Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Guerrilla Warfare Strategy Development

Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Guerrilla Warfare Strategy Development

On 24 June 1963, African National Congress (ANC) Chief Representative in London for Europe and Latin America, Raymond Kunene, was addressing the formation of a French Anti-Apartheid Committee in Paris. He indicated that South Africa was on the brink of one of the bloodiest revolutions in history.

Kunene was basing his address on a briefing ANC leader Oliver Tambo received from Joe Slovo on the guerrilla warfare plan at Dar es Salaam’s Palace Hotel after arriving in Tanganyika on the evening of 20 June 1963. During Slovo’s presentation, Tambo’s eyes began darting from side to side, which was a characteristic sign of excitement that was followed by a jig of joy around the room. For Slovo, the excitement shown by Tambo implied a nod of approval that was still to be tested within the collective leadership of the ANC’s External Mission.

The Guerrilla Warfare Plan, referred to as “Operation Mayibuye”, was presented by Slovo for the first time at a joint meeting of the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP) in Liliesleaf Farm, Johannesburg, in May 1963. the development of Operation Mayibuye was a comprehensive plan designed to create and internalise the structures required for the successful prosecution of the armed struggle within South Africa. Operation Mayibuye had a threefold series of objectives: to prepare an underground structure capable of ensuring the revolutionary overthrow of the state; to provide for the military training of MK personnel, whether at home or abroad, so that MK would possess the capacity to confront the state militarily; and to ensure, via the Congress’ external structures, that the necessary levels of international support accrued to the liberation struggle.

When Slovo mentioned parachute drops, Bram Fischer intervened by asking, “How on earth could people be dropped? Where would they establish a base?” The response was that South Africa is a very large country, so parachute drops were theoretically possible, and that Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) could not expect to possess bases in territories neighbouring South Africa, and therefore, there was no other alternative. Slovo also emphasised on the four areas that were previously alluded to by Arthur Goldreich at an MK National High Command meeting towards the beginning of the second week of May. The four areas included Port Elizabeth to Umzimkhulu, Port Shepstone to Swaziland, the North Western Transvaal bordering Bechuanaland and the Limpopo, and the North Western Cape to the South West, as areas where guerrillas could be infiltrated in order to attack pre-selected targets.

Fischer again interfered with the last assertion, arguing that the last of these areas had no formidable targets and no population on which to have an impact. According to Fischer, there was probably not a single ANC man in the North West Cape Area, and moreover, it was ridiculous to talk of landing thirty men by aeroplane in the North Western Transvaal. Slovo replied that once the forces had landed in the country, they would definitely have the support of the masses, even if there were no members of the ANC present.

Another delegate asked as to where would the plane making the drop in the North West Cape be departing from. For Slovo, it was not difficult for planes to fly across Bechuanaland, drop people and fly back, similar to the sea, which could be used to drop people and sail back. According to Goldreich’s plan, groups of thirty men would be dropped by air or sea to the four identified areas with enough supplies to last them for at least a month. Each group of thirty would be split into sections of ten people that would operate in areas contiguous to the zones designated for guerrilla warfare, linking their activities with prearranged local groups.

The objective would be to train approximately 2 000 men in the first three areas, and 1 000 in the fourth area. Arms were to be supplied to the guerrilla groups to enable them to arm the local population, which would then become integrated with the armed units. Attacks would be launched by the guerrilla groups on pre-selected targets so as to take the enemy by surprise, cause chaos and confusion in their ranks, and inspire the local population to join the revolution. The MK High Command was expected to recruit and arrange external training for at least 300 men in the subsequent few months.

Slovo averred that “From then it became clear that we were entering the second phase, which was the attempt to reconstruct the political underground and to attempt to return to the country those activists who had been trained in the art and science of people’s military struggle. Of course in one sense the two sides of these endeavours stand in contradiction with one another. On the one hand you cannot fight a people’s war without the leadership of a political organisation. You need an underground which is capable of providing both political and military leadership.

“On the other hand”, Slovo continued, “the post-Sharpeville and post-Rivonia successes of the enemy had created such a demoralisation that without the beginnings of armed activity, without a demonstration of our capacity to hit at the enemy, it was difficult to conceive of people getting together, in any large measure to reconstitute the political underground. To put it more simply, without a political underground network and internal leadership it is not possible to engage effectively in people’s armed struggle and, in our situation, without the beginnings of military struggle, the task of political reconstruction assumed difficult proportions.”

On 7 June 1963, Joe Slovo and J.B. Marks arrived in Lobatse and immediately headed north to Francistown, where they completed certain immigration formalities. According to Bram Fischer, in his discussion with his colleague on the SACP Secretariat, Joe Slovo and J.B. Marks were sent abroad by the MK National High Command to present the plan to the External Mission. Fischer stressed that neither the internal ANC nor the SACP had seen or adopted the plan, and he was visibly unhappy about it.

