power.
Of course, such threats and sentiments, when expressed by members of the Afrikaner political elite, can be interpreted as a form of bargaining for a more favourable constitutional dispensation; they may be at best half-hearted. Even so, they should not be dismissed out of hand. Right wing politics has acquired an increasingly militaristic flavour and is also very disunited; even if relatively moderate Conservative Party and Volksfront notables were won over to the settlement through federalist palliatives, by no means all their current allies and supporters would willingly follow them into elected politics. In particular, such a course would hold few attractions, for instance, for the bellicose 'generals' of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) who have become increasingly conspicuous in the public pageantry of right wing politics.
The AWB has existed for over twenty years, but it was only in the mid-1980's that it began to develop a popular base. From its inception, the AWB has been anti-democratic and violent, with a formal ideology heavily derived from national socialist traditions, both domestic and imported. Violent oratory, sporadic terrorism and public brawling failed to draw much of a following until the closing years of the decade, when economic recession began to generate considerable white unemployment; from 1984, the AWB began 'Volkshulpskema' schemes for the collection and distribution of food and clothes for poor Afrikaans households in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Bloemfontein. At the same time, large bodies of uniformed AWB supporters began disrupting National Party meetings in small Transvaal towns, on each occasion swamping the gathering with superior numbers and taking over the rostrum. The AWB became an increasingly conspicuous feature of any right wing anti-government occasion despite its professed disapproval of party politics. Conservative Party politicians tolerated it's presence partly because the AWB disdained elections and so did not constitute a rival. Without moderating its rhetoric or losing any of its fascist dimensions, the AWB managed to acquire a range of respectable associates. Last year, the AWB's annual conference was opened by the Conservative Party's leader, Ferdi Hartzenberg.
Today, the AWB claims a membership of around 80 000, 55 000 of whom, it says, are organised into locally-based Wenkommandos (Sweepslag, no 1, 1993). These figures may well be exaggerated, police sources suggest that the Wenkommandos can muster at most, 15 000 men. Even so the AWB has, on several occasions, demonstrated its ability to concentrate several thousand of its armed and uniformed supporters to carry out spectacular acts of material bravado: last year's invasion of the World Trade Centre was a case in point. Such operations demonstrate an impressive capacity for co-ordination and planning. Over the last year, several Transvaal municipalities, usually quite small rural centres, have granted the AWB 'freedom of the town', these occasions too, were marked by displays of military strength, with several hundred armed men and women marching in formation and in good foot drill order behind mounted AWB officers.
Now, of course, in all this there is an element of theatre; flags, uniforms, drill and grandiose military titles may well be deeply satisfying amongst people who are threatened with, or actually experiencing, political and social marginalisation; they need not signify high levels of military competence. The AWB's military formations can obviously draw upon the army experience which most of its male members will have acquired from their national service, but its hierarchy does not include conspicuous numbers of former, senior, professional soldiers. Eugene Terre Blanche's autocratic and eccentric leadership style is another factor which may prevent the AWB alone from constituting a serious security threat. An organisation which is so dependent on centralised channels of command may find it quite difficult to operate under the clandestine conditions in which localised initiative becomes important.
It would be a mistake though, to measure the AWB's insurrectionary capacity by the pretentious buffoonery of its leader. The AWB might not be able to take on a professional army but then neither could Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). Like MK, though, it has a communal support base and individual members have already been involved in violent attacks on black civilians. Several senior AWB Ystergarde 'officers' were arrested in September, 1993, suspected of plotting to launch a missile attack on the Koeberg nuclear power station, as well as planning raids to secure arms from the S A Army Battle School at Lohatla in the Northern Cape. Unlike MK, the AWB has been able to establish its organisational structures under legal conditions and it has been able to acquire weapons and set up training camps without official interference. Quite apart from buying arms, some of its members have access to weapons through the SADF commando system (Sunday Times, 31 October, 1993). White paramilitary groupings have also stolen weapons from government arsenals and their arsenals3 can also be supplemented from non-military sources, with industrial explosives, for example.
