Fight With a Clear Purpose: The Amanzimtoti Bombing

On the morning of Monday, 23 December 1985, Andrew Sibusiso Zondo and Thembinkosi Jacob Mofokeng travelled by taxis from Lamontville to Amanzimtoti, from where they walked to a Sanlam shopping centre in town. Following a quick breakfast, Zondo dropped the waste papers and other items into a dustbin. After they had left, at around 10:45, a huge blast hit the ice-cream shop from the dustbin in which Zondo dropped his waste papers. Five people were killed and forty were injured in that explosion and Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadre, Andrew Zondo, who detonated the explosive, was arrested and later executed by hanging in Pretoria, on 9 September 1986, at a young age of 19 years.

The bomb attack was considered to be part of Operation Butterfly, which had the aim to integrate the ANC’s political and military machinery in Durban and surrounding areas. On the same night, 23 December 1985, six MK operatives were arrested at House Number 2, Narbada Road, Merewent, Durban. They included Sibusiso Ndlanzi (aka “George Fakude”), Vijay Ramlakan, Phila Ndwandwe, Sandy Afrika, Richard Naidoo and Kwazi Sithole. Although the arrests were not directly related to the bombing in Amanzintoti, they led to the decline of Operation Butterfly’s efficacy from that day of the blast.

According to the African National Congress (ANC), Zondo acted in anger at an apartheid State Security Council-sanctioned Vlakplaas Police raid in Lesotho on 20 December 1985, killing nine anti-apartheid activists. The President of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, understood Zondo’s anger, despite it being contrary to ANC policy, and in the following year’s January 8 Statement, titled “Attack! Advance! Give the Enemy No Quarter!”, he issued clearcut instructions or orders to avoid such discomforting circumstances in future.

In the portion with the heading, “Initiative in Our Hands”, Tambo said the following: “The Botha regime has lost the strategic initiative. That initiative is now in our hands. The racist regime has no policy and can have no policy, either to save the apartheid system from sinking deeper into crisis or to extricate this system from that crisis. Its political programme has been reduced to shambles. Its ideological platform has collapsed. All it can do now is to react to events from day to day, without any consistent plan and without any overall objectives, except to keep itself in power for as long as possible.”

He continued to say, “The fact that the Botha regime has lost the strategic initiative, and is therefore on the defensive all along the line, is of decisive importance for the further advance of our struggle. We have forced the racists into this position through consistent struggle both inside and outside our country. This is an inspiring victory of historic significance. The principal conclusion we should draw from this situation is that through our sacrifices, we have prepared the conditions for us further to transform the situation to that position when it will be possible for us to seize power from the enemy. Thus the central task facing the entire democratic movement is that we retain the initiative until we have emancipated our country.”

Flowing from this analysis, President Tambo had to be specific on what needed to be done in order to avert similar acts of anger as had happened with the Amanzimtoti bombing. Under the heading titled, “Fight with a Clear Purpose”, Tambo instructed that:

“We must achieve this by going on the offensive on all fronts, continuously and boldly. We have to fight with a clear purpose in mind, with a definite perspective of our strategic and tactical goals, so that we can deploy and utilise our forces to the best advantage. Victory demands that we also continue to work for the maximum unity of all our fighting contingents and the democratic movement as well as a co-ordinated approach toward the four pillars of our struggle.”

According to Tambo, “Our strategic goal must be to shift the balance of strength decisively in favour of our struggle, through the further ripening of the revolutionary situation beyond the point where the regime is not able to rule in the old way to the stage where it in fact unable to govern. Thus, we must continue to make South Africa ungovernable and apartheid unworkable. In the attack we must aim further to weaken the Botha regime drastically, to sap its strength, to take away from it even the capacity to launch a limited counter-offensive.”

“Simultaneously, while on the march”, Tambo emphasised, “we must build our forces into an ever more formidable united mass army of liberation, an army that must grow in strength continuously, able to deliver, and actually delivering, bigger blows at every stage and fighting as a conscious force with its eyes firmly fixed on the goal of the destruction of the apartheid regime and the transfer of power to the people. The central focus of our continuous offensive has to be the imposition of the will of the democratic majority over the racist minority, however desperate and stubborn the resistance of this minority.”

In conclusion, Tambo underlined that “To retain the strategic initiative, apart from confronting the army of occupation in our areas, it is essential that we carry and extend our offensive beyond our township borders into other areas, with even greater determination. We also need to mount a continuous assault on the economy, to deny the enemy the material base which gives it the means to conduct its campaign of terror, both inside and outside our country.”

The orders were clear, “Attack! Advance! Give the Enemy No Quarter!”

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!