Revisiting the Nkomati Accord: 16 March 1984
According to the African National Congress’s analysis of the Nkomati Accord, its principal objectives were “to isolate the ANC throughout southern Africa and to compel the independent countries to act as Pretoria’s agents in emasculating the ANC as the vanguard movement of the South African struggle for national liberation. To liquidate the armed struggle for liberation in South Africa. To gain new bridgeheads for the Pretoria regime in its efforts to undermine the unity of the Frontier States, destroy the SADCC (Southern African Development Coordination Conference) and replace it with a so-called constellation of states and thus to transform the independent countries of southern African into its client states. And to use the prestige of the Frontline States in the campaign of the white minority regime to reduce the international isolation of apartheid South Africa and to lend legitimacy to its colonial and fascist state” (Alfred Nzo, Sechaba).
Furthermore, the ANC deduced that the Botha regime, in pursuit of these aims had “sought to reduce the independent countries of our region to the level of its bantustan creations by forcing them to join the Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei bantustans in entering into so-called aggression pacts with Pretoria. Such accords, concluded as they are with a regime which has no moral or legal right to govern our country, cannot but help to perpetuate the illegitimate rule o
