Establishing the Butterfly Unit – The Beginning

Establishing the Butterfly Unit – The Beginning

On 6 August 1985, Commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Natal Machinery, Thami Zulu (real name Muziwakhe Ngwenya), met with the African National Congress (ANC) Head of the Mission in Mozambique, Jacob Zuma, to discuss the establishment of a new politico-military structure for Natal in line with the recommendations of the Kabwe Conference. Zuma gave Zulu the go-ahead to draw up a plan, which was then developed with Edward Lawrence (real name Cyril Raymonds), Sue Rabkin and Terence Tyron in Maputo.

An organisational chart was then drawn, using Koki pens, to determine who was to report to whom, what units were to be required, how they were to coordinate their activities, and other critical details. Provisions were also made on the chart for what was called “area mobilisation”, within the Natal province, such as the mobilisation of Indian and African communities on a separate basis.

In the final structure was the creation of the “Headquarters”, which would, in the form of a Politico-Military Council (PMC), integrate political and military functions and would be based abroad. Its members were to be given specific responsibilities, such as mass mobilisation, propaganda, military operations, communications, logistics and intelligence. Subordinate structures were to be established in the “Forward Areas” neighbouring South Africa, with Swaziland being the Forward Area for Natal, reporting to the Headquarters.

On the bottom row, wherein the structure was extended into the country, the arrangement was that people were to be first tested politically within the mass organisations, and if they impressed the leadership, they were then to be recruited into the underground, where they would begin with minor tasks, such as propaganda development and distribution. After being assessed for competency in these minor tasks, they were then to be promoted into the three-person military combat structures, which was to have a commander reporting to a regional committee, having a single line of communication to Swaziland.

The Campaign was to be codenamed “Butterfly” in honour of Zwelakhe Zweli Nyanda (aka “Douglas” or “Oscar”), who used the term when he was discussing a very similar project with Charles Ndaba and Raymond Lalla at a meeting in Matsapha, Swaziland, on 2 August 1982. This was the first effort to establish an Area Politico-Military Committee (APMC) in a major city, Durban. These discussions concerned the possibilities of creating underground structures in the greater Durban area, using the Alan Taylor Residence of the University of Natal as the main base or headquarters. Both Ndaba and Nyanda were former medical students of the University of Natal, and during their conversation, Nyanda suggested that perhaps it was high time that “the medical students stopped dissecting butterflies and get involved in political activities”. Hence the term “Butterfly” was utilised for the Campaign.

Operations that had been conducted in the past had suffered directly from a lack of coordination between the political and military spheres. This lack of coordination and cooperation meant political and military cadres often pursued isolated programmes inside South Africa. They believed the solution lay in the integrated approach of the area politico-military committee (APMC) plan drawn up in 1981 as part of the Green Book programme, which said, “it is essential to create a local politico-military collective (a sub-organ of the central organ) which is in charge of all political and military work in the region of its responsibility” (The Green Book).

The meeting in Matsapha, Swaziland, was intended to reverse the transfer of Ingwavuma to Swaziland. The then Chief of Staff of the MK Natal Machinery, Zweli Nyanda, who had a map of the whole of Natal spread out on a table, was standing up periodically to pace around and gather his thoughts on the nature and content of the campaign. The Ingwavuma Campaign involved doing groundwork for the creation of guerrilla operational areas in Northern Natal by first politicising the local population. Subsequent preparations included mapping out the terrain, recruiting people and establishing training bases, as it was envisaged that recruits would establish mass peasant political organisations and underground units that would be assisted by MK military structures. Trained MK guerrillas were then to constitute the core of the structure.

Similarly, “Operation Butterfly” was intended to build, in effect, an area politico-military committee (APMC) in Durban and surrounding areas. Butterfly aimed to settle a group of middle-ranking, externally trained political and military cadres of proven discipline in the Durban area; to re-organise the local underground from the top downwards, asserting authority over existing and often isolated underground units; to reflect the principle of integrated political-military command in structures; and to prepare the ground for the clandestine entry into the area of more senior leadership. According to Zweli Mkhize, at the funeral of Vejaynand Indurjith “Vejay” Ramlakan, in 2020, Operation Butterfly “became an extensive operation spanning the entire province of KwaZulu-Natal: in Durban suburbs, townships and rural areas, Pietermaritzburg, Port Shepstone and Newcastle.”

As Zweli Nyanda had contemplated, the Alan Taylor Residence of the University of Natal, in Wentworth, was earmarked as the main base or headquarters for the operation. A corps of cadres emerged at the residence, which included Sibongiseni Dhlomo, Veejay Ramlakan and others. The operation was to have a single line of command from exile to the district committee in Durban. This district committee would, whatever the individual expertise of its three members, operate as a single unit jointly controlling all specialised operational activities in the Durban area. The specialist units falling under the district committee would include ones dealing with mass mobilisation, propaganda, logistics, communications, security and intelligence.

The military headquarters in exile was not to be granted its own, parallel line of command to military units involved in Operation Butterfly, “in other words,” according to the Green Book, “at the local level of implementation, all political and military work will be in the control of the local organ directly responsible to the central organ and not to any other departments. The local organs will, in turn, create and/or absorb existing local sub-machineries specialising in the implementation of political and military tasks in its allotted region.”

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
Goolam Vahed, “Muslim Portraits: The Anti-Apartheid Struggle”, Madiba, 2012.
Zweli L. Mkhize, “Final Tribute to Lt General V.I. Ramlakan”, 5 September 2020.
Janet Smith and Beauregard Tromp, “Hani: A Life Too Short”, Jonathan Ball, 2009.
Howard Barrell, “Conscripts to Their Age: African National Congress Operational Strategy, 1976-1986, Vol. 1”, University of Oxford, 1993.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.
Gregory Houston, et. al., “The Liberation Struggle and Liberation Heritage Sites in South Africa”, Democracy, Governance, and Service Delivery (DGSD), Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), 15 November 2013.
Norman “Billie Holiday”, Pietersen, “Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in Exile”, South African History Online (SAHO), 7 November 2011.

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