For the guerilla wears no uniform. His strength is that of the people. Always and everywhere, our freedom fighters are among the masses, voicing their demands and defending them against the enemy, his soldiers and police. This is not a war that is fought on the battlefields only. It is fought in the factories and on the land. As the clashes grow in number and size, the workers will refuse to work for the oppressor. They will strike and sabotage his production of weapons and supplies. The people of the countryside will become more militant and courageous. They will take themselves the land for which they hunger, and arm their own freedom fighters to defend it. The roads will be bombed and the railways destroyed; by the people in the surrounding areas. As the enemy's lines are extended, his strength will be sapped. Already white South African troops are being sent to Zimbabwe, to Mozambique, to Angola. They are patrolling our long borders. The higher rises the tide of struggle the more they will be dispersed; the more our superiority of numbers will assert itself. This is how it has happened in other areas of people's war: Vietnam, in Algeria, in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea.
Dr. Anthea Jeffery is Head of Special Research at the SA Institute of Race Relations. She holds law degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand and Cambridge, and a doctorate in human rights law from the University of London. Her previous books include The Natal Story: Sixteen years of conflict and The Truth about the Truth Commission. Both books have been acclaimed for their meticulous and objective approach, and for breaking new ground on important and contentious issues. At the launch of People‟s War: New Light on the Struggle382, she introduced People‘s War as follows: ‗One way of understanding people‘s war is to look back at events in the Eastern Cape in 1985, for that was where the people‘s war first escalated. In that year, there were prolonged school boycotts which many pupils disliked but nevertheless joined because of intimidation. There were also major consumer boycotts, which again had some support but were also unpopular because they required people to pay much higher prices in spaza shops. In addition, there was a three-day stayaway in March, which Azapo and the powerful Fosatu unions opposed because the stoppage would put jobs and pay at risk. But participation in the stayaway was nevertheless virtually total: partly out of support for the anti-apartheid cause, but mainly out of fear. Said Fosatu (the forerunner of Cosatu): ‗Our members will not go to work, not because they support the stayaway in principle, but because we know that violence will be the order of the day. Our members won‘t go to work because they are intimidated.‘ Twelve people were killed during the stayaway, adding to the fear. However, it was the rising incidence of necklace executions that sparked real terror. Necklace killings reportedly began with the murder of a black councillor in Uitenhage near Port Elizabeth in March. This councillor, the notorious Tamsanqa Kinikini, was trapped, together with his two sons, by a mob inflamed by recent police shootings at Langa, in which 20 people had died. Kinikini‘s elder son tried to escape but was caught by the crowd and hacked and burnt to death. Moments before the mob took hold of Kinikini, the councillor took out his gun and shot his other son dead to save him from the same fate. Then the crowd dragged Kinikini away and hacked and burnt him to death. [..] Fifteen years have passed since South Africans were being shot or hacked or burned to death in political conflict; and the memory of the trauma has faded. Some 20 500 people were nevertheless killed between 1984 and 1994. The conventional wisdom is that they died at the hands of a state-backed Third Force, but the more accurate explanation is that they died as a result of the people‘s war the ANC unleashed. As the people's war accelerated from September 1984, intimidation and political killings rapidly accelerated. At the same time, a remarkably effective propaganda campaign put the blame for violence on the National Party government and its alleged Inkatha surrogate. Sympathy for the ANC soared, while its rivals suffered crippling losses in credibility and support. By 1993 the ANC was able to dominate the 382
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Last Update: 22-12-2010: Original English Translation Other Translations Available from: www.african-white-refugees.co.nr
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