Historical Context

GROSS HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN

POLITICAL & HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

1
1 Chief Justice DP Mahomed has said:

For decades South African history has been dominated by a deep conflict
between a minority which reserved for itself all control over the political
instruments of the state and a majority who sought to resist that
domination. Fundamental human rights became a major casualty of this
conflict ... the legitimacy of the law itself was deeply wounded as the country
haemorrhaged
in the face of this tragic conflict ...

2 The Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act (the Act) charged the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the Commission) with investigating and
documenting gross human rights violations committed within or outside South
Africa in the period 1960-94. In doing so, it was to compile as complete a picture
as possible of these events and violations. In its report, therefore, the
Commission seeks to reflect fairly and fully the motives and perspectives of
both the alleged perpetrators of gross human rights violations and of their victims.

3 Before starting on the long journey through these volumes, two major points or themes
need to be developed in order to place their context in fuller political and historical
perspective. The first of these relates to the fact that this report covers only a small
fraction of time - although possibly the worst and certainly, in regard to the wider
region, the bloodiest in the long and violent history of human rights abuse in this
subcontinent. The second point to be made is that the report tells only a small
part of a much larger story of human rights abuse in South and southern Africa.

4 In developing these two themes in this chapter, special attention will be given to the
role and contribution of two phenomena or factors in the shaping of this countrys
history, namely violence and the law, and the relationship between them.

1 Judgement, The Azanian Peoples Organisation, Ms NM Biko, Mr CH Mxenge and Mr C Ribeiro v the President
of the Republic of South Africa, the Government of the Republic of South Africa, the Minister of Justice, the
Minister of Safety and Security and the Chairperson of the Commission in the Constitutional Court, Case No 17/96.

V O L U M E 1 C H A P T E R 2 Historical Context PAGE 2 4

 THE LIMITED TIME FRAME OF THE COMMISSION

5 Reference was made in the opening paragraphs to the limited time frame imposed
on the Commission. The purpose was to place in historical context what happened
in Southern Africa in the period 1960-94. In a continental context, this represented
the last great chapter in the struggle for African decolonisation. In a South
Africa-specific context, it was the climactic phase of a conflict that dated back
to the mid-seventeenth century, to the time when European settlers first sought
to establish a permanent presence on the subcontinent.

6 Thus, it is evident that it was not the National Party government that introduced
racially discriminatory practices to this part of the world. Nor is it likely that the
National Party government was the first to perpetrate some or most of the types of
gross violations of human rights recorded in this report. The probable exception
is that category of abuse that falls under the general rubric of contra-mobilisation -
exemplified by the deployment of surrogate forces such as the Caprivi-trained
Inkatha supporters, the Witdoeke, the A-team and other politicised gangs, as
well as those forces, such as UNITA, that were used to destabilise the region.

7 Hence, the types of atrocities committed during the period falling within the
mandate of the Commission must be placed in the context of violations committed
in the course of:

a The importation of slaves to the Cape and the brutal treatment they endured
between 1652 (when the first slaves were imported) and 1834 (when slavery
was abolished).

b The many wars of dispossession and colonial conquest dating from the first
war against the Khoisan in 1659, through several so-called frontier conflicts
as white settlers penetrated northwards, to the Bambatha uprising of 1906,
the last attempt at armed defence by an indigenous grouping.

c The systematic hunting and elimination of indigenous nomadic peoples such as

the San and Khoi-khoi by settler groups, both Boer and British, in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.

d The Difaquane or Mfecane where thousands died and tens of thousands were
displaced in a Zulu-inspired process of state formation and dissolution.
 e The South African War of 1899-1902 during which British forces herded Boer
women and children into concentration camps in which some 20 000 died - a
2
gross human rights violation of shocking proportions.

f The genocidal war in the early years of this century directed by the German
colonial administration in South West Africa at the Herero people, which took
them to the brink of extinction.

8 It is also important to remember that the 1960 Sharpville massacre (with which
the mandate of the Commission begins) was simply the latest in a long line of
similar killings of civilian protesters in South African history. It was, for example,
not a National Party administration but the South African Party government, made
up primarily of English-speaking South Africans, that in July 1913 crushed a series
of miners strikes on the Reef - sending in the army and killing just over one
hundred strikers and onlookers. Thrice in 1921 and 1922, this same governing
party let loose its troops and planes: first, against a protesting religious sect,
the Israelites at Bulhoek, killing 183 people; second, against striking white
3
mineworkers on the Reef in 1922, resulting in the deaths of 214 people ; and
third, when the Bondelswarts people, a landless hunting group of Nama origin
in South West Africa, in rebellion against a punitive dog tax in 1922, were
machine-gunned from the air. One hundred civilians, mostly women, were killed.

9 Thus, when the South African Defence Force (SADF) killed just over 600 men,
women and children, combatant and non-combatant, at Kassinga in Angola in 1978,
and when the South African Police (SAP) shot several hundred black protesters in
the weeks following the June 16 events at Soweto, they were operating in terms
of a well-established tradition of excessive or unjustifiable use of force against
government opponents. This is not, of course, to exonerate them or the force
they employed, but simply to put those events and actions in historical context.

10 Mention has been made of the social-engineering dimension of the policy of

apartheid. Again, it needs to be made clear that the National Party was not the
first political party or group to have been accused of social engineering on a vast
scale in this part of the world. The post-South African War administration of Alfred
Milner was, for example, similarly accused concerning its Anglicisation schemes.

2 In his evidence to a Commission workshop on reconciliation, Mr Ron Viney indicated that a similar number of
black people was exhumed from British concentration camps. (Johannesburg, 18 20 February 1998).
3 Those killed included seventy-six strikers, seventy-eight members of the troops that took them on, thirty African
non-strikers who were killed by the strikers, and thirty bystanders.
11 Indeed, one of most ambitious and far-reaching attempts at social engineering in
twentieth century South African history was introduced by the first post-unification
South African Party government in the form of the 1913 Land Act. No other piece
of legislation in South African history more dramatically and drastically re-shaped the
social map of this country. Not only did it lay the basis for the territorial separation of
whites and Africans; it destroyed, at a stroke, a thriving African landowning and
peasant agricultural sector. It did so by prohibiting African land ownership outside
of the initial 7 per cent of land allocated to the so-called traditional reserves and
ending sharecropping and non-tenancy arrangements on white-owned farms.
The Land Act set in motion a massive forced removal of African people that led,
amongst other things, to the deaths of many hundreds of people who found
themselves suddenly landless.

12 An observer of the impact of the Act on the African people, Solomon Plaatje,
commented:

For to crown all our calamities, South Africa has by law ceased to be the
home of any of her native children whose skins are dyed with a hue that
does not conform with the regulation hue ... Is it to be thought that God is
using the South African Parliament to hound us out of our ancestral homes
4
in order to quicken our pace heavenwards? .

13 Plaatje retells a story told to him which illustrates the tragic human impact of
the implementation of the Act:

A squatter called Kgobadi got a message from his father-in-law in the

Transvaal. His father-in-law asked Kgobadi to try to find a place for him
to rent in the Orange Free State.

But Kgobadi got this message only when he and his family were on their
way to the Transvaal. Kgobadi was going to ask his father-in-law for a home
for the family. Kgobadi had also been forced off the land by the Land Act.

The Baas said that Kgobadi, his wife and his oxen had to work for R38
(18 pounds) a year. Before the Land Act, Kgobadi had been making R200
(100 pounds) a year selling crops. He told the Baas that he did not want
to
work for such low wages. The Baas told Kgobadi to go.

4 Solomon Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa, originally published in 1916 and republished by Ravan Press,
1981, pp 83-4.

V O L U M E 1 C H A P T E R 2 Historical Context PAGE 27

 So, both Kgobadi and his father-in-law had nowhere to go. They were
wandering around on the roads in the cold winter with everything they
owned. Kgobadis goats gave birth. One by one they died in the cold and
were left by the roadside for the jackals and vultures to eat.

Mrs Kgobadis child was sick. She had to put her child in the ox-wagon
which bumped along the road. Two days later, the child died.

Where could they bury the child? They had no rights to bury it on any
land. Late that night, the poor young mother and father had to dig a grave
when no-one could see them. They had to bury their child in a stolen
grave.

14 Plaatje ended the story with the bitter words that even criminals who are hanged
have the right to a proper grave. Yet, under the cruel workings of the Land Act,
little children whose only crime is that God did not make them white, sometimes
5
have no right to be buried in the country of their ancestors.

15 TM Dambuzu described the Land Act in these words:

There is winter in the Natives Land Act. In winter the trees are stripped
and leafless.

16 But if this was an act of wholesale dispossession and discrimination, so too was
the 1909 South Africa Act which was passed, not by a South African legislature,
but by the British Parliament. In terms of the South Africa Act, Britains four South
African colonies were merged into one nation and granted juridical independence
under a constitutional arrangement that transferred power in perpetuity to a
minority of white voters. No firm provisions were made for the protection or
improvement of the civil and political rights of the indigenous black majority.

17 Admittedly, the British government of the day was responding to pressure from
the all-white South African constitutional convention, but Britain had a juridical
responsibility to all, and not simply its white, subjects.

18 No less of a betrayal was the 1936 Representation of Natives Act, by which Cape
African voters were disenfranchised or the 1956 Senate Act, by which the member-
ship of that body was enlarged to enable the National Party to summon a two-thirds
majority to strip Coloured males of the vote. This latter piece of constitutional
chicanery was only the end of a process of black disenfranchisement begun by
the British in 1909.
5 Solomon Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa, originally published in 1916 and republished by Ravan Press,
1981, pp 83-4.

V O L U M E 1 C H A P T E R 2 Historical Context PAGE 28

 THE LIMITED FOCUS OF THE MANDATE

19 As noted in the Mandate chapter later in this volume, the Commissions governing
Act limited its investigation to gross violations of human rights defined as the
killing, abduction, torture or severe ill-treatment and the attempt, conspiracy,
incitement, instigation, command or procurement to commit such acts. In
essence, therefore, the Commission was restricted to examining only a fraction
of the totality of human rights violations that emanated from the policy of
apartheid - namely, those that resulted in physical or mental harm or death and
were incurred in the course of the political conflicts of the mandate period.

20 The Commissions focus was, therefore, a narrow or restricted one, representing

what were perhaps some of the worst acts committed against the people of this
country and region in the post-1960 period, but providing a picture that is by no
means complete. For, simultaneous to the gross abuses documented later in
this report, millions of South Africans, and more particularly those who were not
white, were subjected to racial and ethnic oppression and discrimination on a
daily basis - in pursuit of a system which the Mandate chapter describes as
systemic, all-pervading and evil.

21 Furthermore, in applying this system and in seeking to perpetuate it, the government
of South Africa let loose upon the wider region a reign of terror and destruction.
It was for this reason that Parliament mandated the Commission to include within
its scope gross human rights violations that occurred outside South Africa.

22 Conceptually, the policy of apartheid was itself a human rights violation. The
determination of an individuals civil and political rights by a factor - skin colour
- over which he or she has no control, constitutes an abuse of those rights. Of
course, such discrimination existed before 1948 and had its roots far back in South
Africas colonial past. Nevertheless, the apartheid state that was constructed
after 1948 had dimensions that made it different from the discriminatory orders
that preceded it.

23 Thus, although many of its laws built on or updated a de facto pattern of

segregationist legislation (for example, an industrial colour bar and limited
African property and voting rights), the apartheid system was of a qualitatively
different type. No longer content to tolerate a de facto pattern of segregation in
which grey areas of social mixing remained - such as in urban residential patterns

V O L U M E 1 C H A P T E R 2 Historical Context PAGE 2 9

 and inter-racial personal contacts and relationships, including marriage - from 1948,
the new government set out to segregate every aspect of political, economic,
cultural, sporting and social life, using established legal antecedents where they
existed and creating them where they did not. Although making use of the forms of
democracy (elections, proper legislative processes and so on), it constructed a
totalitarian order that was far from democratic in substance.

24 Apartheid sought to maintain the status quo of white supremacy through the
implementation of massive social change. It was thus an ideology, simultane-
ously of change and of non-change; or alternatively, perhaps, of reactionary
change. To achieve its goals, Parliament:

a transformed the laissez-faire pattern of pre-1948 segregation into a systematic

pattern of legalised racial discrimination, and

b constructed a huge internal security apparatus and armed it with awesome

legal powers to crush opposition generated by the first process.