AWB propaganda has suggested that they enjoy considerable support amongst white police officers (though, significantly, the AWB newsletter, Sweepslag, contains contemptuous references to soldiers).4 Police statements underwrite such claims to some extent; law and order spokesman Craig Kotze, attributed police successes in combating 'right wing extremism' to high levels of police infiltration of right wing groups. Police espionage may prevent the AWB from effectively realising its alleged war plans of constituting 'Boer Task Forces' which would mount blockades around small towns in the aftermath of the elections (Sunday Star, 19 December 1993; Rapport, 12 December 1993)5 but police infiltrates may also be sympathisers.
In any case, even isolated incidents of right wing terrorism may provoke high waves of public disorder in reaction which, in turn, could serve to enhance right wing support. Nor is the AWB's Wenkommando the only rightwing private army in existence; it is organised alongside several smaller independent formations, including the Boerkrisisaksie, and the Boer Republikeinse Leër, which has claimed responsibility for recent bombings of the African National Congress (ANC) offices, electricity pylons and railway tracks in the Orange Free State. The 'Pretoria Boerkommando Groep', (PBKG) led by a former officer of the disbanded 32 Battalion, undertook a symbolic occupation of Fort Schanskop, a military monument outside Pretoria in December. The PBKG was founded in 1992. It claims 1000 adherents divided into 14 neighbourhood units. Its elite 'Reaction Force' sometimes supplies an honour guard at Volksfront meetings (Weekly Mail, 10 December 1993). According to the SA Police, at least 123 militant right groups existed, 11 of which were relatively significant (Sunday Times, 31 October 1983).
In the final analysis, however, what is disturbing about the paramilitary right is not its organisational proficiency or its military firepower, but its apparent legitimacy amongst considerable numbers of South Africans. This seems to extend beyond the small town white communities in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, where its activities are most evident. The Afrikaner Volksfront named Eugene Terre Blanche as one member of its 'shadow cabinet' which would assume control of a self-proclaimed Volkstaat in the event of the failure of negotiated self-determination. The AWB claims the support of white trade unionists with whose leaders it frequently shares platforms at public meetings. The Transvaal and Free State Agricultural Union congress last year featured militant speeches by Volksfront leaders threatening armed action to defend farmers' property rights. Whether expressed in the bombastic language of AWB leaders or the more measured cadences of Volksfront notables, insurrectionary sentiments resonate with the very real fears of white workers and farmers, confronted with social reforms which will certainly threaten their jobs and their livelihoods.
ANTI-APARTHEID 'BITTEREINDERS'
Armed insurgent opposition to the new government may not be confined to the myriad factions of South Africa's new right. Ironically, since the ANC's suspension of armed hostilities in August 1990, black guerrilla armies have expanded their recruitment. The largest of these, MK is now in the process of being integrated into the peacekeeping force. Three thousand or so MK soldiers have completed conventional military training in East Africa and elsewhere and are shortly to return home. Approximately 8 000 members of MK have come back since 1990 and MK recruitment has continued.
To the extent that MK's rank and file are absorbed into a reorganised South African army they will not pose a security threat, but many may choose not to become professional soldiers and others may be denied that option. The ANC's inability to provide security and livelihoods for all its former combatants has prompted the formation of several criminalised renegade MK bands and it is likely that disaffected former guerrillas may continue to represent a police problem. Auxiliary 'mass combat units' formed in the mid-1980's and the more modern 'Self Defence Units' (SDU's) in many townships constitute another set of volatile and uncontrollable elements which are vaguely loyal to the ANC. SDU's can be bands of several hundred men; they sometimes see themselves as part of the local civic movement and their spokesmen are often very resistant to the suggestion that their self-proclaimed functions should be taken over by the regular police, even after the April elections. MK units have on occasion, expressed discontent over conditions and material hardship but collectively they have not raised any objections to the political directions taken by ANC leadership since 1990. Given the significance of MK military campaigning in fostering a new set of national myths it is likely that the new administration will be quite careful to ensure that former guerrillas receive generous treatment. They have already been promised official recognition in the form of pensions.
