The Debate around Adoption of the Armed Struggle: Part 1

The Debate around Adoption of the Armed Struggle: Part 1

On 2 June 1961, at a meeting of the Working Committee of the African National Congress (ANC) National Executive Committee (NEC), Moses Kotane, who did not attend the South African Communist Party (SACP) Annual Congress in December 1960, wherein the document “South Africa What’s Next?”, which was developed by Michael Harmel, interjected when Nelson Mandela raised the contents of the document on the need “to create an armed force to prepare for a new phase”.

Moses Kotane’s interjection was that the matter could not be discussed as the time had not yet arrived for the armed struggle. According to Kotane, “Because of the severe measures taken by the government you are unable to continue in the old way. The difficulties have paralysed you and you now want to talk a revolutionary language and talk about armed struggle, when in fact there is still room for the old method that we are using if we are imaginative and determined enough. You just want to expose people, you see, to massacres by the enemy. You have not even thought very carefully about this.” Mandela was not supported by anybody in the meeting, including Walter Sisulu, to whom he had confided extensively about this proposal.

Later on, in a private meeting with Sisulu, Mandela criticised him for not having supported him in the Working Committee meeting. Sisulu instead laughed at him, saying that it would have been a foolish attempt to fight against a pride of lions. He then proposed to invite Moses Kotane to visit Mandela privately so that he could make his proposal directly to him.

When Mandela met Moses Kotane, he told him that “Sebatana ha se bokwe ka diatla”, which meant that “the attacks of the wild beast cannot be averted with only bare hands”. Mandela told Kotane that his opposition was reminiscent of the Cuban Communist Party under Batista, when the Party insisted that the appropriate conditions for revolution had not yet arrived, and waited because they were following the prescription of Lenin and Stalin. By contrast, Castro did not wait, he acted, and he triumphed.

According to Mandela, if one waited for textbook conditions, they would never occur. Mandela continued that “Here we have to decide from our own situation. The situation in this country is that it is time for us to consider a revolution, an armed struggle, because people are already forming military units in order to start acts of violence. And if we don’t do so, they going to continue. They haven’t got the resources, they haven’t got the experience, they haven’t got the political machinery to carry out that decision.”

For Mandela, “The only organisation that can do so is the African National Congress which commands the masses of the people. And you must be creative and change your attitude because your attitude really is the attitude of a man who is leading the movement in the old way when we were legal, who is not considering leading now in terms of the illegal conditions under which we are operating.” After talking for an entire day, in response Kotane said, “Well, I’m not going to promise anything, but raise it again.”

At a Working Committee meeting a week later, Mandela raised the issue of the armed struggle again, and following his pitch, Kotane told the meeting that, “Well I’m still not convinced, but let’s give him a chance. Let him go and put these ideas to the Executive, with our support.” Walter Sisulu was just smiling.

According to the SACP’s Document, “South Africa What’s Next”, it said, “…the people’s movement could no longer hope to continue along the road of exclusively non-violent forms of political struggle, and to do so would lead to the paralysis of the movement in the face of new government tactics, and to the disillusionment and spread of defeatism amongst the people … That the Party Central Committee should take steps to initiate the training and equipping of selected personnel in new methods of struggle, and thus prepare the nucleus of an adequate apparatus to lead struggles of a more forcible and violent character.”

In an article by A. Lerumo (real name Michael Harmel), published in The African Communist (No. 9, April/May 1962), the South African Communist Party argued “For half a century, Congress has striven for the interests of the African majority of South Africa. Innumerable struggles and campaigns have been waged not only by the ANC but also by the Communist Party, the trade unions, the Indian Congress, the Congress of Democrats and the Coloured People’s Congress and other fighters for liberation against the citadel of White domination. It would be incorrect to assert that these struggles and campaigns have been fruitless. Far from it. In the course of defiance, pass-burning and other campaigns, strikes, demonstrations, boycotts and other forms of non-violent mass action, the political consciousness of the masses has been tremendously raised.”

The article continued, “Steeled and disciplined fighters for freedom have been developed and trained. The atrocious crimes of apartheid and baasskap have been exposed on a world scale. The South African people have created a powerful united front of national liberation – the Congress Alliance – with its own inspiring and well-defined programme-the Freedom Charter. But all these protracted and bitter struggles, waged with skill, imagination and unwearying determination, have not wrung a single concession from the Nationalist Government. On the contrary, that Government has announced the policy of the granite wall against the demands of the people. It has driven the principal organisations of the people’s resistance, first the Communist Party and then the African National Congress, underground.”

In terms of the article, “Hundreds of peoples’ leaders have been ordered, without charge or trial, and for periods, in many cases, of more than ten years each, to abstain from attending all gatherings, to resign from all progressive organisations, to confine themselves to a particular area of the country. Others have been exiled far from their homes and their families. Democrats of all races are continually raided and searched by the special political police, spied upon day and night, their letters opened, and their telephones tapped. There is no freedom of speech; in most African residential areas meetings are forbidden, publications are constantly being banned.”

In conclusion, the article argued that “A turning point was reached following the Sharpeville and Langa massacres of 1960 when a ‘state of emergency’ was declared and 2,000 political prisoners detained for months without charge or trial. The so-galled ‘emergency’ has continued in parts of the Transkei until the present time. The Government is relentlessly intensifying its policy of repression to the point where every possible door to peaceful and constitutional protests and methods of change is slammed in the faces of the people. The Government is openly preparing for civil war. All these things add up to a major shift in the political situation in South Africa, where no further progress is possible along the traditional paths or by adhering rigidly to the non-violence slogan in a situation where every democratic demand or criticism is treated as an act of rebellion and treason.”

Sources:
A. Lerumo, “Forms and Methods of Struggle the South African Democratic Revolution”, The African Communist, No. 9, April/May 1962.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.
Nelson Mandela, “Long Walk to Freedom”, Abacus, 1994.

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!