Legislation

25 With regard to the first process, the key legislative enactments were:

Population Registration Act 1950

26 This Act formed the very bedrock of the apartheid state in that it provided for the
classification of every South African into one of four racial categories. To achieve
this end, it came up with definitions of racial groupings which were truly bizarre:

A White person is one who is in appearance obviously white - and not

generally accepted as Coloured - or who is generally accepted as White -
and is not obviously Non-White, provided that a person shall not be classified
as a White person if one of his natural parents has been classified as a
Coloured person or a Bantu ... A Bantu is a person who is, or is generally
accepted as, a member of any aboriginal race or tribe of Africa ... a
Coloured is a person who is not a white person or a Bantu.

27 Despite the crude and hopelessly imprecise wording of these definitions, the
Act was imposed with vigour and determination.
28 President Nelson Mandela wrote:

Where was one was allowed to live and work could rest on such
6
absurd distinctions as the curl of ones hair or the size of ones lips.

29 The result, especially for the coloured people, was human devastation. As John
Dugard put it in 1972:

No words can capture the misery and human suffering caused by this
legislative scheme which sometimes results in divisions of families owing
7
to the different racial classification of members of the same family .

1950 Group Areas Act

30 In terms of the Group Areas Act, the entire country was demarcated into zones
for exclusive occupation by designated racial groups. Implemented from 1954,
the result was mass population transfers involving the uprooting of (almost
exclusively) black citizens from their homes of generations, and the wholesale
destruction of communities like Sophiatown, District Six, Cato Manor and South
End in Port Elizabeth. Again, in human terms, the consequence was immense
suffering and huge losses of property and income.

The 1949 Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and 1950 Immorality

Amendment Act

31 According to this legislation, all future interracial marriages were prohibited, as

were all forms of sexual contact across colour lines. Like the Population
Registration Act, the Immorality Act was energetically implemented for some
two to three decades, resulting in untold suffering in the form of harassment,
public humiliation and the destruction of marriages and family bonds. Suicide
by those caught in the web of the provisions of this Act was not unknown.

1950 Suppression of Communism Act

32 This Act provided not only for the banning of the Communist Party, but also for
the legislative means to crush or curb all forms of dissent - communist, radical,

6 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, Macdonald Purnell: Randburg, 1994.

7 John Dugard, The Legal Framework of Apartheid in N. J. Rhoodie (ed.) The Legal Framework of Apartheid.
Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill, 1972, p. 83.
 liberal, radically religious and just plain annoying. It did this through the inclusion of
a definition of communism that was absurd in its breadth and vagueness.

1953 Separate Amenities Act

33 This Act designated all public amenities and facilities (parks, libraries, zoos,
beaches, sports grounds, and so on) for the exclusive use of specified racial
groups. The allocation was made on a wholly unequal basis with the result that
most facilities and amenities were closed to black people.

1953 Bantu Education Act

34 The Bantu Education Act laid the basis for a separate and inferior education
system for African pupils. Based on a racist notion that blacks needed only to be
educated, in the words of Dr Verwoerd, in accordance with their opportunities
in life, the Act transferred the control of African schools from the provinces to a
central Bantu Education Department headed by Dr Verwoerd himself.

35 In addition, state subsidies to mission schools were first reduced and later stopped
altogether. This meant that they were either forced into the state school system
or had to close - which many (often the better) schools did. The result, in the
short term, was the destruction of black mission education in South Africa -
that sector of African education that had produced some of the countrys finest
minds and political leaders. It also stifled the development of a private African
school sector by requiring that all non-state schools be registered with the then
Native Affairs Department.

36 In the longer term, the consequence was exactly what had been intended: namely,
the under-skilling of generations of African children and their graduation into an
economy for which they were singularly under-equipped. The critical shortage of
skills in the economy forty years later and the massive numbers of unemployed
African people bear witness to the legacy of this legislation.

37 In the next decade - the 1960s - legislation brought coloured and Indian education
under state control with similar, though not as severely deleterious, effects.
1959 Extension of University Education Act

38 This perversely named law, far from extending opportunities for tertiary education,
actually had the opposite effect by denying black students the right to attend
their university of choice. It imposed apartheid on the tertiary sector, making it
illegal for the existing largely (in the case of the Afrikaans campuses exclusively)
white universities to admit black students except with ministerial permission. It
resulted in the creation of separate ethnic colleges for Indians, coloureds and
Zulu, Sotho and Xhosa-speaking Africans.

39 This Act, which was first published in draft form in 1957, was significant in another
sense. It signalled a shift in government thinking in relation to the challenge
posed by the growing force of African nationalism of the time. Having laid out
the framework for the racial compartmentalisation of, particularly, urban South
Africa, the governments provision for African tertiary education along ethnic lines
flagged an intention to engage in a further bout of racial and social engineering.
This theme will be discussed later in this chapter.

40 These eight pieces of legislation laid the foundation of the new apartheid order in
South Africa. However, other important pieces of legislation passed in the first
decade of apartheid rule stripped coloured male voters of their common-roll
franchise rights, further limited the rights of African workers to strike and bargain
collectively and, by extending pass laws to African women, further restricted the
rights of Africans to move from the reserves to the cities and to sell their labour
8
to the highest bidder.

The effects of apartheid legislation

41 Overall, what the National Party did in its first ten to twelve years of power
9
amounted, in Leo Kupers words , to a white counter-revolution to forestall the
perceived (although, as will be noted later, misinterpreted and exaggerated)
growing threat to white supremacy from both local forces and the rising tide of
African nationalist sentiment on the continent. This concern was often present-
ed in the popular media as the Mau-Mau factor, reflecting a real fear of what
African independence represented for the white minority.

8 See chapter on Chronologies and Submissions.

9 Leo Kuper, African Nationalism in South Africa, 1910-1964 in Leonard Thompson and Monica Wilson (Eds.)
Oxford History of South Africa: vol. ii, South Africa 1870-1966. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.
42 It was also a social engineering project of awesome dimensions through which,
from about the mid-1950s and for the next thirty or so years, the inherited rural
and urban social fabric of South Africa was torn asunder and recreated in the image
of a series of racist utopias. In the process, as indicated earlier, millions of black
people and a handful of mainly poor whites were shunted around like pawns on
a chessboard. Forced to relocate to places that often existed only on the drawing
boards of the architects of apartheid, entire communities were simply wiped
out. These included urban suburbs and rural villages, traditional communities and
homelands, schools, churches and above all people. Sometimes the demolition
was total, as in Sophiatown; sometimes an isolated temple, mosque or church
was left intact, as in District Six, South End and Cato Manor; sometimes simply
the name remained, as in Diagonal Street.

43 Thus, it needs constantly to be borne in mind that, while the state and other
operatives were committing the murders and abductions and other violations
documented in this report, a much larger pattern of human rights violations was
unfolding. These may not have been gross as defined by the Act, but they
were, nonetheless, an assault on the rights and dignity of millions of South
Africans and they were, in large part, the product of the core legislation, and
subsequent amendments, outlined above.

44 This point is eloquently developed in the Mandate chapter. For the vast majority
of South Africans, human rights abuse was:

for nearly half a century ... the warp and weft of their experience ... defining
their privilege and their disadvantage, their poverty and their wealth, their
public and private lives and their very identity ... the system itself was evil,
inhumane and degrading ... amongst its many crimes, perhaps its greatest
was the power to humiliate, to denigrate and to remove the self-
confidence, self-esteem and dignity of its millions of victims.

45 Thus, while only some 21 300 persons filed gross human rights violations
petitions with the Commission, apartheid was a grim daily reality for every black
South African. For at least 3.5 million black South Africans it meant collective
expulsions, forced migration, bulldozing, gutting or seizure of homes, the mandatory
carrying of passes, forced removals into rural ghettos and increased poverty and
desperation. Dumped in the national states without jobs, communities experienced
powerlessness, vulnerability, fear and injustice.
46 Many of the killings and acts of torture documented in this report occurred precisely
because of resistance to the day-to-day experience of life under apartheid. The
sixty-nine people killed at Sharpville were not armed Umkhonto weSizwe (MK)
cadres or even human rights activists. They were just ordinary men and women
protesting against the hated dompas. Countless, nameless people had their rights
trampled trying to save their homes from apartheids bulldozers. Hundreds died
doing no more than demanding a decent education or instruction in a language
other than Afrikaans. One did not need to be a political activist to become a
victim of apartheid; it was sufficient to be black, alive and seeking the basic
necessities of life that whites took for granted and enjoyed by right.

THE LAW AND ETHNICITY

47 The legislation of the early apartheid years and the implementation of those
laws were countered by considerable political activity and campaigning in the
1950s. This took the form of non-violent resistance campaigns in the cities, such
as the Defiance Campaign of 1952/53, the Congress of the People in 1955, the
1956 bus boycotts, the anti-pass laws campaigns in 1959 and 1960 and so on.
There were also sporadic and scattered but sustained rural uprisings in Zeerust,
Witzieshoek, Sekhukuneland, Marico, Harding and Pondoland, which involved
some levels of violence.

48 In the context of this domestic activity, together with growing international hostility
and the fever of decolonisation then sweeping Africa, the government responded
in two ways. The first was to introduce a battery of security laws; the second
took the form of what might be described as its ethnic project.

Domestic opposition

49 Internal resistance forces at the end of the 1950s were weak. Despite the militant
rhetoric contained in such policy documents as the 1949 Programme of Action,
the 1955 Freedom Charter and the 1959 founding document of the Pan
Africanist Congress, the nationalist movement lacked the capacity to translate its
intentions into effective action. First, it was internally divided: the 1959 break-
away of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) was the result of a decade of divi-
sion within the African National Congress (ANC). Second, neither of these
organisations had a mass base and their capacity outside of the cities was
 small. Third, neither organisation had an effective strategic counter to the states
willingness to employ violence against black protesters. Time and again in the
1950s, non-violence as a vehicle of struggle was shown to be an impotent and
ineffective counter to state action.

50 Even after the abandonment of non-violence and the adoption of various forms
of armed struggle, the South African government had little difficulty containing
opposition until well into the 1980s. The reasons for this need not be discussed
extensively here, but they bear out the proposition of the American political
scientist, Harry Eckstein, that :

In the real world of phenomena, events occur not only because forces
leading towards them are strong, but also because forces tending to
10
inhibit, or obstruct, are weak or absent.

Politics in the region

51 One of the factors that inhibited or obstructed the liberation movements in their
efforts to mount a serious armed threat was their inability to develop secure and
permanent rear bases in the neighbouring states from which they were obliged to
operate. Ironically, the explanation for this is to be found in the very circumstances
the Pretoria government had viewed with such trepidation - the recent decolonisation
of these states. Thus while, up until 1960, South Africa had, on the whole, enjoyed
co-operative alliances with the British and Portuguese colonial administrations
in the region, these latter would never have tolerated the cross-border violations
undertaken by elements in the South African forces from the mid-1970s. However,
the new national entities, politically weak and economically bonded to South
Africa, were largely helpless in the face of South African aggression. Moreover,
and perhaps to South Africas surprise, it found that it had the covert support of
at least some of the governments and/or their security establishments in parts
of the region.

52 Given this situation, it is worth asking why it was that South Africa found it
necessary from 1975 to wage what became a thirteen-year long full-scale war
in Angola. The answer lies in two factors.

9 Harry Eckstein, On the Etiology of Internal Wars in Claude Welch and Mavis Taintor Bunker (Eds.)
Revolution and Political Change. New York: Duxbury Press 1972, p. 70.
The Namibian question

53 One of these factors related to the position of Namibia which, because of its
contested status in international law, had become the Achilles heel of the South
African government. Eventually, South Africa would have to surrender its control
over the protectorate. Its ambition was, therefore, to thwart SWAPO (South West
African Peoples Organisation) in its ambitions to win independence for a democratic
Namibia. From the late 1970s, Angola became SWAPOs forward base.

54 The other factor was the spectre of the Cold War, which continued to haunt the
global scene in the 1970s and 1980s. In this latter period of Cold War politics,
the hot spot or focus shifted from Europe to remote parts of the globe like
Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Ethiopia. With British and American encouragement,
the major powers came to see Angola as one of a number of regional arenas of
Cold War confrontation.