Guerrillas loyal to organisations other than the ANC may be less inclined to lay down their weapons, return to civilian life, or join the security forces. Though the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) announced a suspension of military operations on January 16, and though it is committed to contesting the elections, (and, by implication, participation in the next government), both leaders and followers appear to be divided over whether the 'armed struggle' will continue (Weekly Mail, January 21, 1994). The PAC has a long history of internal strife and since 1990 its political leadership has been either unwilling or unable to exercise control over the military command. The PAC's in African Peoples Liberation Army (APLA) units may still view 1994 as 'The Year of the Great Offensive' as it was christened early January by APLA's then Commander, Sabelo Phama.
APLA is not a large force. In March 1993, the Goldstone Commission reported police estimates of its size as totalling nearly 3 000. This figure included 2 700 members in holding camps in Tanzanian and other African countries and 120 cadres undergoing foreign training elsewhere, (The Citizen, 25, March 1994). Though smaller than MK at the peak of its activities during the 1980s, the present scale of APLA's operations and the number of its combatants are fairly comparable. Unlike MK, APLA units have eschewed complex sabotage operations. In the last two years their attacks have been focused on three main target groups: police personnel based or on duty in townships; white farmers; and recreational or social facilities used chiefly by white civilians. Until January 1994 these activities were sustained with the support of training and logistical facilities in Tanzania and Zimbabwe. The PAC has also developed a strong presence in the comparatively secure environment provided by the Transkei. With the disappearance of these external shelters it may become much more difficult for APLA to maintain itself as an organised and disciplined formation. In fact, while it is possible to ascribe a certain logic and purpose to APLA's targeting of white farmers, which is at least consistent with PAC programmatic and ideological emphases, much of the urban terrorism attributed to APLA seems to be inspired only by racial hatred; it clearly embarrasses PAC leaders and probably reflects a general deterioration of internal control.
The Pan-Africanist Student Organisation (PASO) has set up its own armed units which function independently of APLA structures and PASO leadership remains critical of the decision to compete for votes in April.
The Black Consciousness Movement of South Africa (BCMSA) also fields an insurgent wing, though it is probably tiny. Twenty two adherents of the Azanian National Liberation Army (AZANLA) were arrested towards the end of last year after being discovered holed up in a cave near the Zimbabwean border. Others may have been more successful in their infiltration efforts; an AZANLA spokesman claimed responsibility for bombs which destroyed two petrol stations in Pretoria, saying these represented protests against the constitutional negotiations as well as a hike in petrol prices (Business Day, 2 November 1993). The BCMSA is an exiled body, loosely aligned with AZAPO. Both bodies are opposed to any form of power sharing, they reject the authority of the Transition Executive Council (TEC), and they intend to boycott the elections.
Insurgent armies, whether on the white right or the black left, may worry the police because of their capacity for small-scale sabotage and terrorism but, despite the apocalyptic insurrectionary schemes professed by AWB and Volksfront diehards, it is difficult to view large-scale organised insurgency as a substantial threat to South African security, and certainly not as the prelude to a civil war. Black left wing groups after April will be confronted with an administration of unprecedented local legitimacy (if the opinions polls are anything to go by) and, for the PAC at least, the defection of its leadership to parliamentary politics will probably have a demoralising effect on its more militant cadres. Guerrillas who choose to fight on will be handicapped by the disappearance of external logistical and political support and will operate within communities which will be less and less inclined to offer sanctuary. Right-wingers, at present, are able to capitalise on fear and uncertainty, as well as the popular belief that they enjoy substantial sympathy within sections of the security forces. A loyal army and police force and an administration which responds sensitively to some of the more reasonable apprehensions among the white right's following should have little difficulty in pushing the AWB's commandos and the various other private armies back into the domain of fringe politics from which they have quite recently emerged.
