The Western Cape’s Intrepid Ashley Kriel Unit

The Western Cape’s Intrepid Ashley Kriel Unit

On 23 July 1989, twenty-three-year-old Coline Williams and twenty-year-old Robert Anthony Basil “Robbie” Waterwitch, of Umkhonto we Sizwe’s (MK’s) Ashley Kriel Unit, often referred to as the “Ashley Kriel Detachment”, were killed while planting a bomb inside a public toilet across the street from the Athlone Magistrate’s Court in Klipfontein Road. On the same day, at approximately 21:45, an explosion at a temporary satellite police station in Mitchell’s Plain caused minimal damage to the structure. Another bomb exploded at around 23:20 at the Somerset West Magistrate’s Court.

A man was who was trying to plant a mini limpet mine was spotted by a policeman at the Bellville Magistrate’s Court, who fled the scene before he was apprehended. Bomb disposal experts arrived later to defuse the device. Four limpet mine attacks in the Peninsula were planned for the evening of Sunday 23 July 1989 as part of an anti-election bombing campaign by MK. The magistrate courts that were targeted were earmarked to be used the following morning for the nomination of candidates for the 6 September 1989 general elections.

Following these blasts in the Western Cape, Colonel Nik Heynes of the apartheid SA Police informed the media that the police were investigating the possibility that the incidents were part of a campaign waged by the African National Congress (ANC) against the elections. South Africa’s White, Indian and so-called Coloured voters were being prepared to go to segregated elections for separate chambers of the Tri-cameral Parliament, while the country’s millions of Black citizens had no representation in Parliament.

Progressive organisations and trade unions under the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) demonstrated their rejection of the voting in protest rallies, marches and a partly effective general strike. The independent Labor Monitoring Group reported that approximately forty percent of black workers in factories with 100 or more employees heeded a call by the anti-apartheid MDM to stay at home as an expression of protest of the election. Labour union federations and anti-apartheid organisations maintained that there was strong participation in the strike in Cape Town, where many of the anti-government protests of the month-old “defiance campaign” had taken place.

On 5 August 1989, more than 5 000 people attended a funeral service for Coline Williams and Robbie Waterwitch at the St Mark’s Catholic Church in Bonteheuwel. Outside the church, there was a team of policemen carrying automatic weapons and teargas canisters strapped to their belts, and a police helicopter hovering above. Police began firing teargas and removing the ANC flags from the coffins. However, during the burial at the Maitland Cemetery, additional flags were smuggled past the police and placed on the coffins just prior to burial.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) later established that youth activist, Geoffrey Randall Bruce Brown, was an informant for the National Intelligence Service (NIS). Brown, who was also involved as part of the MK Ashley Kriel Unit, was a close friend of Robbie Waterwitch and met with him virtually on a daily basis. Brown was handled by National Intelligence Service (NIS) member Johan Hattingh and, under the guise of writing political analysis pieces, received large sums of money from NIS. The limpet mine that killed Waterwitch and Williams had been “zero timed” which meant it would have exploded immediately on detonation.

The day after the fatal explosion, Brown was involved in removing weapons and explosives from Waterwitch’s home. These were not handed over to the Ashley Kriel Unit but rather to persons uninvolved with military structures and others outside of their discipline. The TRC deduced that the possibility of rigging explosives could not be discounted, since it was notable that at least two other explosive devices used in the simultaneous raid did not go off or were defused by bomb experts. Secondly, that on one occasion, security forces substituted a limpet mine for one filled with clay, in a “credibility operation” for Shane Oliver without endangering him. Oliver had been infiltrated as an informant into the Ashley Kriel Unity and was handled by Aristedes Spannelis of the Directorate of Covert Collections (DCC) tasked by apartheid South African Defence Force (SADF) Western Province Command.

Following the brutal killing of MK cadre Ashley Kriel on 9 July 1987 in Athlone, activities of MK in the Western Cape began to intensify. For instance, on 25 July 1987, the Cape Times newspaper reported that it had received letter from a group calling itself the “Basil February MK Squad”, which claimed responsibility for the bomb attacks that occurred in that month in the Cape Peninsula. The group vowed to “answer racist violence with people’s revolutionary violence, until the black, green and gold flag flies over the Union buildings in Pretoria”. Two days later, on 27 July 1987, the London Times newspaper reported that the Basil February MK Squad declared that by its actions it was “honouring our late commander and leader Comrade Cassius Make, Ashley Kriel and all the heroes and martyrs of our struggle”.

