45

IN PLANNING the direction and form that MK would take, we considered four types of violent activities: sabotage, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, and open revolution. For a small and fledgling army, open revolution was inconceivable. Terrorism inevitably reflected poorly on those who used it, undermining any public support it might otherwise garner. Guerrilla warfare was a possibility, but since the ANC had been reluctant to embrace violence at all, it made sense to start with the form of violence that inflicted the least harm against individuals: sabotage.

Because it did not involve loss of life it offered the best hope for reconciliation among the races afterward. We did not want to start a blood feud between white and black. Animosity between Afrikaner and Englishman was still sharp fifty years after the Anglo-Boer War; what would race relations be like between white and black if we provoked a civil war? Sabotage had the added virtue of requiring the least manpower.

Our strategy was to make selective forays against military installations, power plants, telephone lines, and transportation links; targets that would not only hamper the military effectiveness of the state, but frighten National Party supporters, scare away foreign capital, and weaken the economy. This we hoped would bring the government to the bargaining table. Strict instructions were given to members of MK that we would countenance no loss of life. But if sabotage did not produce the results we wanted, we were prepared to move on to the next stage: guerrilla warfare and terrorism.

The structure of MK mirrored that of the parent organization. The National High Command was at the top; below it were Regional Commands in each of the provinces, and below that there were local commands and cells. Regional Commands were set up around the country, and an area like the eastern Cape had over fifty cells. The High Command determined tactics and general targets and was in charge of training and finance. Within the framework laid down by the High Command, the Regional Commands had authority to select local targets to be attacked. All MK members were forbidden to go armed into an operation and were not to endanger life in any way.

One problem we encountered early on was the question of divided loyalties between MK and the ANC. Most of our recruits were ANC members who were active in the local branches, but we found that once they were working for MK, they stopped doing the local work they had been performing before. The secretary of the local branch would find that certain men were no longer attending meetings. He might approach one and say, “Man, why were you not at the meeting last night?” and the fellow would say, “Ah, well, I was at another meeting.”

“What kind of meeting?” the secretary would say.

“Oh, I cannot say.”

“You cannot tell me, your own secretary?” But the secretary would soon discover the member’s other loyalty. After some initial misunderstandings, we decided that if we recruited members from a branch, the secretary must be informed that one of his members was now with MK.

One warm December afternoon, while I sat in the kitchen at Liliesleaf Farm, I listened on the radio to the announcement that Chief Luthuli had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo. The government had issued him a ten-day visa to leave the country and accept the award. I was — we all were — enormously pleased. It was, first of all, an acknowledgment of our struggle, and of the achievements of the chief as the leader of that struggle and as a man. It represented a recognition in the West that our struggle was a moral one, one too long ignored by the great powers. The award was an affront to the Nationalists, whose propaganda portrayed Luthuli as a dangerous agitator at the head of a Communist conspiracy. Afrikaners were dumbfounded; to them the award was another example of the perversity of Western liberals and their bias against white South Africans. When the award was announced, the chief was in the third year of a five-year ban restricting him to the district of Stanger in Natal. He was also unwell; his heart was strained and his memory was poor. But the award cheered him and all of us as well.

The honor came at an awkward time for it was juxtaposed against an announcement that seemed to call the award itself into question. The day after Luthuli returned from Oslo, MK dramatically announced its emergence. On the orders of the MK High Command, in the early morning hours of December 16 — the day white South Africans used to celebrate as Dingane’s Day — homemade bombs were exploded at electric power stations and government offices in Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth, and Durban. One of our men, Petrus Molife, was inadvertently killed, the first death of an MK soldier. Death in war is unfortunate, but unavoidable. Every man who joined MK knew that he might be called on to pay the ultimate sacrifice.

At the time of the explosions, thousands of leaflets with the new MK Manifesto were circulated all over the country announcing the birth of Umkhonto we Sizwe.

Units of Umkhonto we Sizwe today carried out planned attacks against government installations, particularly those connected with the policy of apartheid and race discrimination. Umkhonto we Sizwe is a new, independent body, formed by Africans. It includes in its ranks South Africans of all races. . . . Umkhonto we Sizwe will carry on the struggle for freedom and democracy by new methods, which are necessary to complement the actions of the established national liberation movement. . . .

The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices: submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all means within our power in defence of our people, our future and our freedom. . . .

We of Umkhonto have always sought — as the liberation movement has sought — to achieve liberation without bloodshed and civil clash. We hope, even at this late hour, that our first actions will awaken everyone to a realization of the disastrous situation to which the Nationalist policy is leading. We hope that we will bring the government and its supporters to their senses before it is too late, so that both the government and its policies can be changed before matters reach the desperate stage of civil war. . . .

We chose December 16, Dingane’s Day, for a reason. On that day, white South Africans celebrate the defeat of the great Zulu leader Dingane at the Battle of Blood River in 1838. Dingane, the half brother of Shaka, then ruled the most powerful African state that ever existed south of the Limpopo River. That day, the bullets of the Boers were too much for the assegais of the Zulu impis and the water of the nearby river ran red with their blood. Afrikaners celebrate December 16 as the triumph of the Afrikaner over the African and the demonstration that God was on their side; while Africans mourned this day of the massacre of their people. We chose December 16 to show that the African had only begun to fight, and that we had righteousness — and dynamite — on our side.

The explosions took the government by surprise. They condemned the sabotage as heinous crimes while at the same time deriding it as the work of foolish amateurs. The explosions also shocked white South Africans into the realization that they were sitting on top of a volcano. Black South Africans realized that the ANC was no longer an organization of passive resistance, but a powerful spear that would take the struggle to the heart of white power. We planned and executed another set of explosions two weeks later on New Year’s Eve. The combined sound of bells tolling and sirens wailing seemed not just a cacophonous way to ring in the new year, but a sound that symbolized a new era in our freedom struggle.

The announcement of Umkhonto spurred a vicious and unrelenting government counteroffensive on a scale that we had never before seen. The Special Branch of the police now made it their number one mission to capture members of MK, and they would spare no effort to do so. We had shown them we were not going to sit back any longer; they would show us that nothing would stop them from rooting out what they saw as the greatest threat to their own survival.