HOMELAND OPPOSITION
At present, only KwaZulu continue to dispute the legitimacy of the political transition. KwaZulu's government and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) may choose to boycott and obstruct the elections and the new peacekeeping force may have to concentrate its personnel around polling stations in the region, both before and during the elections. The KwaZulu police force is about 4 000 men strong and its detractors argue that it has played a partisan role in the violent political rivalry between IFP and ANC supporters. There has been no overt resistance though, to the recent movement into the territory of South African police units. Moreover, the IFP itself is divided over the wisdom of not contesting the elections and indeed, has been developing its grass roots campaigning organisation in anticipation of a favourable decision concerning the elections by its leaders for some months. Opinion polls suggest that IFP has minority support even in its Northern heartland and KwaZulu civil servants may be quite hesitant about supporting an insurgent regime. Even so, the possibility of armed efforts at secession by IFP supporters should not be entirely discounted. The IFP has been training 'self protection units' since the beginning of September in a camp near the Umfolozi game reserve. Some 500 youths were said to have graduated from the five week course in mid-November. They are trained to use firearms though they do not leave the camps equipped with them (The Star, 9 November 1993; Sunday Times, 14 November 1993).
ARMED CIVILIAN DISAFFECTION
To date, of course most of the political violence in South Africa has not been committed by complex or hierarchically organised formations. Right wing terrorism and PAC guerrilla warfare has been responsible for only a very small proportion of the 10 000 lives which have been lost since the beginning of the decade. The arguments about the causes of this violence fall roughly into two categories. One set of analyses identifies the prime causes as the political rivalries between ANC supporters and IFP followers with rogue policemen and other mischief-makers constituting a 'third force' of agents provocateur.6 In this school, ethnic antagonisms are often seen to reinforce political divisions. An alternative view emphasises 'a deeper contextualization of how apartheid has played a central role in creating the material conditions and patterns of differentiation which have fostered and structured the social conflict'.7 Such an interpretation has rather more pessimistic implications than the first argument with its stress on political rivalries which might weaken after an election. For in this view, conflict is understood to be primarily generated by the social inequalities which have been generated by inequalities of access within and between black communities to resources and employment. Tensions which accompany these irregularities are likely to endure for as long as the condition remains unaddressed.
This is not the place to review the two arguments in depth. Advocates of the first set of views tend to understand ethnic identities as constant and inherently mutually hostile. Much of the violence, though, has taken place in Natal between Zulu speakers. On the other hand, it does seem sensible to point to political rivalry between large organisations competing for territory as a relatively fresh ingredient within black South African politics. Social inequalities among black communities generated by Apartheid exist in many different parts of South Africa; it is only when these combine with the presence of political organisations, with identifiably different social bases, that social tensions lead to massive bloodshed. Researchers have pointed out that in the last year or so political violence has become increasingly localised; of the 3 000 people killed last year, 1 200 died in the East Rand townships (The Star, 25 November, 1993 and 26 January, 1994). The violence has been intensified by the proliferation of modern weaponry in townships, most of it smuggled across South Africa's borders from the civil wars in Mozambique and Angola.