Meanwhile, in Cape Town, a female MK soldier, Shirley Gunn, met Moegmat Aneez Salie, who was her comrade in the MK underground, and they decided then to combine their units as a tribute to the recently murdered MK cadre, which they decided to call the “Ashley Kriel Unit”. Shirley Gunn, who was recruited into MK in 1984 by Leon Meyer – killed in the Maseru Raid in December 1985 – on 23 April 1986 entered Botswana hidden under a load of cabbages before she was transported to a safe house on her way to undergo military training. On 12 June 1987, Gunn was infiltrated back into South Africa, as she was being deployed to the Western Cape, after completing her military training in Angola.

Shirley was meant to be with special operations, but with permission from our MK Headquarters in exile, she started operating together with Aneez Salie. Aneez asked Shirley to co-command the detachment, whose jurisdiction included the so-called Coloured, White and Indian areas in the Western Cape. These communities made up the majority of the Western Cape population and the two had been instructed not to operate in the black townships because they would have been easily exposed. They then had to secure a safe underground base from which to operate, beginning with rented a tiny, one-roomed flat above Second Beach, in Clifton. Afterwards they started building the Unit by recruiting key youth activists for training .

Thirdly, they set about establishing a Western Cape Regional Political Military Committee (RPMC), which was the overarching structure necessary to implement the “People’s War” strategy and tactics in the Western Cape. The purpose of the RPMC was to link the military leadership to the political leadership, since their operations had to be informed by the political conditions on the ground. This was based on the understanding that no group of trained guerrillas would be able to liberate the country alone. Shirley and Aneez chaired the committee along with Johnny Issel, who provided political input, and Melvin Bruintjies, who became chief of operations.

Communication with the ANC-MK leadership in Gaborone and Lusaka was done through Shanil Haricharan, whom Aneez had met at a mutual friend’s flat in Hillbrow in 1987 before he went into exile. Shanil was the first person Aneez deployed to command the Johannesburg unit, after he had returned from the Transkei, where he was an MK operative in 1986. He recruited Richard Ishmail, and Aneez put them in touch with James Ngculu, who was their commander in Botswana. One of their first operations of the internally-trained Ashley Kriel Unit was on 28 September 1988, whereby Sidney Hendricks, Vanessa November and Coline Williams planted a mine at the Bonteheuwel Rent Office’s front door, which shattered windows and tore off the office’s roof tiles.

Ultimately, on 25 June 1990, while Shirley Gunn was visiting the Karoo, with her family, she was arrested on trumped-up charges of her involvement in the Khotso House bombing. Nevertheless, the Ashley Kriel Unit was among the most successful in the history of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). The geographic spread of their operations was far ranging, with seven units having carried out more than 30 operations between 1987 and 1990. The success of the Unit may be attributed to the fact that different members were trained inside and outside South Africa, some as far as Cuba.

Salute to Anton Fransch, Coline Williams and Robbie Waterwitch who lost their lives in the line of duty, and Richard Ismail who was murdered in 2007. A lot still needs to be written and honoured about this Intrepid Ashley Kriel Unit/Detachment.

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
South African History Archives (SAHA).
Aneez Salie, “How the Death of Ashley Kriel Made an MK Soldier Want to Fight”, Cape Times, 23 September 2019.
Marianne Thamm, “The Heroes ANC Forgot to Remember: Robbie Waterwitch and Coline Williams, 25 Years Later”, Daily Maverick, 28 July 2014.
Alet Janse van Rensburg, “Going Underground with the Ashley Kriel MK Detachment”, News 24, 29 September 2019.
William Claiborne, “South African Elections Protested by Thousands Strikes, Marches Staged Across Country”, The Washington Post, 5 September 1989.
Nadine Cloete, “‘Voices from the Underground’: In Service for Our Liberation”, Mail & Guardian, 21 April 2020.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report”, Vol. 3, 29 October 1998.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “Amnesty Hearings: Sydney Hendricks, Vanessa Rhoda November and Moegmat Aneez Salie”, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Amnesty Committee, Cape Town, 1 February 2001.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.
Shirley Gunn and Shanil Haricharan (Eds.), “Voices from the Underground: Eighteen Life Stories from Umkhonto we Sizwe’s Ashley Kriel Detachment”, September 2019.

Castro Khwela
Good evening fellow Compatriots!