55 Thus, largely as a consequence of a particular moment in the politics of the

twentieth century, the way in which southern African was perceived underwent
a change of perspective. From an arena of racial conflict, it became a scene
of active Cold War confrontation. This perception was the result of a chance
coalition of interests between the United States and Britain (and their so-called
special alliance) and a government regarded almost everywhere else as a pariah.
Hence, the coming to power in the United States and Britain of Ronald Reagan and
Margaret Thatcher, whose political mindset on international issues represented a
throwback to the 1950s and its obsession with Communism and the Soviet Union,
presented the South African government with a window of opportunity which it
adroitly exploited.

56 In essence, the struggle to maintain white minority privilege was repackaged

as an effort to maintain so-called western civilised values against the godless
and evil forces of Communism. Thus it was that conscripts, when they turned
up for basic training in the 1980s, could be expected to believe (as one witness
related to the Commission): this story that people tell you that there is a
Communist behind every bush is nonsense. There are in fact two.

57 This is not to suggest that there were not some - even amongst top state and
security officials - who genuinely believed in the threat and who saw themselves
as anti-Communist crusaders. It is, however, the view of the Commission that,
at heart, the struggle for South and southern Africa was a racial one, and that
 notions of the red peril were manipulated to justify the perpetration of the
gross human rights violations this Commission was charged to investigate.

The Vorster laws

58 Details of security legislation introduced in the 1960s are contained in a separate

chapter. Suffice it to say here that they amounted to a sustained assault on the
principles of the rule of law. The suspension of the principle of habeas corpus,
limitations on the right to bail, the imposition by the legislature of minimum gaol
sentences for a range of offences and limitations on the ability of the courts to
protect detainees all contributed to a mounting exclusion of the authority of the
courts from the administration of justice, thereby seriously eroding their
independence.

59 Security legislation also introduced into the law a definition of sabotage so broad
and all encompassing as to render virtually all forms of dissent illegal or dangerous.
Peaceful protest and non-violent civil disobedience no longer seemed a viable
option and, faced with the choice to submit or fight, as Umkhonto weSizwe
(MK) expressed it in its launch statement, the resort to illegality and armed struggle
was inevitable. With the benefit of hindsight, it is now possible to see how, in its
efforts to crush all opposition in the early 1960s, the government sowed the
seeds of its eventual destruction.

The ethnic project

60 The second response of the government, as indicated earlier, was an attempt to

counter the growing sense of racial or African nationalist identity, with its aspirations
to replace white minority hegemony with majority rule. This it did by attempting
to deflect these sentiments along particularistic (ethnic) lines and endeavouring
to create avenues for political expression within ethnic categories.

61 This was the intention of the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act in 1959.
This piece of legislation simultaneously abolished indirect political representation
of Africans in Parliament and made provision for the transformation of the African
reserves (or homelands as they came to be called in the 1960s) through various
stages of self-government to eventual fully-fledged independent status.
62 There was nothing particularly new or unique to this approach. In fact, it was a
11
resort to long-established colonial practice in Africa. As Mamdani has noted,
other European colonisers had:

confronted the dilemma that the institutions of racial supremacy inevitably

generated a racial identity not only amongst its beneficiaries, but also
amongst its victims. Their solution was to link racial exclusion to ethnic
inclusion: the majority that had been excluded on racial grounds would
now appear as a series of ethnic minorities, each included in an ethnically-
defined political process. The point was to render racial supremacy
secure by eroding the racial identity of the oppressed, by fracturing it into so
many ethnic identities.

63 While acknowledging that the National Party was primarily concerned with
12
maintaining our right to self-determination, former President De Klerk argued
that the bantustan project was not without idealism:

We thought we could solve the complex problems that confronted us by

giving each of the ten distinguishable black South African nations self-
government and independence within the core areas they had
traditionally occupied. In this way we would create a commonwealth of
South African states - each independent but all co-operating on a
confederal basis with one another within an economic common market

64 Beyond political idealism, Mr De Klerk articulated a development dimension,

pointing to the construction of ten capital cities:

each with its own parliament, quite impressive government buildings ...
several well-endowed universities ... By 1975 some 77 new towns had been
established and 130 204 new houses had been built. Between 1952 and
1975 the number of hospital beds in the homelands increased from some
5 000 to 34 689. Decentralised industries were developed and hundreds
of millions of rands were pumped into the traditional areas in a futile
attempt
to stem the flood of people to the supposedly white cities.
11 Mahmood Mamdani, Reconciliation without Justice, Southern Review of Books, November/December 1996.
12 In his second submission to the Commission on behalf of the National Party, 23 March 1997.
65 Such intentions notwithstanding, as a political project it failed; though it could
be argued that it bought the government some time. However, far from producing
the hoped-for political nirvana for the African majority, the bantustans degenerated
into what one commentator once described as a constellation of casinos. More
seriously, they became riddled with corruption and, as the expenditure referred
to by Mr De Klerk suggests, a never-ending drain on the central governments
treasury.

66 More significantly, the political idealism of an envisaged ethno-nationalist

commonwealth was undermined by homeland leaders who displayed varying
degrees of despotism. Far from becoming part of the governments solution,
therefore, the bantustans rapidly became part of the problem, acting as a spur
and a means to mobilise for the alternative inclusive and non-racial nationalism
of the ANC and its allies.

67 Despite this, the manipulation of ethnicity represented by the bantustans became a

critical component of the governments contra-mobilisation or counter-revolutionary
warfare programme in the 1980s. It was a line of approach which spawned the
Caprivi hit squads in KwaZulu and countrywide vigilante forces like the Witdoeke,
as well as the surrogate armies or elements in the region, like UNITA, RENAMO,
the Lesotho Liberation Army and Zimbabwean dissident groups.

THE LAW AND VIOLENCE IN SOUTH

AFRICAN HISTORY

68 Violence has been the single most determining factor in South African political
history. The reference, however, is not simply to physical or overt violence - the
violence of the gun - but also to the violence of the law or what is often referred
to as institutional or structural violence.

69 White dominance in South Africa in the period covered by the Commissions

mandate was founded on colonial conquest, a condition consequent upon more
than 200 years of near-continuous interracial conflict which began with the first
migration of white settlers in the mid-seventeenth century. Initial penetration
was relatively simple as the first encounters of these new northward-moving
migrants were with nomadic pastoralists with little or no military tradition.
70 Beyond them, however, were more formidable opponents. Originally southward-
moving migrants themselves, these were now independent and, in some cases,
powerful nations; state systems with hierarchic authority structures and deep-
rooted military traditions. Like the northward-moving migrants, they farmed
land, exploited natural resources and raised stock. Conflict was inevitable and,
contrary to the myth propagated by some schools of local historiography, it did
not take the form a series of one-sided victories and defeats.

71 The reality is that the conquest of the South African interior was achieved only
in slow stages and was interspersed with setbacks and even defeats for the
white intruders. Inevitably, however, the contest between firearms and assegais
could have only one ending. By the twentieth century, the backbone of armed
black resistance was broken and the independence of the people surrendered
or ceded to protectorate status.

72 Indigenous resistance did not, however, cease. It transformed itself into political
and constitutional forms of struggle. But neither did the violence of the victors end.
Subjugation by the gun gave way to legislative subjugation as one law after another
sought to consolidate the gains of two centuries of overt violence. Stripped bare, the
1913 Land Act was an act of violence, a brutal separation of people from their
essential means of sustenance. So too was much of the repressive legislation that
followed down the years. Laws tore millions of workers from their families, forcing
them to work in white areas and live in enclosed compounds to which their
families had no access. Laws forced people to work for grossly insufficient
remuneration and to endure the indignity of pay scales determined not by
competence or experience, but by race. Laws forced people from their homes
and communities and from their ancestral lands. Laws dictated with whom one
might and might not have sex, marry or even drink. Laws allowed people to die
rather than violate whites-only hospital edicts, and then determined in which
plot of ground they could be buried.

73 This preoccupation of the government with the law, with due constitutional
process, with obtaining a legislative mandate for whatever acts (however heinous)
it or its security forces committed, was frequently commented upon favourably
by political analysts of the 1960s and 1970s. It was also often used to mount a
defence of the system. The argument made was that it was at least a system of
law, albeit bad law, and thus preferable to the military or political dictatorships
to the north.
74 What these analysts failed to acknowledge was that the law was a veneer.
Twentieth century law in South Africa, to paraphrase Hannah Arendt, made
crime legal. Mamdani made a similar point to the Commission when he
13
described apartheid law as crime which was institutionalised as the law.

75 Thus, these laws arose not out of reverence for justice and due process, but out
of a wish to legitimise the system. Beyond that even, the process of legitimation
provided a means to self-justification for those whose task it was to pass,
enforce and defend the law.

76 However, in the 1980s, when the state was in crisis, it became clear that the law
had run its course; that it could no longer do the job. The law had become
ineffective, an apparent obstruction to the restoration of what government leaders,
seemingly oblivious to the irony, called law and order. At this stage, real rule-
making power shifted from Parliament and the Cabinet to a non-elected
administrative body, the State Security Council (SSC) which operated beyond
public scrutiny. Nominally a sub-organ of the Cabinet, in reality the SSC
eclipsed it as the key locus of power and authority in matters relating to
security.

77 In his presentation to the Commission on the states counter-revolutionary warfare

14
principles and strategy , Craig Williamson provided an explanation of how this
situation came about. He argued that, in the context of insurgency and counter-
insurgency theory (particularly as developed by McKuen), a democratic state is
often limited by its laws, values and norms in the methods it can use to defeat an
insurgent movement. Its solution is to resort to extra-legal counter-revolutionary
acts, as long as they are done secretly. The South African state, he argued,
reached this stage in the 1980s:

The counter-insurgency elements of the police and military ... felt that a
democratic state using democratic methods could never withstand a
concerted Soviet-backed revolutionary effort. Their solution was to
suspend democratic freedoms and to militarise South African society
...
13 Commission symposium, 1997.
14 Craig Williamson, Aspects of State Counter-revolutionary Warfare Principles and Strategy: Republic of South
Africa in the 1980s, submission to the Commission, 9 October 1997.
78 The result was a:

drift ... more and more towards a militarily dominated state. This
expressed itself in para-military action in support of the state, while
ensuring that the states sponsorship thereof was kept secret ... In this
context results become more important than legality. The eleventh
commandment was well known, especially to those in the covert/special
force elements of the security forces. This was Thou shalt not be found
out

79 It was not Parliament therefore, but the State Security Council that stood at the
apex of the secretive National Security Management System. Initially it targeted
members of terrorist groups operating outside of South Africa, as well as their
supporters and hosts. Then, from the mid-1980s, it began focusing on its opponents
inside South Africa. Of course, the word murder was never used but euphemisms
like eliminasie, verwyder, neutraliseer and uitwis are to be found in some of
the SSC policy documents adopted in the 1980s.

80 To many, notably those in the leadership in the government and security forces
in the 1980s, the conclusion that the state sanctioned murder may and probably
will be an unpalatable assertion. It is also probably not what the Commission
expected to find when it started its work two years ago. It is, however, a truth
to which it has been drawn by the evidence.
Political Violence in the Era
of Negotiations and
Transition, 1990-1994

INTRODUCTION

1 The Commission had considerable success in uncovering violations that took

place before 1990. This was not true of the 1990s period. Information before the
Commission shows that the nature and pattern of political conflict in this later period
changed considerably, particularly in its apparent anonymity. A comparatively
smaller number of amnesty applications were received for this period. The
investigation and research units of the Commission were also faced with some
difficulty in dealing with the events of the more recent past.

2 Two factors dominated the period 199094. The first was the process of negotiations
aimed at democratic constitutional dispensation. The second was a dramatic
escalation in levels of violence in the country, with a consequent increase in the
number of gross violations of human rights.

3 The period opened with the public announcement of major political reforms by
President FW de Klerk on 2 February 1990 including the unbanning of the ANC,
PAC, SACP and fifty-eight other organisations; the release of political prisoners
and provision for all exiles to return home. Mr Nelson Mandela was released on
11 February 1990. The other goals were achieved through a series of bilateral
negotiations between the government and the ANC, resulting in the Groote
Schuur and Pretoria minutes of May and August 1990 respectively. The latter
minute was accompanied by the ANCs announcement that it had suspended
its armed struggle.

