The Hani Memorandum

The Hani Memorandum

Around 7 January 1969, Chris Hani and six other Comrades signed a document, later known as the “Hani Memorandum”, that accused the African National Congress (ANC) in exile of being in a deep crisis as a result of “the rot” that had set in. After 18 frustrating months in jail, Hani became an adopted son for Livingstone and Nzimazana Mqotsi, in Woodlands, Lusaka.

When Hani and his comrades had returned to Lusaka from jail in Botswana, a party was thrown for them at the home of the South African Communist Party (SACP) members, Jack and Ray Simons. Ben Magubane, who was an ANC academic teaching at the University of Zambia, threw a party, too. But surprisingly, disturbingly, there was no other official welcome.

On their return from war and prison, the Luthuli Detachment had been all but ignored by the ANC leadership. There were no ceremonies and no medals, no special briefings. The silence from the leadership began to affect Hani negatively. Within months, his confusion turned into a desperate kind of fury, feeling that the ANC leadership had neglected them after having sacrificed their lives and lost a number of gallant comrades in the Wankie Campaign. Finally, he put his name at the top of a list of seven signatures in the Memorandum, the signatories, included two former cellmates in Gaborone, gathered in Mqotsi’s home in Lusaka.

The Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) soldiers in the camps decried the disenchantment that had affected the ANC while executing its external mission in exile, which included careerism of its leadership abroad, shady businesses run by leaders with a questionable background and how the Movement’s security organ had notoriously suppressed and persecuted MK cadres.

In the document, several names were mentioned. It was claimed that one “Thabo More” – the name by which Joe Modise was known – paid more attention to commercial enterprises like the furniture factory in Lusaka and a bone factory in Livingstone, rather than focusing on developing the armed struggle. Initially being established as fronts for the ANC’s underground activities, the businesses were at the time run as true commercial ventures.

Modise took a salary and owned “a posh and militarily irrelevant” car, as articulated in the Memorandum, he was becoming “middle class”. His relative, Shadrack Tladi, was part of a trio with Boy Otto and Joseph Cotton, the son of ANC Treasurer-General, Moses Kotane, that was openly flirting with members of the US Peace Corps, an alleged “CIA front”. At the time, Tladi and Cotton handled much of the organisation’s highly sensitive information and transported war material. It was also stated that the wife of the ANC’s Secretary General and Chief of Security, Duma Nokwe, worked for an Israeli intelligence-gathering agency.

The Memorandum reflected the sense among some cadres that Duma Nokwe was indifferent and cynical towards battle-weary comrades. In the camps, combatants who had offended the leadership were rumoured to have been “dumped in dugouts half-filled with several drums of water without blankets or any other protective material for periods of up to about 22 days”. There were secret trials and secret executions which were carried out with a veil of secrecy.

MK Commander Joe Modise was reputed to have become a law unto himself, arbitrarily appointing and dismissing people, leading to the entrenchment of a culture in which sycophants prevailed. According to the document, the movement had created a machinery that had become an end in itself and was completely divorced from the situation at home.

Particular rancour was also directed at the “bogus ANC Youth Organisation”, and one of its leaders, Thabo Mbeki, was predominantly singled out. While Hani went to war in Wankie, Mbeki was studying at the University of Sussex, funded by the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), the white liberal student organisation. It felt as if there was clear nepotism going on.

Finally, it called for the need to seriously investigate ways and means of going home, with MK fully involved in the process. It concluded that “all these problems must be resolved by a conference between the ANC leadership and members of MK, and not just handpicked individuals”. Consequently, the Memorandum led to the holding of the Morogoro Consultative Conference on 25 April to 1 May 1969, which reflected the seriousness of the issues that had arisen prior to the conference and the determination of the leadership of the Congress movement to unite its cadres behind a common programme.

Sources:
Wikipedia.
Hugh Macmillan, “Commentary: The ‘Hani Memorandum’ – Introduced and Annotated”, Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, No. 69, 2009.
Janet Smith and Beauregard Tromp, “Hani: A Life Too Short”, Jonathan Ball, 2009.

Castro Khwela
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