and our own revolutionary war (1961 – 1994). The method is more or less the same: “The International Brigades (Spanish: Brigadas Internacionales) were paramilitary units set up by the Communist International to assist the Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. The organisation existed for two years, from 1936 until 1938.”11 So, in a sense we in Special Branch had external, albeit covert, opponents in the International Brigade. This made our task a bit more difficult but we succeeded in arresting quite a few of them, as an example just think of Mr. Moumbaris, Mr. De Jonge and Mrs. Helene Pastoors. (She is mentioned in Gen. Van der Merwe’s article and played an active part in the Church Street Bomb.) Looking back at the past, it is my understanding that the Intelligence Section of the Special Branch of the South African Police was up to date with most the South African members of the SACP-ANC’s covert operatives. As far as African members were concerned the Security Branch knew who had left the country to undergo military training. One of the conduits to leave the RSA was controlled by the Security Branch. So, in spite of the cell system and various other precautions we knew who had left for training, etc. The irony is that some of our own members were also under cover in various places inside and outside the country. Askari’s and agents who returned from training helped us to fill in the gaps. We knew the real names as well as their nome de geurre’s. (From the French, literally “war name’). Consequently “we” at Security Branch HQ knew what was going on. The SACP-ANC realized this. They had to fall back on plan “B”. Plan “B” entailed the recruitment of foreign, mainly white, operatives, people who were totally unknown to the SA Police. So, our opponents were forced to rely more and more on unknown foreign, usually Moscow communist aligned persons, to carry out local missions. Due to the “Simons Town”-agreement the Security Branch could only operate in South Africa and in Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana and in Mozambique. However, in spite of the agreement, RS-agents of our covert intelligence section (of which Craig Williamson was a member) was ideally placed in Switzerland and various other places across the globe reporting to Pretoria what was going on. These internationally recruited people had excellent cover, they were academics, clergy, researchers, students, newspapermen, adventurers and not necessarily committed communists per se. They could openly or under cover enter South Africa to do surveillance, to plan or to execute deeds of terror. They could for e.g. liaise without arising suspicion with other academics in the so-called Front Line States and in the rest of the world. (Tongue in the cheek: We could not watch everybody in the world!) Perspective From 1980 - 1981 until the Nkomati Accord was signed in mid-1984 Joe Slovo and his team (including his wife Ruth First) were operating from Maputo with approval of the Mozambique government, which is where and when Passtoors joined them. After the Nkomati Accord they had to operate more clandestinely (even from SNASP) and so Swaziland, Lesotho and SA came more into the picture. Consequently, the Security Branch had to extend their operations over the border. The SA Security Forces are constantly vilified for attacking people apparently working in non-military positions such as academics or teachers or those assisting refugees etc. They apparently see no contradiction when people such as Passtoors admit openly to having operated in SA under cover as an academic.
11
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Brigades – accessed 10 May 2017. 47