4 A long period of talks about talks followed primarily between the government,
the ANC and Inkatha culminating in the December 1991 launch of the Convention
for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). CODESA, which involved twenty different
political parties and organisations, collapsed in disagreement over issues of

V O L U M E 2 C H A P T E R 7 Political Violence in the era of Negotiations & Transition 1990-94 PAGE 5 8 3

 majority rule and regional powers. In May 1992, talks resumed with CODESA II.
However, barely a month later, the ANC withdrew in the wake of the Boipatong
massacre of 17 June 1992 and embarked on a campaign against the remaining
homeland governments. Talks resumed five months later, after the signing by
the ANC, PAC and the government of a Record of Understanding.

5 The Record of Understanding marked a shift in the National Party (NP) governments
negotiating strategy. It abandoned its de facto alliance with the IFP, through
which it had hoped to secure enough electoral support to force a power-sharing
arrangement with the ANC. Instead, the ANC and the government now co-operated
closely while the IFP aligned itself with a coalition of bantustan governments and
elements of the white right wing. This latter grouping ultimately coalesced into
the Concerned South Africans Group (COSAG) which, in July 1993, walked out
of the talks and formed the Freedom Alliance. This development saw a further
escalation in the level of violence. With the IFPs chief negotiator threatening a
civil war if the elections went ahead without the IFP, deaths from political violence
in July and August 1993 soared to 605 and 705 respectively, compared to 267
in June 1993.

6 In December 1993, a Transitional Executive Council (TEC) was installed, composed

of representatives of all parties to the negotiations process. Meanwhile, behind-
the-scenes talks continued with the Freedom Alliance to secure its participation.
This was achieved shortly before the 27 April 1994 election.

7 Of 9 043 statements received on killings, over half of these (5 695) occurred

during the 1990 to 1994 period. These figures give an indication of violations
recorded by the Commission during the negotiations process. They represent a
pattern of violation, rather than an accurate reflection of levels of violence and
human rights abuses. Sources other than the Commission have reported that,
from the start of the negotiations in mid-1990 to the election in April 1994, some
14 000 South Africans died in politically related incidents. While Commission
figures for reported violations in the earlier part of its mandate period are under-
represented in part because of the passage of time, they are under-reported in
this later period because the abuses are still fresh in peoples memories and
closely linked into current distribution of power.

8 The violence during the 1990s stemmed from intensification in the levels of conflict
and civil war in KwaZulu/Natal. While the province had been plagued for five
years by a low-level civil conflict, conflict intensified dramatically in the 1990s.
 The Human Rights Committee (HRC) estimates that, between July 1990 and June
1993, an average of 101 people died per month in politically related incidents
a total of 3 653 deaths. In the period July 1993 to April 1994, conflict steadily
intensified, so that by election month it was 2.5 times its previous levels.

9 Moreover, political violence in this period extended to the PWV (Pretoria

Witwatersrand-Vereeniging) region in the Transvaal. The HRC estimates that
between July 1990 and June 1993, some 4 756 people were killed in politically
related violence in the PWV area. In the period immediately following the
announcement of an election date, the death toll in the PWV region rose to four
times its previous levels.

10 The escalation of violence coincided with the establishment of Inkatha as a

national political party, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), in July 1990, and its
attempts to develop a political base in the Transvaal. The development of self-
defence units (SDUs) in largely ANC/UDF strongholds led to an escalation of
violence in both provinces.

11 Many came to believe that a hidden hand or third force lay behind the random
violence, which included military-style attacks on trains, drive-by shootings and
a series of massacres and assassinations. The train violence swept the Rand from
1990 onwards. By June 1993 it had caused some 400 deaths and countless more
injuries, and left thousands of commuters consumed with fear on a daily basis.
Such attacks frequently generated further violence.

12 At this time, there was also a marked increase in attacks on police officers. Between
July 1991 and June 1992, the HRC recorded a total of sixty-eight police officers
killed. A further 200 deaths were recorded between July 1992 and June 1993.

13 Violence also arose from the continued use of lethal force in public order policing.
The HRC estimated that killings by the security forces, primarily in the course of
public order policing, numbered 518 between July 1991 and June 1993. In the first
major incident, less than six weeks after President de Klerks speech, seventeen
people died and 447 were injured when police fired without warning on a crowd
of 50 000 protesters at Sebokeng. Other massacres occurred in Sebokeng in July
and September 1990 and in Daveyton and Alexandra townships in March 1991.

14 This was also APLAs most active period. A wave of military attacks was visited
on largely civilian targets, primarily in the western and eastern Cape, as well as
attacks on farmers in the Orange Free State.
15 Right-wing organisations were also active and vocal during this period, expressing
their resistance to the changing political order. The right wing was responsible for
several random attacks on black people as well as a more focused campaign of
bombings before the elections in April 1994.

16 The term third force began to be used increasingly to describe apparently random
violence that could not be ascribed to political conflict between identifiable competing
groups. Rather it appeared to involve covert forces intent on escalating violence
as a means of derailing the negotiations process.

17 At about this time FW de Klerk appointed the Commission of Inquiry Regarding

the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation headed by Judge Richard
Goldstone. Initial reports of the Goldstone Commission found no evidence of a
third force. While there were many criticisms of the manner in which the security
forces were dealing with the situation, the Commission pointed to high levels of
political intolerance as well as wider-ranging socio-economic conditions as the
primary causes of violent conflict. Notwithstanding Goldstones findings, non-
government organisations, including violence monitoring groups, and a number
of national newspapers continued to allege the presence of a third force in the
violence. Allegations of security force involvement in the violence reached a climax
with the Boipatong massacre.

18 In November 1992, during a Goldstone raid on the offices of the Directorate of

Covert Collections (DCC), evidence emerged of security force involvement in
illegal activities. President de Klerk responded by appointing General Pierre
Steyn, assisted by General Conradie of the SAP, to conduct an investigation
into the activities of certain military units.

19 General Steyn based his investigation on two investigative initiatives already

underway and reported to President de Klerk and senior members of his cabinet
on 20 December 1992. The substance of this report was that components of
the South African Defence Force (SADF) DCC, Army Intelligence, Special
Forces and the 7th Medical Battalion were involved in a wide range of illegal
and/or unauthorised activity. These included the establishment of arms caches and
springboards for attacks; an attempt to overthrow General Bantu Holomisas
government in the Transkei; the planting of weapons in Swaziland to discredit
the ANC; corruption of DCC members in relation to arms deals; the selective
leaking of information to right-wing groups; involvement in a chemical attack on
FRELIMO, and corruption for personal gain.
20 In addition, he concluded that the security forces (and specifically 5 Reconnaissance
Regiment) were probably involved in train violence; that there was probably a
Chemical and Biological Warfare programme, as well as a probable attempt to get
CCB operative Danie Phaal to distribute poisoned beer to Zulu-speakers in the
Transkei. Strong allegations were also made of further unlawful and/or unautho-
rised actions.

21 General Steyn indicated, however, that the intelligence was not sufficiently refined
to stand up in court because of the extensive destruction of documents and other
evidence, concern over the safety of sources, the fear that those implicated
would resort to murder if they felt threatened, and the fact that many role-players
protected each other.

22 De Klerk was given a staff report compiled for General Steyn by the SADFs Chief
Directorate of Counter Intelligence. SADF chief General Kat Liebenberg, army
chief General Georg Meiring and chief of staff intelligence, General CP van der
Westhuizen, were called to Tuynhuys and asked to draw up a list of people against
whom action should be taken. Their list included General Thirion whom the Steyn
report specifically recommended for exemption from action, and excluded other
names including those of the three generals who drew up the list against
whom the Steyn report had recommended that action should be taken.

23 The following day, De Klerk issued a statement saying that six top-ranking officials
had been placed on compulsory early retirement and sixteen on compulsory leave
pending further investigation. By the end of December, fifteen of the twenty-three
had been cleared of possible links to illegal or criminal actions. It was announced
that a board of enquiry would be constituted to examine possible illegal and/or
criminal or unauthorised actions involving three SADF and four civilian members.

24 The Steyn documents were handed over to a team of investigators consisting of

the Attorneys-General of the Witwatersrand and the Transvaal, the SAP and the
Auditor-General, under the direction of Transvaal Attorney-General Jan DOliviera.
Some of the allegations were referred to the Goldstone Commission for further
investigation.

25 Steyn himself took early retirement in October 1993, at the age of fifty-one. His
last progress report submitted to the Minister of Defence noted that few, if any,
of the suspects had been questioned and that there had been little progress in
gathering evidence.
26 In addition to Steyn Commission allegations in respect of taxi and train violence,
the Goldstone Commission investigated a number of allegations of the involvement
of a third force in the conflict. These included the planning or instigation of acts
of violence by the SAP in the Vaal area; the presence of RENAMO soldiers in
KwaZulu; the existence of a third force as alleged by the Vrye Weekblad on 30
October 1992; the existence of SADF front companies; the training by the SADF
of Inkatha supporters in 1986 and of the Black Cats, and the involvement by
elements within the SAP, the KwaZulu Police (KZP) and the IFP in criminal
political violence.

27 The Goldstone findings initially rejected the notion of a third force or hidden
hand. However, in his March 1994 report, Criminal political violence by elements
within the SAP, the KZP and the Inkatha Freedom Party, Goldstone alleged that
the SAP were engaged in arming the IFP and pointed to attempts by senior
police officers to subvert the Goldstone enquiry.

28 The Goldstone Commission submitted its final report in October 1994, some six
months after the first democratic elections and the end of this Commissions
mandate period. While the overall levels of violence dropped dramatically in the
post-election period, allegations of sinister forces continued in relation to ongoing
violence in KwaZulu-Natal.

29 The commission of gross violations of human rights by state security forces,

homeland structures, the right wing and liberation movements are dealt with below.

SECURITY FORCES

Detention and Torture

1
30 Evidence before the Commission indicates that detention and torture continued
to be used by the SAP in the early 1990s.

31 The majority of torture victims were short-term detainees, frequently arrested in

connection with public unrest. Analysis of human rights violations statements
indicates a far greater incidence of torture in rural areas and small towns than in
the major urban centres. A possible explanation is the wide support enjoyed by
the right wing in non-urban areas. The overwhelming majority of torture victims

1 In June 1991, the Internal Security Act of was amended by the Internal Security and Intimidation Act. In terms
of the new legislation, incommunicado detention under section 29 was limited to only 10 days, unless ordered by a
Supreme Court judge. However, it was only on 25 April 1994, just days before the first democratic election, that
section 29 was finally removed from the statute book.
 in this period continued to be those allied to the ANC and the Mass Democratic
Movement (MDM). The Commission received fewer than ten statements from
members of the IFP alleging torture at the hands of the South African security
forces in the 1990s. Even taking into account the fact that fewer IFP victims
came to the Commission, the disparity is marked.

32 The Commission received human rights violations statements from two members
of right-wing organisations who were victims of torture. Phillipus Cornelius Kloppers
[JB06109/03WR and AM4627/97], member of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging
(AWB) was arrested in January 1994 in connection with the roadblock killings of
December 1993 on the Ventersdorp/Randfontein Road (see below), in respect of
which he also applied for amnesty. He was blindfolded, bound, tubed (suffocated
with a tube) and subjected to electric shock treatment. Kloppers claims to have
been denied medical treatment for nineteen months and to have lost 75 per
cent of the mobility in his neck.

33 Mr Leonard Michael Veenendal [KZN/Mr/146/NC], a member of the Orde Boerevolk

and an alleged NIS source, was detained under section 29 in July 1990. He was
handcuffed and had his legs bound in chains and a balaclava pulled over his
head. He was taken to a farm where he was assaulted with fists on his face and
stomach until he vomited. During the night he was taken to an office and further
beaten by askaris. On another occasion, he was told to undress and was bound
to a chair. Three live wires were attached to his armpit, toes and genitals and he
was subjected to electric shocks until he lost consciousness. After being revived
with cold water, he was told to stand but was too weak to do so. His torturers
then urinated over him. Veenendal was eventually released after a seventy-six
day hunger strike.

34 An amnesty application was also received from a security police officer, Roelof
Venter [AM2774/96], relating to the detention and intimidation of a number of
high-profile members of right-wing organisations.

