Operation Vula Exposed – Part 2

Operation Vula Exposed – Part 2

On 29 July 1990, after African National Congress (ANC) leader Nelson Mandela had studied the documents that he received from the leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP), Joe Slovo, he believed that he had enough ammunition to launch a fight-back against the attacks waged by the racist regime relating to “Operation Vula”. This began the day before, on 28 July, when he briefed foreign ambassadors to South Africa on Joe Slovo continuing to take part in the talks with the apartheid government “whether De Klerk liked it or not”. Mandela further accused the apartheid security forces of trying to drive a wedge between the ANC and the Communist Party.

The reason for the apartheid government objecting to Joe Slovo’s further participation in the talks was related to the events that began on 7 July 1990, wherein two Umkhonto we Sizwe operatives, Charles Ndaba and Mbuso Tshabalala, were arrested, which led to 12 July 1990, with the arrest of Siphiwe Nyanda (aka “Gebhuza”) and Raymond Lalla (aka “Brazzo”) in Durban’s Kenville suburb, as well as the events of 25 July 1990 in Johannesburg, in which Mac Maharaj was apprehended.

On Wednesday, 25 July 1990, Mac Maharaj left the ANC office in Sauer Street to Mohammed Valli Moosa’s house in Mayfair, Johannesburg. When he pulled up in front of Valli Moosa’s house, policemen pounced on him and had him arrested. The policemen then pulled out a document from him, which was in his handwriting, relating to a National Executive Committee (NEC) draft resolution advocating the suspension of the armed struggle by Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK).

Maharaj’s arrest followed publications in various newspapers, on 22 July 1990, referring to the arrests of up to forty MK guerrillas, “all said to be members or supporters of the SA Communist Party, which were detained in the Transvaal, Natal and other areas in connection with alleged plans for an insurrection”.

The Sunday Star was one of a number of papers that led with the story, which were referred to by the Minister of Law and Order, Adriaan Vlok, when he phoned Nelson Mandela on Saturday 21 July 1990, warning him that the following day’s newspapers were going to publish allegations about a Communist Party conspiracy to stage an armed insurrection in South Africa, which was referred to as “Operation Vula”. Anonymous security sources maintained that the “Operation Vula” Unit was so secret that not even the senior MK’s conventional command structures knew of it.

A spokesperson for the Minister of Law and Order, Peet Bothma, said the arrests followed a spike in violence in June 1990, while another anonymous police source held that SACP members were believed to be largely responsible for the upturn in violence following the lifting of the State of Emergency. Police leaks continued to flow into the mainstream media about “Operation Vula”, with the Beeld newspaper reporting the day after Maharaj’s arrest that the apartheid security police possessed approximately 2 000 pages of evidence obtained from the computer system of the group arrested in the latest raids.

According to the report, the data told a story of machinations within MK by a group of members of the Communist Party who were known privately as the President’s Committee. Some of these members were on the ANC’s National Executive Committee and were quietly preparing a wholesale uprising against the state in the event that talks with the government failed, and, the paper continues to say, “they were convinced that the talks would fail”.

The Beeld newspaper further maintained that the “Operation Vula” specialists sought to construct an extensive underground network with hubs in Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town, and senior ANC/SACP members, who had received amnesty for the length of the negotiations, infiltrated South Africa and spent many months establishing the clandestine structures. The computer system was used as a channel of communication and information between the interior hubs, but it was also used to liaise with accomplices in London, Lusaka and Moscow. A costly blunder landed the system to the apartheid Security Branch, when a computer and a paper containing access codes for it were found during a raid on a so-called “safe house” in Durban, as the information that was extracted there was followed up day and night leading to the subsequent arrests.

The apartheid Security Branch however overplayed their hand in their determination to use the revelations to implicate the SACP in a conspiracy against the negotiation process. At an informal meeting, Nelson Mandela briefed Joe Slovo on allegations made by apartheid President de Klerk at their meeting following the Operation Vula revelations. After Mandela had spoken, Joe Slovo responded that what De Klerk was saying was not true.

According to Slovo, the apartheid security services “have distorted the documents they found. Those documents make it clear that the Communist Party agrees with negotiations and they also compliment Mr de Klerk for having had the courage to come out openly and call for a change of the political system.” Slovo also handed Mandela a copy of the documents so he could see for himself what was contained in them.

On 29 July 1990, at a rally held at the Soccer City (FNB) Stadium, in Nasrec, bordering the Soweto area of Johannesburg, where the SACP’s was marking its re-launch inside the country, Mandela addressed the crowd saying: “The ANC is not a communist party, and as a national liberation movement has no mandate to espouse Marxist ideology”. Referring to the allegations of the racist regime about communist machinations, he argued that to suggest that “these outstanding sons and daughters of our people harbour ideas of unilateral military action against the peace process is an insult manufactured by the enemies of democracy”.

When Joe Slovo took to the stage to speak after Mandela, he alleged that they knew “who is behind the poisonous offensive which had been launched in the last few days. The peace process has many enemies, and some of them surround De Klerk himself … they feed him on a diet of the most ghastly lies and distortions about our party. These were, Lie No 1: That I was at a meeting in Tongaat on the 19th and 20th May. Their own records will show that I left Lusaka on the 14th of May, and returned for the business conference at the Carlton on the 21st.”

Slovo continued, “Lie No 2: At this Tongaat meeting, which I did not attend, I was supposed to have said that whatever agreement was signed between the government and the ANC relating to a cease-fire would not apply to the SACP. I have never said anything of the sort, at any meeting anywhere. I go further, I have shown a copy of the Tongaat minutes and I challenge anyone to demonstrate that the meeting adopted a position that the SACP would not be bound by a cease-fire. This is an outright and deliberate distortion. [The Tongaat Conference minutes refer to a ‘Comrade Joe’, but this was in fact Siphiwe Nyanda, and what he actually said has been discussed earlier.]

“Lie No 3”, Slovo added, “In an attempt to link us with the Red Plot they talk about Operation Vula as an SACP project and about SACP arms dumps. They know perfectly well that Operation Vula was an ANC underground … project, including the preparation of arms caches under the direct control of the President of the ANC, dating from 1987. Not one mention is made in the minutes of the Tongaat meeting about the delivery of weaponry.” Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Army Chief of Staff, Chris Hani, who also spoke at the rally, told the crowd that, “Slovo does not want violence. He wants peace. We must not allow the Party to be isolated, because that is what they want”.

For the apartheid government, “Operation Vula” confirmed “De Klerk’s worst fears” about secret plans to overthrow the government under the “pretence” of negotiation and dialogue. As a result, Mac Maharaj, Siphiwe Nyanda, Ronnie Kasrils and six others were charged with “attempting to overthrow the government by force”. Furthermore, the National Party demanded that the ANC abandon its policy of armed struggle.

As a response, the ANC accused the government of failing to deal with the spiralling violence, as this was a moment of intense crisis. The ANC maintained that once negotiations began after an intensive internal debate, the Movement decided to keep Operation Vula in place, as it believed that to be “an insurance policy” in case the talks failed. ANC President Oliver Tambo was also concerned that the ANC should not allow negotiations to result in the Movement being stripped of “our weapons of struggle”. Sanctions, the guerrilla force, and Operation Vula would remain until it was clear that the process was irreversible (To be continued).

Castro Khwela
Good evening fellow Compatriots!