STRATEGIES TO CONTAIN VIOLENCE AND ALLEVIATE CONFLICT
A famous South African general once said that the solutions to South Africa's problems were twenty per cent military and eighty per cent political. I think that the view contiunes to have considerable merit; the military proportion indeed, in this equation should be even smaller. I think this brief survey suggests that, in security terms, the challenges confronting South African soldiers and policemen are fairly modest in character; there are no armed formations which are capable of sustaining prolonged and extensive military operations, even on the scale undertaken by MK in the 1980's, provided, that is, that the SADF and the SAP retain their loyalty to the government of the day. On the other hand, acts of terrorism by small autonomous conspiracies and communal clashes in townships, as well as the activities of armed criminals are likely to continue to represent a major threat to the safety of the large numbers ordinary people, particularly those who live in impoverished surroundings. Moreover, militarised politics will continue to appeal to people who are confronted with intolerable degrees of deprivation, as well as those who believe that their property and livelihoods may be taken away. Of course, there are narrow security issues which both the TEC and the new government must tackle with urgency; the effective deployment of the peacekeeping force in the run-up to elections; the reform of the police force; and the suppression of the arms traffic are all obvious items on any security agenda. But by themselves these moves will be insufficient if the new government is unable to go some way towards addressing the material issues which underlie white fears8 and black expectations.
ENDNOTES
- This was evident in the acclamation Gaye Derby-Lewis received at a public meeting presided over by CP and AVF leaders after her acquittal from complicity in the Chris Hani.
- Indeed, this decision may already have been taken, if a Rapport (23 January, 1994) journalist's informants are to be believed. A group of farmers have constituted a planning 'inner circle' which, for some months, has been preparing a co-ordinated uprising in which key centres would be captured and placed under the authority of Burger Councils. Plans include measures to suppress township rebellions. Some 700 conspirators are apparently involved in the Brits vicinity alone, the most well organised area. After towns have been blockaded and secured, the Councils will appeal for support from the SADF and the police. Stockpiles of weapons have been established which include bullets treated with cyanide and armoured vehicles have been hidden on farms around Brits and Thabazimbi. These plans were disclosed to Rapport because members of the inner circle are apparently having second thoughts, but fear that 'right politicians... speak of war in disengaged tones without having the foggiest idea of the magnitude and consequence of their underground plots'.
- The largest arms theft so far was undertaken by a dissident faction of the Boer Weerstandsbeweging, The Soldiers of Jesus Christ who removed from an airforce base in Pietersburg 400 hand grenades, 100 000 rounds of ammunition and 200 mortar bombs in November 1993. The material was subsequently recovered when nine men were arrested.
- For example, in this description of General 'Hagar' Thompson's 'mass action' in the wake of the Eikenhop shootings: 'The women of the AWB stood in a line in front of the caspir and the police put their weapons away. The army bike patrol was banished to the bushes where they sat like the monkeys they are' (Sweepslag, no. 2, 1993). In the 1980's, there were reports of AWB infiltration of the army, one farmer in Lydenberg telling a researcher that 'even the army trucks have AWB stickers on the back in this part of the Transvaal' (Stephen John Louw, The Rise of the 'Ultra Right' in South Africa, unpublished paper, p. 15). The ending of national conscription and the move towards a wholly professional army has probably significantly reduced the extent of political subversion of the military.
- These plans were leaked, initially to Rapport, by senior AWB officers, who were exasperated, apparently by the lack of realism and delusion which characterises strategic deliberations within the AWB's top echelon leadership.
- For versions of this argument of varying degrees of sophistication: H Adam, Explaining the Slaughter, The Star, 24 August, 1990; P Wellman MK Link in Killing Fields, The Star, October 26, 1992; D Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided South Africa, Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1991; A Jeffrey, Spotlight on Disinformation about Violence in South Africa, SAIRR, Johannesburg, 1992.
- R Taylor and M Shaw, Interpreting the Conflict in Natal, Africa Perspective, Volume 2, Number 1, December 1993, p11.
- Affirmative action and land reform are two obvious areas of anxiety amongst working class and rural whites. Affirmative action programmes are necessary and inevitable but they should avoid the crudity of a recent decision by Spoornet to close formally its lower echelon recruitment to whites. The ANC is committed to land reform but its policy makers have demonstrated some sensitivity to the feelings of white farmers. In August 1993, ANC spokesmen expressed misgivings about a World Bank, report saying it made exaggerated claims about the inefficiency of commercial agriculture; its own proposals are rather less radical than those of the Bank.
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