35 The Complaints Investigation Unit of the Peace Accord raided the headquarters
of the Internal Stability Unit (ISU) at Vosloorus in 1993 after the ANC had won
an order restraining ISU members from assaulting and torturing people. Electric
shock equipment and rubber tubing were found. In May 1994, after the first
democratic election, Dutch observers discovered a machine for administering
electric shock at the Vaal Riot and Crime Investigation Unit. According to the
submission of the HRC, at least three people died in custody for security-related
 offences. They were Mr Clayton Sizwe Sithole, who is alleged to have committed
suicide while held at John Vorster Square; Mr Lucas Tlhotlhomisang, who is
alleged to have died from meningitis while held in Klerksdorp; and Mr Donald
Thabela Madisha, who is said to have hanged himself at the Potgietersrus police
station. In addition, there were a number of other cases of death in custody. A
special investigation task team was set up in July 1991 to investigate the activities
of police at the Welverdiend police station on the West Rand, dubbed the House
of Horrors, following numerous accounts of torture and assault and the deaths
of some seventeen people in custody. Victims included sixteen-year-old Nixon
Phiri and fifteen-year-old Eugene Mbulawa (see Volume Three).

WHILE THEY FALL OUTSIDE ITS MANDATE PERIOD, THE COMMISSION NOTES WITH CONCERN
THE ONGOING REPORTS OF TORTURE AND DEATHS IN CUSTODY, WHICH HAVE REACHED ALARM-
ING LEVELS. AS NOTED IN THE PREVIOUS SECTION, TORTURE OF SUSPECTS IN CRIMINAL CASES
PRECEDED THE USE OF TORTURE OF POLITICAL DETAINEES. IT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED THAT
SUCH METHODS WERE AND ARE ROUTINE METHODS IN POLICE CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS AND
TO A LARGE DEGREE REPLACE ROUTINE INVESTIGATIVE WORK. THE COMMISSION RECOMMENDS
THAT THE POLICE SERVICES UNDERTAKE URGENT MEASURES TO HALT THESE PRACTICES.

Violations associated with public order policing

36 There was little change in the policing of demonstrations after 1990. Unrest and
deaths continued to occur as a result of the use of deadly force. The following
graphs indicate violations recorded by the Commission. While not reaching the
same level as the 198487 period, killings by the SAP increased significantly
between 1989 (the year of the Defiance Campaign) and 1990 and remained at
relatively high and constant levels until the end of 1993. The breakdown reveals
that over 600 of the SAP killings were the result of shooting. As the number of
assassinations by known/identified security force personnel during this period
was relatively small, most of these shootings would have arisen in public order
policing situations.

37 In one incident which took place on 26 March 1990, police opened fire on a crowd
of 50 000 people marching to Vereeniging to present a list of grievances. At least
thirteen people died and more than 400 were injured. Many victims had been shot
in the back. Police claimed to have fired in self-defence after the crowd threw
stones and bottles. However, reporters present testified that they had seen no
evidence of this. Participants alleged that the police had opened fire without
warning. Judge Goldstone, appointed after calls for a judicial commission of
enquiry, recommended that police be prosecuted. No action was taken.
 38 On 19 April 1990, five youths were killed during a march at Viljoenskroon in the Orange Free State.
The police gave orders to disperse, but it is alleged that, before the time had elapsed. a police
officer shot into the air, causing panic among the crowd. The police then opened fire.

39 On 14 March 1991, police opened fire on a crowd of approximately 200 Daveyton residents, killing
thirteen people and injuring twenty-nine. The police version was that they opened fire after they were
attacked by a group which then hacked a police officer to death. A special police investigation into
this incident was headed by Lieutenant General Jaap Joubert. The ANC rejected the results of
Jouberts investigation. Several months later, a judicial enquiry under Supreme Court judge, Justice
B Donovan, found that the police had used excessive force in their handling of the incident. In
Judge Donovans words:

The one feature in my mind which is of decisive importance is the enormous number of rounds of
ammunition (250) fired by the police ... It appears to
me that the policemen involved in the incident were guilty of an excessive use of firearms in
their defence and exceeded the limits of self-defence.

40 The finding was referred to the Attorney-General who declined to prosecute.

41 On 8 April 1992, two women were shot dead and more than 100 injured in Phola Park following an
attack on a 32 Battalion (SADF) patrol by unknown gunmen. Several women were also allegedly
raped or sexually harassed during the twelve- hour raid. On 19 June 1992, an interim report of the
Goldstone Commission found that more than 200 rounds had been fired and that the soldiers had
acted
in a manner completely inconsistent with the function of a peacekeeping force and, in fact, became
perpetrators of violence. The Commission recommended that the Battalion should not be used in
any further peace-keeping duties. General Meiring, then chief of the army, responded that, while the
army would act against any abuses, it would not withdraw Battalion 32 from the townships.

42 The Commission made a comprehensive finding regarding public order policing in the pre-1990
period.

THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT, IN THE POST-1990 PERIOD, THE APPROACH OF THE SAP TO CROWD CONTROL AND PUBLIC ORDER
POLICING REMAINED LARGELY UNCHANGED AND EVIDENCE AVAILABLE TO THE COMMISSION INDICATES THAT LARGE NUMBERS
OF PEOPLE DIED AS A RESULT OF THE UNJUSTIFIED USE OF DEADLY FORCE. SUCH DEATHS ARE GROSS VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN
RIGHTS FOR WHICH THE SAP IS HELD ACCOUNTABLE
www. gov. za

The mineral revolution

By the late 19th century, the limitations of the Cape's liberal tradition were becoming apparent.
The hardening of racial attitudes that accompanied the rise of a more militant imperialist spirit
coincided locally with the watershed discovery of mineral riches in the interior of southern
Africa.

In a developing economy, cheap labour was at a premium, and the claims of educated Africans
for equality met with increasingly fierce resistance.

At the same time, the large numbers of Africans in the chiefdoms beyond the Kei River and north
of the Gariep (Orange River), then being incorporated into the Cape Colony, posed new threats
to racial supremacy and white security, increasing segregationist pressures.

Alluvial diamonds were discovered on the Vaal River in the late 1860s. The subsequent
discovery of dry deposits at what became the city of Kimberley drew tens of thousands of
people, black and white, to the first great industrial hub in Africa, and the largest diamond
deposit in the world. In 1871, the British, who ousted several rival claimants, annexed the
diamond fields.

The Colony of Griqualand West thus created was incorporated into the Cape Colony in 1880. By
1888, the consolidation of diamond claims had led to the creation of the huge De Beers
monopoly under the control of Cecil Rhodes. He used his power and wealth to become prime
minister of the Cape Colony (from 1890 to 1896) and, through his chartered British South Africa
Company, conqueror and ruler of modern-day Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The mineral discoveries had a major impact on the subcontinent as a whole. A railway network
linking the interior to the coastal ports revolutionised transportation and energised agriculture.
Coastal cities such as modern-day Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban
experienced an economic boom as port facilities were upgraded.

The fact that the mineral discoveries coincided with a new era of imperialism and the scramble
for Africa, brought imperial power and influence to bear in southern Africa as never before.

Independent African chiefdoms were systematically subjugated and incorporated by their white-
ruled neighbours. In 1897, Zululand was incorporated into Natal.

The South African Republic (Transvaal) was annexed by Britain in 1877. Boer resistance led to
British withdrawal in 1881, but not before the Pedi (northern Sotho) state, which fell within the
republic's borders, had been subjugated. The indications were that, having once been asserted,
British hegemony was likely to be reasserted.

The southern Sotho and Swazi territories were also brought under British rule but maintained
their status as imperial dependencies, so that both the current Lesotho and Swaziland escaped the
rule of local white regimes.
The discovery of the Witwatersrand goldfields in 1886 was a turning point in the history of South
Africa. It presaged the emergence of the modern South African industrial state.

Once the extent of the reefs had been established, and deep-level mining had proved to be a
viable investment, it was only a matter of time before Britain and its local representatives again
found a pretext for war against the Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

The demand for franchise rights for English-speaking immigrants on the goldfields (known as
uitlanders) provided a lever for applying pressure on the government of President Paul Kruger.
Egged on by the deep-level mining magnates, to whom the Boer government seemed obstructive
and inefficient, and by the expectation of an uitlander uprising, Rhodes launched a raid into the
Transvaal in late December 1895. The raid's failure saw the end of Rhodes' political career, but
Sir Alfred Milner, British high commissioner in South Africa from 1897, was determined to
overthrow Kruger's government and establish British rule throughout the subcontinent. The Boer
government was eventually forced into a declaration of war in October 1899.

The mineral discoveries had a radical impact on every sphere of society. Labour was required on
a massive scale and could only be provided by Africans, who had to be drawn away from the
land.

Many Africans responded with alacrity to the opportunities presented by wage labour, travelling
long distances to earn money to supplement rural enterprise in the homestead economy.

In response to the expansion of internal markets, Africans exploited their farming skills and
family labour to good effect to increase production for sale. A substantial black peasantry arose,
often by means of share-cropping or labour tenantry on white-owned farms.

For the white authorities, however, the chief consideration was ensuring a labour supply and
undermining black competition on the land. Conquest, land dispossession, taxation and pass laws
were designed to force black people off the land and channel them into labour markets,
especially to meet the needs of the mines.

Gradually, the alternatives available to Africans were closed, and the decline of the homestead
economy made wage labour increasingly essential for survival. The integration of Africans into
the emerging urban and industrial society of South Africa should have followed these
developments, but short-term, recurrent labour migrancy suited employers and the authorities,
which sought to entrench the system.

The closed compounds pioneered on the diamond fields, as a means of migrant labour control,
were replicated at the gold mines. The preservation of communal areas from which migrants
could be drawn had the effect of lowering wages, by denying Africans rights within the urban
areas and keeping their families and dependants on subsistence plots in the reserves.

Africans could be denied basic rights if the fiction could be maintained that they did not belong
in "white South Africa", but to "tribal societies" from which they came to service the "white
man's needs". Where black families secured a toehold in the urban areas, local authorities
confined them to segregated "locations". This set of assumptions and policies informed the
development of segregationist ideology and, later (from 1948), apartheid.

The Anglo-Boer/South African War (October 1899

May 1902) and its aftermath
The war that followed the mineral revolution was mainly a white man's war.

In its first phase, the Boer forces took the initiative, besieging the frontier towns of Mafeking
(Mafikeng) and Kimberley in the northern Cape, and Ladysmith in northern Natal.

Some colonial Boers rebelled, however, in sympathy with the republics. But, after a large
expeditionary force under lords Roberts and Kitchener arrived, the British advance was rapid.
Kruger fled the Transvaal shortly before Pretoria fell in June 1900. The formal conquest of the
two Boer republics was followed by a prolonged guerrilla campaign. Small, mobile groups of
Boers denied the imperial forces their victory by disrupting rail links and supply lines.

Commandos swept deep into colonial territory, rousing rebellion wherever they went. The British
were at a disadvantage, owing to their lack of familiarity with the terrain and the Boers' superior
skills as horsemen and sharpshooters. The British responded with a scorched-earth policy which
included farm burnings, looting and the setting-up of concentration camps for non-combatants, in
which some 26 000 Boer women and children died from disease. The incarceration of black
(including coloured) people in the path of the war in racially segregated camps has been absent
in conventional accounts of the war and has only recently been acknowledged.

They too suffered appalling conditions and some 14 000 (perhaps many more) are estimated to
have died. At the same time, many black farmers were in a position to meet the demand for
produce created by the military, or to avail themselves for employment opportunities at good
wages. Some 10 000 black servants accompanied the Boer commandos, and the British used
Africans as labourers, scouts, dispatch riders, drivers and guards.

The war also taught many Africans that the forces of dispossession could be rolled back if the
circumstances were right. It gave black communities the opportunity to recolonise land lost in
conquest, which enabled them to withhold their labour after the war. Most Africans supported the
British in the belief that Britain was committed to extending civil and political rights to black
people. In this they were to be disappointed, as in the Treaty of Vereeniging that ended the war,
the British agreed to leave the issue of rights for Africans to be decided by a future self-
governing (white) authority. All in all, the Anglo-Boer/South African War was a radicalising
experience for Africans.

