“Operation Santa” Fortified

On 28 January 1982, the Senior Staff Officer of apartheid South African Military Intelligence’s liaison project with Swaziland, dubbed “Operation Santa”, met with the Chief of Staff of the Royal Swazi Defence Force (RSDF), Lieutenant Colonel Jameson Ndzimandze, to receive a report on growing anxiety in Swaziland regarding the presence and activities of the African National Congress (ANC).

According to Ndzimandze, certain political, military and security leaders were concerned about the activities of the ANC and its armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in the Kingdom. Earlier in the month of January, the Kingdom’s Minister of Foreign Affairs delivered a document to Pretoria containing an official request for assistance in efforts to eliminate the ANC in Swaziland, as well as to protect the Kingdom against possible ANC reprisals.

The geopolitical changes in the 1980s and the increased radicalisation of the South African domestic scene, led apartheid South Africa to view the entire region as an operational area. The struggle for change in South Africa became a regional war. Given the alteration of the balance of political forces in the region, with the independence of Angola and Mozambique, South Africa could no longer rely exclusively on its economic power or even its diplomatic leverage to contain the growing revolutionary situation, and had to resort to military means to protect the apartheid system.

The immediate manifestation of this campaign was to punish those who gave assistance to the ANC and to dissuade those governments that might be tempted to do so. However, the ultimate objective appeared to be the recreation of the pre-1974 “Cordon Sanitaire” by pressuring the governments of the region or to cripple their economies that their survival would require the expulsion of the ANC refugees. Consequently, since 1981 the apartheid South African military and security operatives had undertaken acts of aggression in a number of neighbouring countries including Swaziland.

Around January 1982, Swaziland was under considerable pressure from apartheid South Africa to expel South African refugees, particularly those who had political connections with militant groups inside South Africa. The apartheid government had in this regard pursued a two-pronged approach, diplomatic-cum-economic, and military pressures. In a diplomatic offensive, South Africa pushed for the conclusion of a non-aggression pact. Under such an agreement, the apartheid government envisaged that the Contracting Parties would undertake to combat terrorism, insurgency and subversion individually and collectively as well as to call upon each other whenever possible for assistance.

The agreement was further intended to emphasise the need to develop and maintain friendly relations with each other. In that context the parties were to agree not to allow any activities within their respective territories directed towards the committing of any act which involved a threat or use of force against each other’s territorial integrity. The intention was also that the parties would undertake, further, not to allow within their respective territories the installation or maintenance of foreign military bases or the presence of foreign military units. The inclusion of the latter provisions was influenced by South African experience with Angola, and the need to forestall any possible intervention by third parties.

The agreement was intended to be of more significance for South Africa than it was for Swaziland. Firstly, it was to mark a significant diplomatic victory for South Africa in as much as it would symbolise some form of recognition by an independent African state. Secondly, it would diminish apartheid South Africa’s status as an aggressor in the region by depicting the racist regime as a peacemaker little interested in the escalation of armed confrontation in the region.

Pursuing a diplomatic offensive, apartheid South Africa pushed for a conclusion of a non-aggression pact, which was signed in 1982, although it was officially acknowledged in 1984 after the Nkomati Accord between Mozambique and South Africa. At the same time South Africa announced its intention to cede to Swaziland the Bantustan of KaNgwane and part of KwaZulu Bantustan’s Ingwavuma area. This was seen as a reward for Swaziland commitment to clamp down on South African liberation movements, particularly the ANC, and was also a cunning attempt by the apartheid regime to slip in recognition of the Bantustan policy via the backdoor.

Broadly viewed, the land deal also fell well into the racist regime’s foreign and strategic interests. Firstly, the plan was an attempt to lure Swaziland into a constellation of states, which would have had a double-edged advantage of rejuvenating the constellation plan as well as of weakening Southern Africa Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) to which Swaziland was committed. However, this was viewed by South Africa as a counter-constellation strategy which threatened the country’s traditionally firm economic grip on the sub-continent. Secondly, the plan could be viewed as a means of persuading Swaziland to take action against the ANC so as to close off its use of Swaziland as a base, when viewed from a “Total Strategy” perspective.

In response to these developments, the ANC in its official journal, Sechaba (September 1982), said, “the ultimate aim of apartheid is to render all South Africa’s 21 million Africans statutory foreigners and make the 4.5 million whites a de jure majority. The Bantustans play a key role in this. They are meant to entrench the powers of the racists; to withhold the political rights from the black majority; to intensify the increasing exclusion of workers from employment opportunities and the state has to abdicate its responsibility for social services. They see this as a solution to the crisis. An aspect of this solution is the ‘ethnic solution’ which attempts to confuse and delay African nation-building in South Africa – an attempt to divide and rule.”

In conclusion, the ANC maintained that “this threat to tear apart South Africa is aimed at fermenting border wars and distracting world attention from the illegal occupation of Namibia by racist South Africa and its barbaric invasion of Angola. It is a contravention of the OAU (Organisation of African Unity) principle of self-determination and the policy of the nine-nation Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) of which Swaziland is a member.”

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!