gdvsmit@watrose.UUCP (Riel Smit) (09/04/85)
Some time ago there was an argument on the net about the ANC leadership being communists. I realise the following does not really prove anything and is not quite unbiased. However, it remains informative. The article appeared in "Beeld" of July 30, 1985 (Beeld is an Afrikaans newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Amid the unrest and state of emergency there is another drama taking place on another front, one of which South Africa has certainly not seen the end - a renewed power struggle for leadership between the ANC (African National Congress) and PAC (Pan Africanist Congress). South Africans have had glimpses of the struggle, which dates from 1959. It is reminiscent of that between Mr Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF party in Zimbabwe and Mr Joshua Nkomo's Zapu party and could have the same end. Recently, when Senator Edward Kennedy was the guest in South Africa of the United Democratic Front, Dr. Allan Boesak and Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Azapo organisation arranged demonstrations against the American. At one stage Senator Kennedy was pushed around, while on another occasion he was barely able to complete a speech. And now, in the midst of the riots, there are violent clashes in the Black townships between UDF supporters and those of Azapo. Recently, at the University of the North, three speakers from the Azanian Students Movement were so badly attacked and beaten that they were admitted to hospital in serious condition. All these things are claimed to be a manifestation of the struggle between the ANC and the PAC, which started at the end of the previous decade. To go even further back - the South African National Congress was established in 1912. Thirteen years later it became the ANC, a movement which originally had a strong Christian-liberal background. When the South African Communist Party was banned in 1950, members of the party concentrated in infiltrating the ANC and White, Indian and Coloured communists joined the ANC. In 1959, many Black members of the ANC began to feel less at home in the multiracial ANC because of the Black consciousness movement. In addition, the party was being dictated to by its communist members in Moscow. Joe Slovo, a communist who fled SA, was later exposed as a KGB colonel in the Russian secret service and recently he was elected one of 11 new executive members of the ANC in Zambia. Election of these 11 means that 25 of the ANC's executive are members of the Communist Party. However, Black nationalists broke away in 1959 and established the Pan Africanist Congress under Robert Sobukwe. Its philosophy was the same as that of the late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah - Africa for the African. The PAC believes White South Africans should remain here only on con- ditions laid down by the Black majority and believes the country should be called Azania. Russia, having channelled its energy and funds to the ANC via the Communist Party, would not support the breakaway PAC, which thus approached Red China for aid - and got it. John Pokela took over after the death of Robert Sobukwe and tried his best to reconcile the ANC and PAC, but until his death last month failed to do so. His successor, appointed last month, is Vusi Make. Organisations believed to support the PAC are claimed to be easily recognisable - all have the word Azania in their titles. There is Azapo (the Azanian People's Organisation), Azanzu (Azanian National Youth Unity) and Azasm (Azanian Students Movement). Politically speaking, the PAC does have influence in SA as is proved by its "success" against the ANC in Black townships. But it is less successful as a terrorist organisation and, since the Bashee Bridge murders in the Eastern Cape in the early 1950's, it has not had much success. PAC terrorists are supposed to have tried to infiltrate SA early this year but they were found in Mafikeng and arrested. The PAC has headquarters in Tanzania and has only one training camp there. The ANC, however, with its communist contacts, has far greater inter- national support and has camps in Angola, Tanzania and Zambia (its head- quarters are in Lusaka). And it had a camp in Maputo. The OAU accuses the ANC of not being "Black" enough, saying its terror campaign in SA has not really got off the ground. Its leader, Oliver Tambo, lives in luxury in Zambia, they say, while the masses in South Africa suffer. The Minister of Law and Order, Mr Louis le Grange, has said the ANC aims to infiltrate the United Democratic Front and use it for its own ends. Other organisations like Cosas (Congress of South Africa Students) are also claimed to have been infiltrated by the ANC, which does not mean that all UDF or Cosas members are communists. At present the ANC is trying to politicise the Black masses, making political issue of every imagined or legitimate grievance. And, because it has greater financial resources and support, the ANC is responsible for the acts of terror committed in South Africa. The brutality of these acts has shocked the world and even Nobel Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu. The Black woman burnt to death and who was shown worldwide on television was the girlfriend of a policeman. That's all. Not a police informer. At the same time, the PAC must be considered. Many of the acts of violence in recent times in Black townships were bloody confrontations between the ANC and PAC, each fighting for leadership. Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's military wing, is fighting the Azanian People's Liberation Army (Apla) to the end. With Vusi Make heading the PAC, reconciliation between the ANC and PAC seems more remote than ever. Violence between them is by no means over. The South African dilemma is to avoid the whole country going up in flames when the two really attack each other. And that is one of the reasons for the state of emergency.