Britain's reconstruction regime set about creating a white-ruled dominion by uniting the former
Boer republics (both by then British colonies) with Natal and the Cape.

The most important priority was to re-establish white control over the land and force the Africans
back to wage labour. The labour-recruiting system was improved, both internally and externally.
Recruiting agreements were reached with the Portuguese authorities in Mozambique, from where
much mine labour came.
When, by 1904, African resources still proved inadequate to get the mines working at pre-war
levels, over 60 000 indentured Chinese were brought in. This precipitated a vociferous outcry
from proponents of white supremacy in South Africa and liberals in Britain.

By 1910, all had been repatriated, a step made easier when a surge of Africans came forward
from areas such as the Transkeian territories and the northern Transvaal, which had not
previously been large-scale suppliers of migrants. This was the heyday of the private recruiters,
who exploited families' indebtedness to procure young men to labour in the mines. The Africans'
post-war ability to withhold their labour was undercut by government action, abetted by drought
and stock disease.

The impact of the Anglo-Boer/South African War as a seminal influence on the development of
Afrikaner nationalist politics became apparent in subsequent years.

The Boer leaders most notably Louis Botha, Jan Smuts and JBM Hertzog played a dominant
role in the country's politics for the next half century. After initial plans for anglicisation of the
defeated Afrikaners were abandoned as impractical, the British looked to the Afrikaners as
collaborators in securing imperial political and economic interests.

During 1907 and 1908, the two former Boer republics were granted self-government but,
crucially, with a whites-only franchise. Despite promises to the contrary, black interests were
sacrificed in the interest of white nation-building across the white language divide. The National
Convention drew up a constitution and the four colonies became an independent dominion called
the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910.

The 19th century formally non-racial franchise was retained in the Cape but was not extended
elsewhere, where rights of citizenship were confined to whites alone. It was clear from the start
that segregation was the conventional wisdom of the new rulers. Black people were defined as
outsiders, without rights or claims on the common society that their labour had helped to create.

Segregation
Government policy in the Union of South Africa did not develop in isolation, but against the
backdrop of black political initiatives. Segregation and apartheid assumed their shape, in part, as
a white response to Africans' increasing participation in the country's economic life and their
assertion of political rights. Despite the government's efforts to shore up traditionalism and
retribalise them, black people became more fully integrated into the urban and industrial society
of 20th-century South Africa than elsewhere on the continent. An educated lite of clerics,
teachers, business people, journalists and professionals grew to be a major force in black politics.
Mission Christianity and its associated educational institutions exerted a profound influence on
African political life, and separatist churches were early vehicles for African political assertion.
The experiences of studying abroad, and in particular, interaction with black people struggling
for their rights elsewhere in Africa, the United States of America and the Caribbean, played an
important part. A vigorous black press arose, associated in its early years with such pioneers as
JT Jabavu, Pixley Seme,Dr Abdullah Abdurahman, Sol Plaatje and John Dube, served the black
reading public.
At the same time, African communal struggles to maintain access to the land in rural areas posed
a powerful challenge to the white state. Traditional authorities often led popular struggles against
intrusive and manipulative policies. Government attempts to control and co-opt the chiefs often
failed. Steps towards the formation of a national political organisation of coloureds began around
the turn of the century, with the formation of the African Political Organisation in 1902 by Dr
Abdurahman, mainly in the Cape Province.

The African National Congress (ANC), founded in 1912, became the most important black
organisation drawing together traditional authorities and the educated African lite in common
causes.

In its early years, the ANC was concerned mainly with constitutional protest.

Worker militancy emerged in the wake of the First World War and continued through the 1920s.
It included strikes and an anti-pass campaign given impetus by women, particularly in the Free
State, resisting extension of the pass laws to them. The Industrial and Commercial Workers'
Union, under the leadership of Clements Kadalie, was (despite its name) the first populist,
nationwide organisation representing blacks in rural as well as urban areas. But it was short-
lived.

The Communist Party, formed in 1921 and since then a force for both non-racialism and worker
organisation, was to prove far longer-lasting. In other sections of the black population too, the
turn of the century saw organised opposition emerging. Gandhi's leadership of protest against
discriminatory laws gave impetus to the formation of provincial Indian congresses, including the
Natal Indian Congress formed by Gandhi in 1894.

The principles of segregationist thinking were laid down in a 1905 report by the South African
Native Affairs Commission and continued to evolve in response to these economic, social and
political pressures. In keeping with its recommendations, the first union government enacted the
seminal Natives Land Act in 1913.

This defined the remnants of their ancestral lands after conquest for African occupation, and
declared illegal all land purchases or rent tenancy outside these reserves.

The reserves ("homelands" as they were subsequently called) eventually comprised about 13% of
South Africa's land surface. Administrative and legal dualism reinforced the division between
white citizen and black non-citizen, a dispensation personified by the governor-general who, as
"supreme chief" over the country's African majority, was empowered to rule them by
administrative fiat and decree.

The government also regularised the job colour bar, reserving skilled work for whites and
denying African workers the right to organise. Legislation, which was consolidated in the
Natives (Urban Areas) Act, 1923, entrenched urban segregation and controlled African mobility
by means of pass laws. The pass laws were designed to force Africans into labour and to keep
them there under conditions and at wage levels that suited white employers, and to deny them
any bargaining power. In these and other ways, the foundations of apartheid were laid by
successive governments representing the compromises hammered out by the National
Convention of 1908 to 1909 to effect the union of English- and Afrikaans-speaking whites.
However, divisions within the white community remained significant. Afrikaner nationalism
grew as a factor in the years after union.

It was given impetus in 1914, both by the formation of the National Party (NP), in a breakaway
from the ruling South African Party, and by a rebellion of Afrikaners who could not reconcile
themselves with the decision to join the First World War against Germany.

In part, the NP spoke for Afrikaners impoverished by the Anglo-Boer/South African War and
dislodged from the land by the development of capitalist farming.

An Afrikaner underclass was emerging in the towns, which found itself uncompetitive in the
labour market, as white workers demanded higher wages than those paid to blacks.

Soon, labour issues came to the fore. In 1920, some 71 000 black mineworkers went on strike in
protest against the spiralling cost of living, but the strike was quickly put down by isolating the
compounds where the migrant workers were housed. Another threat to government came from
white workers. Immigrant white workers with mining experience abroad performed much of the
skilled and semi-skilled work on the mines. As mine owners tried to cut costs by using lower-
wage black labour in semi-skilled jobs, white labour became increasingly militant. These
tensions culminated in a bloody and dramatic rebellion on the goldfields in 1922, which the
Smuts government put down with military force. In 1924, a pact government under Hertzog,
comprising Afrikaner nationalists and representatives of immigrant labour, ousted the Smuts
regime.

The pact was based on a common suspicion of the dominance of mining capital, and a
determination to protect the interests of white labour by intensifying discrimination against
blacks. The commitment to white labour policies in government employment, such as the
railways and postal service was intensified, and the job colour bar was reinforced, with a key
objective being to address what was known as the "poor-white problem".

In 1934, the main white parties fused to combat the local effects of a worldwide depression.

This was followed by a new Afrikaner nationalist breakaway under Dr DF Malan. In 1936, white
supremacy was further entrenched by the United Party with the removal of the Africans of the
Cape Province who qualified, from the common voters' roll. Meanwhile, Malan's breakaway NP
was greatly augmented by an Afrikaner cultural revival spearheaded by the secret white male
Afrikaner Broederbond and other cultural organisations during the year of the Voortrekker
centenary celebrations (1938), as well as by anti-war sentiment from 1939.

Apartheid
After the Second World War in 1948, the NP, with its ideology of apartheid that brought an even
more rigorous and authoritarian approach than the segregationist policies of previous
governments, won the general election. It did so against the background of a revival of mass
militancy during the 1940s, after a period of relative quiescence in the 1930s when black groups
attempted to foster unity among themselves.

The change was marked by the formation of the ANC Youth League in 1943, fostering the
leadership of figures such as Anton Lembede, AP Mda, Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and
Walter Sisulu, who were to inspire the struggle for decades to come.

In the 1940s, squatter movements in peri-urban areas brought mass politics back to the urban
centres. The 1946 Mineworkers' Strike was a turning point in the emergence of a politics of mass
mobilisation.

As was the case with the First World War, the experience of the Second World War and post-war
economic difficulties enhanced discontent. For those who supported the NP, its primary appeal
lay in its determination to maintain white domination in the face of rising mass resistance; uplift
poor Afrikaners; challenge the pre-eminence of English-speaking whites in public life, the
professions and business; and abolish the remaining imperial ties.

The state became an engine of patronage for Afrikaner employment. The Afrikaner Broederbond
co-ordinated the party's programme, ensuring that Afrikaner nationalist interests and policies
attained ascendancy throughout civil society.

In 1961, the NP Government under Prime Minister HF Verwoerd declared South Africa a
republic, after winning a whites-only referendum on the issue. A new currency, the Rand, and a
new flag, anthem and coat of arms were formally introduced.

South Africa, having become a republic, had to apply for continued membership of the
Commonwealth. In the face of demands for an end to apartheid, South Africa withdrew its
application and a figurehead president replaced the British queen (represented locally by the
governor-general) as head of state.

In most respects, apartheid was a continuation, in more systematic and brutal form, of the
segregationist policies of previous governments.

A new concern with racial purity was apparent in laws prohibiting interracial sexual activities
and provisions for population registration requiring that every South African be assigned to one
discrete racial category or another.

For the first time, the coloured people, who had always been subjected to informal
discrimination, were brought within the ambit of discriminatory laws. In the mid-1950s,
government took the drastic step of overriding an entrenched clause in the 1910 Constitution of
the Union so as to be able to remove coloured voters from the common voters' roll. It also
enforced residential segregation, expropriating homes where necessary and policing massive
forced removals into coloured "group areas".

Until the 1940s, South Africa's racial policies had not been entirely out of step with those to be
found in the colonial world. But by the 1950s, which saw decolonisation and a global backlash
against racism gather pace, the country was dramatically opposed to world opinion on questions
of human rights. The architects of apartheid, among whom Dr Verwoerd was pre-eminent,
responded by elaborating a theory of multinationalism.

Their policy, which they termed "separate development", divided the African population into
artificial ethnic "nations", each with its own "homeland" and the prospect of "independence",
supposedly in keeping with trends elsewhere on the continent.

This divide-and-rule strategy was designed to disguise the racial basis of official policy-making
by the substitution of the language of ethnicity. This was accompanied by much ethnographic
engineering as efforts were made to resurrect tribal structures. In the process, the government
sought to create a significant collaborating class.

The truth was that the rural reserves were by this time thoroughly degraded by overpopulation
and soil erosion. This did not prevent four of the "homeland" structures (Transkei,
Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei) being declared "independent", a status which the vast
majority of South Africans, and therefore also the international community, declined to
recognise. In each case, the process involved the repression of opposition and the use by the
government of the power to nominate and thereby pad elected assemblies with a quota of
compliant figures.

Forced removals from "white" areas affected some 3,5 million people and vast rural slums were
created in the homelands, which were used as dumping grounds. The pass laws and influx
control were extended and harshly enforced, and labour bureaux were set up to channel labour to
where it was needed. Hundreds of thousands of people were arrested or prosecuted under the
pass laws each year, reaching over half a million a year from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.
Industrial decentralisation to growth points on the borders of (but not inside) the homelands was
promoted as a means of keeping blacks out of "white" South Africa.

In virtually every sphere, from housing to education to healthcare, central government took
control over black people's lives with a view to reinforcing their allotted role as "temporary
sojourners", welcome in "white" South Africa solely to serve the needs of the employers of
labour. However, these same programmes of control became the focus of resistance. In particular,
the campaign against the pass laws formed a cornerstone of the struggle.

The end of apartheid

The introduction of apartheid policies coincided with the adoption by the ANC in 1949 of its
programme of action, expressing the renewed militancy of the 1940s. The programme embodied
the rejection of white domination and a call for action in the form of protests, strikes and
demonstrations. There followed a decade of turbulent mass action in resistance to the imposition
of still harsher forms of segregation and oppression.

The Defiance Campaign of 1952 carried mass mobilisation to new heights under the banner of
non-violent resistance to the pass laws. These actions were influenced in part by the philosophy
of Mohandas Gandhi.
A critical step in the emergence of non-racialism was the formation of the Congress Alliance,
including the ANC; South African Indian Congress; the Coloured People's Congress; a small
white congress organisation (the Congress of Democrats); and the South African Congress of
Trade Unions.

