The Yu Chi Chan Club (YCCC) and National Liberation Front (NLF) Members Convicted

The Yu Chi Chan Club (YCCC) and National Liberation Front (NLF) Members Convicted

On 18 April 1964, Neville Alexander and four others were found guilty of sabotage and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. The judge found that the accused participated in the activities of the National Liberation Front (NLF), an offshoot of the Yu Chi Chan Club (YCCC), whose aims was to advance the revolution through violence.

Along with Namibian activists Kenneth and Tilly Abraham from the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), Neville created the YCCC to promote guerrilla warfare and subsequently founded the NLF to bring together people who were committed to the ‘overthrow of the state, irrespective of their political ideology’. In 1974, Alexander was released from prison, but banned and placed under house arrest for five years.

The Yu Chi Chan Club, which is Chinese for “guerrilla warfare”, founded in July 1962, was a minor militant anti-apartheid organisation which operated within South Africa. Its members included Neville Alexander, Dulcie September, Elizabeth van der Heyden, Ottilie Abrahams, Kenneth Abrahams, Fikile Bam, Marcus Solomons, Xenophon Pitt, Don Davies, Lionel Davies, Lesley van der Heyden, Gordon Hendricks and Andreas Shipinga. This was a club made up of leftist revolutionaries who took their contributions to the revolution very seriously and were prepared to make sacrifices in pursuit of such principles as non-racialism, non-sexism and democracy. Marcus Solomon was another member who also spent a “short” stint of 10 years on Robben Island.

The YCCC disbanded in late 1964 and was replaced by the National Liberation Front (NLF). In July 1963, Neville, along with most members of the NLF, was arrested. the NLF’s work ended soon after. Don Davis was arrested on 8 July 1963, Neville on 12 July, and Elizabeth van der Heyden on 18 July. Elizabeth was kept in solitary confinement for four months. Other arrests followed. In 1964 the core group was charged with conspiring to commit sabotage and inciting acts of politically motivated violence. In Germany Bolle and Lee set up the Alexander Defence Committee to publicise and raise funds for the trial. The trial of Neville Alexander and ten others began on 4 November 1964; the eleven were found guilty of conspiracy on 14 April 1964. The treason trial of the Yu Chi Chan Club lasted from 1962 to 1964 and led to others being sentenced to imprisonment as well.

Doris van der Heyden, Doris Alexander and Dulcie September all received their respective sentences, during which time they endured severe physical and psychological abuse. At the age of 28, Elizabeth was sentenced again, to an effective 10 years’ imprisonment. After her release in 1973, she was slapped with a further five-year banning order. During Dulcie’s release, she too was slapped with a five-year banning order. Afterwards, she made her way into exile in 1973 where she naturally joined the anti-apartheid national liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC). In 1983 she was appointed as ANC Chief Representative in France. Five years later, she was too much of a threat to the apartheid security police and was assassinated outside the ANC Paris office. She was shot five times in the head with a .22-calibre silenced rifle.

YCCC and NLF members, mostly in their twenties, came from Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) affiliates, especially the Cape Peninsula Students’ Union (CPSU), the Teachers League of South Africa (TLSA) and African People’s Democratic Union of Southern Africa (APDUSA), and from the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO). Founded in 1943 as a federal organization, the NEUM sought to attract African, so-called Coloured, and Indian organisations around a common democratic platform in the hope of undermining the state-imposed sectional divisions. Its two main affiliates were the All-African Convention (AAC) and the Anti-CAD movement against the Coloured Affairs Department (CAD), but factionalism culminated in a split in December 1958.

The YCCC and NLF were exceptional amongst the early 1960s underground groups in their systematic attempts to theorise the guerrilla struggle, to assess its applicability to South African conditions and to build cell structures through political education. Particularly, the NLF’s relatively horizontal cell structure, small cell size, and lack of hierarchy made participation easier, allowing women to operate equally within the political space. “This was a secret organisation operating cells in South Africa to prepare for the armed struggle against the South African Government” (Ottilie Abrahams).

Unfortunately, the Yu Chi Chan “guerrilla warfare” Club and NLF were short-lived, they had a huge impact on revolutionary education and gender-related activism. According to Neville Alexander, “It – the multiracial National Liberation Front (NLF) – was to be a resistance movement which would take our struggle beyond theoretical protest. We wanted armed resistance, of all people. We wanted to involve coloureds, blacks, Indians, whites in the struggle against apartheid. We thought we were the only ones. We did not even know that there was an Umkhonto we Sizwe.”

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
Allison Drew, “South Africa’s Radical Tradition: A Documentary History, Volume Two 1943 – 1964”, UCT Press, 1997.
Allison Drew, “A Gendered Approach to the Yu Chi Chan Club and National Liberation Front during South Africa’s Transition to Armed Struggle”, Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Chevon Booysen, “At 89, Ex-Political Prisoner, Ma Betty Fights a Different Struggle”, Cape Times, 16 August 2024.
Asher Gamedze, “Ensemble study and struggle: A history of the Yu Chi Chan Club and the National Liberation Front”, PhD Dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, 22 March 2024.
Oscar van Heerden, “Remembering the Yu Chi Chan Club — and The Women Who Made Sacrifices for Liberation”, Daily Maverick, 06 August 2019.
Ottilie Abrahams, “Yu Chi Chan Club”, Revolutionary Papers, 2004.
Sister Namibia, “Ottilie Grete Abrahams (1937 – 2018)”, Facebook, 20 March 2020.
Abigail George, “The YCCC and How It Changed the Future of South Africa”, Modern Diplomacy, 13 October 2021.
Graeme Bloch, “Tribute to Neville Alexander”, Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra), 22 August 2012.

Castro Khwela
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