Nevertheless, the plan, according to Slovo, argued that a widespread conviction was prevalent and that the road to victory was through force. It followed, therefore, that a general uprising could be sparked off, as in Cuba, “by organised and well-prepared guerrilla operations during which the course of the masses will be drawn in and armed”. The key to success was the political, underground mobilisation and “if every member now prepares to make unlimited sacrifice for the achievement of our goal”. The movement would approach African governments — Algeria and Ghana — to see what could be done to help the specific project of getting the guerrillas back home.

For Slovo, guerrilla warfare was feasible, as was stressed in the Strategy and Tactics document adopted at the ANC’s First National Consultative Conference in Morogoro, in 1969, which maintained that “the prospect of advancing into the new phase would have been extremely small. This is so because even in the typical colonial-type situation armed struggle becomes feasible only if: there is disillusionment with the prospect of achieving liberation by traditional peaceful processes because the objective conditions blatantly bar the way to change; there is readiness to respond to the strategy of armed struggle with all the enormous sacrifices which this involves; there is in existence a political leadership capable of gaining the organised allegiance of the people for armed struggle and which has both the experience and the ability to carry out the painstaking process of planning, preparation and overall conduct of the operations; and that there exist favourable objective conditions in the international and local planes.”

Furthermore, the document stressed that “In one sense conditions are connected and interdependent. They are not created by subjective and ideological activity only and many are the mistakes committed by heroic revolutionaries who give a monopoly to the subjective factor and who confuse their own readiness with the readiness of others. These conditions are brought about not only by developing political, economic and social conditions but also by the long hard grind of revolutionary work. They depend on such factors as the response of the enemy, the extents to which he unmasks himself and the experience gained by the people themselves, not in academic seminars but in actual political struggle.”

Accordingly, the document surmised “We believe that given certain basic factors, both international and local, the actual beginning of armed struggle or guerrilla warfare can be made and having begun, can steadily develop conditions for the future all-out war which would eventually lead to the conquest of power. Under the modern highly sophisticated police State (which South Africa is) it is questionable whether a movement can succeed in a programme of mass political organisation beyond a certain point without starting a new type of action.”

“Also”, the document added, “it is not easy to determine the point at which sufficient concrete political and organisational preparations have been carried out to give our armed detachments the maximum chances of survival and growth within any given area. There is no instrument for measuring this. But we must not overdo the importance of the subjective factor and before embarking upon a path which is in one sense tragic, although historically inevitable and necessary, certain of the basic minimum conditions already mentioned must be present and certain minimum preparations must have been made.”

With regards to “Operation Mayibuye”, Ronnie Kasrils maintains that although the draft document was “never adopted, and criticised by some for being impractical and adventuristic, it has the merit of indicating the breadth and audacity of thinking at that time. It was a strategic plan meant to facilitate the transition from sabotage to guerrilla struggle, drafted mainly by Govan Mbeki and Joe Slovo. Ironically many of its recommendations evolved in the course of the struggle” (MK in the Aftermath of Rivonia [1963 – 1976]).

The emphasis was that “The enemy controls the state, its armed forces, police and courts. But he does not command the hearts and minds of the people. They are with us in a just war for national liberation. Their support is our chief weapon. What gives the guerrilla his advantage is his political superiority and people’s support. … the most important guarantee of victory is ‘the support of the people who in certain situations are better protection than mountains and forests’.” (Operation Mayibuye, 1963).

Sources:
Simon Stevens, “Violence, Political Strategy and the Turn to Guerrilla Warfare by the Congress Movement in South Africa”, Journal of Southern Sources:
Simon Stevens, “Violence, Political Strategy and the Turn to Guerrilla Warfare by the Congress Movement in South Africa”, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 47 No. 6, 2021.
Ronnie Kasrils, “MK in the Aftermath of Rivonia (1963 – 1976)”, The Thinker, Vol. 80, 2019.
Joe Slovo, “The Second Stage: Attempts to Get Back”, Dawn, Souvenir Issue, 1986.
Stephen Ellis, “External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960–1990”, Jonathan Ball, 2013.
Janet Smith and Beauregard Tromp, “Hani: A Life Too Short”, Jonathan Ball, 2009.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.
Rocky Williams, “South African Guerrilla Armies: The Impact of Guerrilla Armies on the Creation of South Africa’s Armed Forces”, ISS Monograph Series, No. 127, September 2006.
Stephen R. Davis, “The ANC’s War Against Apartheid: Umkhonto We Sizwe and the Liberation of South Africa”, Indiana University Press, 2018.
Stephen Ellis, “The Genesis of the ANC’s Armed Struggle in South Africa 1948-1961”, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 37 No. 4, December 2011.
Simon Stevens, “The Turn to Sabotage by The Congress Movement in South Africa”, Past & Present, Vol. 245, Issue 1, November 2019.
Gregory Houston, “The Post-Rivonia ANC and SACP Underground”, South African Democracy Education Trust: The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Vol. 1 (1960-1970), Zebra Press, 2004.
Luli Callinicos, “Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains”, David Philip, 2004.

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