The alliance gave formal expression to an emerging unity across racial and class lines that was
manifested in the Defiance Campaign and other mass protests, including against the Bantu
education of this period, which also saw women's resistance take a more organised character
with the formation of the Federation of South African Women.

In 1955, the Freedom Charter was drawn up at the Congress of the People in Soweto. The charter
enunciated the principles of the struggle, binding the movement to a culture of human rights and
non-racialism. Over the next few decades, the Freedom Charter was elevated to an important
symbol of the freedom struggle.

The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), founded by Robert Sobukwe and based on the philosophies
of "Africanism" and anti-communism, broke away from the Congress Alliance in 1959.

The state's initial response, harsh as it was, was not yet as draconian as it was to become. Its
attempt to prosecute more than 150 anti-apartheid leaders for treason, in a trial that began in
1956, ended in acquittals in 1961. But by that time, mass organised opposition had been banned.

Matters came to a head at Sharpeville in March 1960, when 69 anti-pass demonstrators were
killed when police fired on a demonstration called by the PAC. A state of emergency was
imposed and detention without trial was introduced.

The black political organisations were banned and their leaders went into exile or were arrested.
In this climate, the ANC and PAC abandoned their long-standing commitment to non-violent
resistance and turned to armed struggle, combined with underground organisation and
mobilisation as well as mobilisation of international solidarity. Top leaders, including members
of the newly formed military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) (Spear of the Nation), were
arrested in 1963. In the "Rivonia Trialquot;, eight ANC leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were
convicted of sabotage (instead of treason, the original charge) and sentenced to life
imprisonment.

In this period, leaders of other organisations, including the PAC and the New Unity Movement,
were also sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and/or banned.

The 1960s was a decade of overwhelming repression and relative political disarray among blacks
in the country. Armed action was contained by the state.

State repression played a central role in containing internal resistance, and the leadership of the
struggle shifted increasingly to the missions in exile. At the same time, the ANC leadership
embarked on a campaign to infiltrate the country through what was then Rhodesia.
In August 1967, a joint force of MK and the Zimbabwean People's Revolutionary Army (Zipra)
of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (Zapu) entered Zimbabwe, and over a two-month
period engaged the joint Rhodesian and South African security forces.

Although the joint MK-Zipra force failed to reach South Africa, this was the first military
confrontation between the military forces of the ANC-led alliance and white security forces.

The resurgence of resistance politics from the early 1970s was dramatic. The Black
Consciousness Movement, led by Steve Biko (who was killed in detention in 1977), reawakened
a sense of pride and self-esteem in black people.

News of the brutal death of Biko reverberated around the globe and led to unprecedented
outrage.

As capitalist economies sputtered with the oil crisis of 1973, black trade unions revived.

A wave of strikes reflected a new militancy that involved better organisation and was drawing
new sectors, in particular intellectuals and the student movement, into mass struggle and debate
over the principles informing it. Rallies at black universities in support of Frelimo, the
Mozambican liberation movement, also gave expression to the growing militancy. The year 1976
marked the beginning of a sustained anti-apartheid revolt. In June, school pupils of Soweto rose
up against apartheid education, followed by youth uprisings all around the country. Despite the
harsh repression that followed, students continued to organise, with the formation in 1979 of
organisations for school students (Congress of South African Students and college and university
students (Azanian Students Organisation). By the 1980s, the different forms of struggle armed
struggle, mass mobilisation and international solidarity were beginning to integrate and
coalesce.

The United Democratic Front and the informal umbrella, the Mass Democratic Movement,
emerged as legal vehicles of democratic forces struggling for liberation. Clerics played a
prominent public role in these movements. The involvement of workers in resistance took on a
new dimension with the formation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the
National Council of Trade Unions.

Popular anger was directed against all those who were deemed to be collaborating with the
government in the pursuit of its objectives, and the black townships became virtually
ungovernable. From the mid-1980s, regional and national states of emergency were enforced.

Developments in neighbouring states, where mass resistance to white minority and colonial rule
led to Portuguese decolonisation in the mid-1970s and the abdication of Zimbabwe's minority
regime in 1980, left South Africa exposed as the last bastion of white supremacy.

Under growing pressure and increasingly isolated internationally, the government embarked on a
dual strategy, introducing limited reform coupled with intensifying repression and militarisation
of society, with the objective of containing the pressures and increasing its support base while
crushing organised resistance.
An early example of reform was the recognition of black trade unions to try to stabilise labour
relations. In 1983, the Constitution was reformed to allow the coloured and Indian minorities
limited participation in separate and subordinate houses of Parliament.

The vast majority of these groups demonstrated their rejection of the tricameral dispensation
through massive boycotts of elections, but it was kept in place by the apartheid regime despite its
visible lack of legitimacy. Attempts to legitimise community councils as vehicles for the
participation of Africans outside the Bantustans in local government met a similar fate.

Militarisation included the ascendancy of the State Security Council, which usurped the role of
the executive in crucial respects, and a succession of states of emergency as part of the
implementation of a comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy to combat what, by the mid-
1980s, was an endemic insurrectionary spirit in the land.

However, by the late 1980s, popular resistance was taking the form of mass defiance campaigns,
while struggles over more localised issues saw broad sections of communities mobilised in
united action. Popular support for released political prisoners and for the armed struggle was
being openly expressed.

In response to the rising tide of resistance, the international community strengthened its support
for the anti-apartheid cause. Sanctions and boycotts were instituted, both unilaterally by
countries across the world and through the United Nations (UN). These sanctions were called for
in a co-ordinated strategy by the internal and external anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

FW de Klerk, who replaced PW Bothaas State President in 1989, announced at the opening of
Parliament in February 1990 the unbanning of the liberation movements and release of political
prisoners, among them, Nelson Mandela. A number of factors led to this step. International
financial, trade, sport and cultural sanctions were clearly biting.

Above all, even if South Africa was nowhere near collapse, either militarily or economically,
several years of emergency rule and ruthless repression had clearly neither destroyed the
structures of organised resistance, nor helped establish legitimacy for the apartheid regime or its
collaborators. Instead, popular resistance, including mass and armed action, was intensifying.

The ANC, enjoying popular recognition and legitimacy as the foremost liberation organisation,
was increasingly regarded as a government-in-waiting.

International support for the liberation movement came from various countries around the globe,
particularly from former socialist countries and Nordic countries as well as the Non-Aligned
Movement (NAM).

The other liberation organisations increasingly experienced various internal and external
pressures and did not enjoy much popular support.

To outside observers, and also in the eyes of growing numbers of white South Africans, apartheid
stood exposed as morally bankrupt, indefensible and impervious to reforms.
The collapse of global communism, the negotiated withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola, and
the culmination of the South-West African People's Organisation's liberation struggle in the
negotiated independence of Namibia formerly South-West Africa, administered by South
Africa as a League of Nations mandate since 1919 did much to change the mindset of white
people. No longer could they demonise the ANC and PAC as fronts for international
communism.

White South Africa had also changed in deeper ways. Afrikaner nationalism had lost much of its
raison d'tre. Many Afrikaners had become urban, middle class and relatively prosperous.

Their ethnic grievances and attachment to ethnic causes and symbols had diminished. A large
part of the NP's core constituency was ready to explore larger national identities, even across
racial divides, and yearned for international respectability. In 1982, disenchanted hardliners split
from the NP to form the Conservative Party, leaving the NP open to more flexible and
modernising influences.

After this split, factions within the Afrikaner lite openly started to pronounce in favour of a
more inclusive society, causing more friction with the NP government, which became
increasingly militaristic and authoritarian.

A number of business, student and academic Afrikaners held meetings publicly and privately
with the ANC in exile. Secret talks were held between the imprisoned Mandela and government
ministers about a new dispensation for South Africa, with blacks forming a major part of it.

Inside the country, mass action became the order of the day. Petty apartheid laws and symbols
were openly challenged and removed. Together with a sliding economy and increasing
international pressure, these developments made historic changes inevitable.
 The First Decade of Freedom

After a long negotiation process, sustained despite much

opportunistic violence from the right wing and its surrogates, and in some instances sanctioned
by elements of the state, South Africa's first democratic election was held in April 1994 under an
interim Constitution.

The interim Constitution divided South Africa into nine new provinces in place of the previous
four provinces and 10 "homelands", and provided for the Government of National Unity to be
constituted by all parties with at least 20 seats in the National Assembly.

The NP and the IFP formed part of the Government of National Unity until 1996, when the NP
withdrew. The ANC-led Government embarked on a programme to promote the reconstruction
and development of the country and its institutions.

This called for the simultaneous pursuit of democratisation and socio-economic change, as well
as reconciliation and the building of consensus founded on the commitment to improve the lives
of all South Africans, in particular the poor. It required the integration of South Africa into a
rapidly changing global environment.

Pursuit of these objectives was a consistent focus of government during the First Decade of
Freedom, seeking the unity of a previously divided society in working together to overcome the
legacy of a history of division, exclusion and neglect.

Converting democratic ideals into practice required, among other things, initiating a radical
overhaul of the machinery of government at every level, working towards service delivery,
openness, and a culture of human rights. It has required a more integrated approach to planning
and implementation to ensure that the many different aspects of transformation and socio-
economic upliftment cohere with maximum impact.

A significant milestone in the democratisation of South Africa was the exemplary Constitution-
making process, which in 1996 delivered a document that has evoked worldwide admiration. So
too have been the elections subsequent to 1994 all conducted peacefully, with high levels of
participation compared with the norm in most democracies, and accepted by all as free and fair
in their conduct and results.

Since 2001, participatory democracy and interactive governance have been strengthened through
the practice of imbizo, roving executive council and mayoral meetings, in which members of the
executive, in all three spheres of government, including The Presidency, regularly engage
directly with the public around implementation of programmes of reconstruction and
development.

The second democratic national election in 1999 saw the ANC majority increase to just short of
two thirds and the election of Mr Thabo Mbeki as president and successor to Mr Mandela. It saw
a sharp decline of the NP (then the New National Party [NNP]) and its replacement by the
Democratic Party, led by Mr Tony Leon, as the official opposition in Parliament. These two
parties formed the Democratic Alliance, which the NNP left in 2001.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), under the leadership of Archbishop Desmond
Tutu, helped inculcate a commitment to accountability and transparency in South Africa's public
life, at the same time helping to heal wounds inflicted by the inhumanities of the apartheid era.

During 2003, Parliament accepted the Government's response to the final report of the TRC. Out
of 22 000 individuals or surviving families appearing before the commission, 19 000 were
identified as needing urgent reparation assistance virtually all, where the necessary information
was available, received interim reparations.

As final reparations, government provided a once-off grant of R30 000 to individuals or

survivors who appeared before, and were designated by, the TRC, over and above the
programmes for material assistance. There are continuing programmes to project the symbolism
of the struggle and the ideal of freedom. These include the Freedom Park and other symbols and
monuments, and such matters as records of history, remaking of cultural and art forms and
changing geographical and place names.

The ethos of partnership informed the establishment of the National Economic Development and
Labour Council. It brings together government, business, organised labour and development
organisations to confront the challenges of growth and development for South Africa in a
turbulent and globalising international economy.

The Presidential Jobs Summit in 1998 and the Growth and Development Summit in June 2003
brought these sectors together to collectively take advantage of the conditions in South Africa for
faster growth and development.
At the Growth and Development Summit, a comprehensive set of agreements was concluded to
address urgent challenges in a practical way and to speed up job-creating growth and
development.

Partnership between government and civil society was further strengthened by the creation of a
number of working groups through which sectors of society business, organised labour, higher
education, religious leaders, youth and women engage regularly with the President.

In the First Decade of Freedom, government placed emphasis on meeting basic needs through
programmes for socio-economic development such as the provision of housing, piped water,
electricity, education and healthcare, as well as social grants for those in need.

The integration of South Africa into the global political, economic and social system has been a
priority for democratic South Africa. As a country isolated during the apartheid period, an
African country, a developing country, and a country whose liberation was achieved with the
support of the international community, it remains of critical importance to build political and
economic links with the countries and regions of the world, and to work with others for an
international environment that is more favourable to development across the world, and in Africa
and South Africa in particular.

The South African Government is committed to the African Renaissance, which is based on the
consolidation of democracy, economic development and a co-operative approach to resolving the
challenges the continent faces.

South Africa hosted the launch in 2002 of the African Union (AU), a step towards further
unification of Africa in pursuit of socio-economic development, the Organisation of African
Unity having fulfilled its mandate to liberate Africa. President Mbeki chaired the AU for its
founding year, handing over the chair to President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique in July
2003.

In 2004, the AU decided that South Africa should host the Pan-African Parliament and it met for
its second session in South Africa, the first time on South African soil, in September of that year.
By participating in UN and AU initiatives to resolve conflict and promote peace and security on
the continent in among other countries, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi
and Sudan South Africa has contributed to the achievement of conditions conducive to the
entrenchment of stability, democracy and faster development.

During the First Decade of Freedom, South Africa acted at various times as chair of the Southern
African Development Community (SADC), NAM, AU and the Commonwealth Heads of
Government meetings. It has played host to several international conferences, including the:

UN Conference on Trade and Development in 1996

2000 World AIDS Congress

World Conference Against Racism in 2001

 World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002

World Parks Congress in 2003.

The country has also been represented on international forums such as the International
Monetary Fund's Development Committee and Interpol.

The Second Decade of Freedom

When South Africa celebrated 10 years of freedom in 2004, there were celebrations across the
world in countries whose peoples had helped to bring freedom to South Africa through their
solidarity, and who today are partners in reconstruction and development.

As government took stock of the First Decade of Freedom in Towards a Ten Year Review, it was
able to document great progress by South Africans in pursuit of their goals, as well as the
challenges that face the nation as it traverses the second decade of its freedom towards 2014.

In its third democratic elections, in April 2004, the country gave an increased mandate to the
Governments programme for reconstruction and development and for the entrenchment of the
rights inscribed in the Constitution. It mandated government specifically to create the conditions
for halving unemployment and poverty by 2014.

Following these elections, President Thabo Mbeki was appointed to a second term of office as
President of South Africa a position he relinquished in September 2008, following the decision
of the National Executive Committee of the ANC to recall him. Parliament elected Kgalema
Motlanthe as President of South Africa on 25 September 2008.

Local government elections in 2006, following a long period of civic unrest as communities
protested against a mixed record of service delivery, saw increased participation compared with
the previous local elections, as well as increased support for the ruling party based on a
manifesto for a concerted effort, in partnership with communities, to make local government
work better.

South Africa held national and provincial elections to elect a new National Assembly as well as
the provincial legislature in each province on 22 April 2009. Some 23 million people were
registered for the 2009 general election, which were about 2,5 million more than in 2004. About
77% of registered voters took part in the election. The results for the top five parties were as
follows: the ANC achieved 65,9%; the DA 16,6%; the newlyformed Congress of the People
7,4%; the IFP 4,5%; and the Independent Democrats 0,9% of the votes cast.

Jacob Zuma was inaugurated as President of South Africa on 9 May 2009. Shortly thereafter,
President Zuma announced several changes to current government departments and the creation
of new structures within The Presidency. The latter essentially comprises the Ministry for
Performance Monitoring, Evaluation and Administration and the National Planning Ministry, in
keeping with the new administration's approach to intensify government delivery through an
outcomes-based approach, coupled with a government-wide monitoring and evaluation system.
Government adopted 14 outcomes as its focus areas. These include among other things:

improving the quality of basic education and health services

strengthening the fight against crime

creating decent employment through inclusive growth

boosting skills development.

It also included ensuring food security for all, building sustainable human settlements and an
improved quality of household life, improving local government structures and an efficient and
development-oriented public service.

A significant milestone for South Africa in the Second Decade of Freedom was the successful
hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

The tournament, which was the first World Cup on African soil, demonstrated that South Africa
has the infrastructure and capability to warrant serious investment consideration. It also
showcased South Africa and its people to the world.

The 2011 local government elections, held in May, were characterised by lively and respectful
campaigning with all political parties free to engage with voters in all areas. The Independent
Electoral Commission high-lighted decreased voter apathy and achieved an impressive 57,6%
registered voter turn-out an improvement from the previous local government elections, which
scored below the 50% mark. The ANC won the highest number of seats and councils 198
councils and 5 633 seats, constituting 62% of the vote. The DA came second with 18 councils,1
555 seats and 23,9% support. The ANC and DA were followed by the IFP and Cope.

As part of government's commitment to secure a better quality of life for all, the National
Planning Commission (NPC) in The Presidency finalised the draft National Development Plan:
Vision for 2030 in 2011. The plan was a step in the process of charting a new path for South
Africa.

By 2030, government seeks to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality. The plan was the product
of not just the NPC but also tens of thousands of ordinary South Africans who shared their
dreams, hopes and ideas for the future.

In August 2012, the then Chairperson of the NPC, Minister Trevor Manuel, handed the revised
National Development Plan 2030 over to President Zuma during a Joint Sitting of both Houses in
Parliament. The revised document, entitled Our future make it work, is a policy blueprint for
eliminating poverty and reducing inequality in South Africa by 2030.

Implementation of the plan will be broken up into five-year chunks, in line with the electoral
cycle, with the 2014 to 2019 medium-term strategic framework forming the first five-year
building block of the plan.
The Presidency will lead the formulation of the 2014 to 2019 medium-term strategic framework,
which includes key targets from the NDP and other plans such as the New Growth Path, National
Infrastructure Plan and Industry Policy Action Plan.

The Presidency and National Treasury will work with government departments to clarify roles
and responsibilities, ensure that plans and budgets are aligned, and develop clear performance
indicators for each programme.

Government will focus on areas where implementation of existing policies need to improve and
hold focused dialogues to overcome obstacles to implementation. It will also engage with other
sectors to understand how they are contributing to the NDP's implementation and to identify any
obstacles they face.

The 2019 to 2024 and 2024 to 2029 planning cycles will be used to initiate the remaining
activities and will be informed by a performance review of the previous cycle.

The objective of a better life for the people of South Africa, the continent of Africa and the world
at large was at the heart of the country's successful hosting of the UN Framework Convention on
Climate Change's 17th Conference of the Parties in Durban towards the end of 2011. Aware of
the fact that Africa is the continent most affected by the impact of climate change, South Africa
was committed to ensure that Durban delivered a fair and balanced out- come that would help
secure the future of our planet. The resulting Durban Platform outcome was a coup for South
Africa and the African continent.

South Africa has continued to build on its international profile. On 1 January 2011, South Africa
began its second term as a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) for the
period 2011 and 2012. South Africa served alongside the permanent five members, China,
France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, and
elected members Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Colombia, Gabon, Germany, India, Lebanon,
Nigeria and Portugal. It was the UNSC President in January 2012, which saw the adoption of
Resolution 2033 that provides for closer cooperation between the UN and the African Union
(AU).

In the conduct of its international relations, South Africa is committed to garner support for its
domestic priorities, promote the interests of the African continent, enhance democracy and
human rights, uphold justice and international law in relations between nations, seek the peaceful
resolution of conflicts and promote economic development through regional and international
cooperation in an interdependent world.

On 8 January 2012, Africa's oldest liberation movement, the ANC, celebrated 100 years of
existence. This was a historic achievement, not only for the movement, but also for South Africa,
the continent and the world. Thousands of ordinary South Africans, political and religious leaders
attended the centenary celebrations which were held in Mangaung, Free State, the birthplace of
the ANC.
On 25 May 2012 the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Organisation announced that the SKA
Project would be shared between South Africa and Australia, with a majority share coming to
South Africa.

The full dish array and the dense aperture array will be built in Africa. The core, i.e. the region
with the highest concentration of receiv- ers, will be constructed in the Northern Cape, about 80
km from the town of Carnarvon (the same site where the MeerKAT is being con- structed). The
sparse aperture array (low-fre- quency array) will be built in Western Australia.

Over the next four years, teams of radio astronomy scientists and engineers from around the
world will work together to scope and finalise the design of the SKA.

In July 2012, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, then Minister of Home Affairs, was elected as the
rst female head of the AU Commission and the rst person from South Africa to hold this posi-
tion. In September 2012, she received the UN South-South Award for Global Leadership.

In November 2012, South Africa was elected by the members of the UN General Assembly to
the UNs 47-member Economic and Social Coun- cil (Ecosoc). It is one of the principal organs
of the UN, alongside the Security Council and General Assembly. South Africa completed its
two-year non-renewable, non-permanent membership of the Security Council on 31 December
2012, and immediately assumed the membership of Ecosoc on 1 January 2013. South Africa last
served in Ecosoc from 2004 to 2006.

Released in September 2012, the World Economic Forums Global Competitiveness Report
2012/13 confirmed that South Africa remained the most competitive economy in sub-Saharan
Africa.

On 30 October 2012, Statistics South Africa released the Census 2011 results. The census, which
analysed the countrys demographics, population distribution and access to services, average
household size, income, migration, and mortality, was the third national population and housing
count in post-apartheid South Africa. Results showed that the countrys population grew to 51,8
million people from 44,8 million in 2001, representing a 15,5% increase over the last decade.

In December 2012, President Zuma was re-elected as the president of the ANC during the ruling
partys congress in Mangaung. Cyril Ramaphosa was elected as the partys deputy president.

In July 2013, Ms Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was appointed executive director of the UN Women
Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women, and Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi was
appointed director in the UN Development Programmes Bureau for Development Policy.

While receiving intensive medical care at home for a lung infection after spending three months
in hospital, South Africas first democratically elected President and anti-apartheid icon, Nelson
Mandela, died at the age of 95, on 5 December 2013.

Mr Mandela led South Africas transition from white-minority rule in the 1990s, after serving 27
years in prison for his political activities.
His body lay in state at the Union Buildings from 11 to 13 December. He was buried in his home
town of Qunu in the Eastern Cape on 15 December 2013.

South Africa celebrated 20 Years of Freedom in 2014, which was a historic milestone for the
country.

The Twenty Year Review, which was released in 2013, and the National Planning Commissions
2011 Diagnostic Report, highlight that poverty, inequality and unemployment continue to
negatively affect the lives of many people.

Despite progress in reducing rural poverty and increasing access to basic services in rural areas
over the past 20 years, rural areas are still characterised by great poverty and inequality. As stated
in the NDP, by 2030 South Africas rural communities must have better opportunities to
participate fully in the economic, social and political life of the country.

Governments programme of radical economic transformation is about placing the economy on a

qualitatively different path that ensures more rapid, sustainable growth, higher investment,
increased employment, reduced inequality and deracialisation of the economy. The NDP sets a
growth target of at least 5% a year, and emphasises measures to ensure that the benefits of
growth are equitably shared.

The 2014 South African general election to elect a new National Assembly and new provincial
legislatures in each province was held on 7 May 2014. It was the fifth election held in South
Africa under conditions of universal adult suffrage since the end of the apartheid era in 1994, and
the first held since the death of Nelson Mandela. It was also the first time that South African
expatriates were allowed to vote in a South African national election.The National Assembly
election was won by the ANC (62,1%). The official opposition, Democratic Alliance (DA) won
22,2% of the votes, while the newly formed Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) obtained 6,4% of
the vote. Eight of the nine provincial legislatures were won by the ANC. The EFF obtained over
10% of the votes in Gauteng, Limpopo and North West, and beat the DA to second place in
Limpopo and North West. In the other six provinces won by the ANC, the DA obtained second
place. In the Western Cape, the only province not won by the ANC, the DA increased its majority
from 51,5% to 59,4%.

The September 2014 Quarterly Employment Statistics report, released on 11 December 2014,
showed that despite job losses recorded in some of the sectors of the economy, there were
quarter- on-quarter increases reported by the mining (8 000), finance (6 000) and trade (4 000)
industries.

Year-on-year, an additional 83 000 formal jobs were created between September 2013 and
September 2014. This reflects an annual increase of 1,0%. The largest increase was recorded by
community services industry (73 000), followed by the trade and finance industries, with 21 000
and 20 000 jobs respectively.
Gross earnings paid to employees increased by R18,9 billion from R409 billion in June 2014 to
R428 billion in September 2014. The mining industry recorded the largest quarterly percentage
increase of 20,9% in earnings.

Source: South Africa Yearbook 2014/15