ANC: a Soviet task force?

National Review, March 13, 1987 by Chilton Williamson, Jr.

ANC: A Soviet Task Force?

OWING TO ITS ready availability aswell as to its intrinsic interest, I am breaking precedent with NR's policy against noticing foreign publications not available in the U.S. to review Keith Campbell's extremely useful booklet ANC: A Soviet Task Force? (Institute for the Study of Terrorism, 65 Blandford Street, London W1H 3AJ, England, UK; $4.50). Mr. Campbell's work richly merits publication and distribution in the United States, events that the prevailing war hysteria in this country make unlikely.

Indeed, the situation is not muchbetter in Great Britain where, as Lord Chalfont (who serves as chairman of the institute) notes in a foreword, "One of the myths carefully fostered by organs of progressive opinion . . . is that the African National Congress is a straightforward nationalist movement, dedicated to the peaceful establishment of majority rule in South Africa. . . . When the ANC was founded in 1912 by moderate mission-educated black South Africans, its aims may well have been peaceful and evolutionary. The present-day ANC is a very different organization. In the 1950s it began to establish close links with the South African Communist Party, and in 1961 it founded Umkhonto we Sizwe (the Spear of the Nation), a militant organization openly dedicated to the overthrow of the South African regime by "armed struggle,' which in practice has come to mean terrorism.' In 58 large, crowded, and highly condensed pages, Mr. Campbell substantiates these remarks and offers what amounts to conclusive evidence that the goal of the ANC--acting in formal alliance with the South African Communist Party (SACP) and in close collaboration with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)--is the creation of a one-party Communist-dominated state, entailing the enslavement of all South Africans, black, white, and colored, and the inclusion of South Africa within the Soviet bloc.

In the manuscript of his essay "Howto Be a Good Communist,' the pages of which were produced in evidence at his trial in 1963-64, Nelson Mandela wrote: "Under a Communist Party government, South Africa will become a land of milk and honey. . . . Without a hard, bitter, and long struggle against capitalism and exploitation, there can be no Communist world. The cause of Communism is the greatest cause in the history of mankind.' In 1983 Alfred Nzo, Secretary General of the ANC, orated: "Within the past month and addressing himself to the anti-imperialist struggles . . . in Central America, Reagan made bold to proclaim that the Soviet Union is "the focus of evil in the modern world.' This grand patron of the butchers of San Salvador, Tel Aviv, and Pretoria, a warmonger who is pushing the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust, a self-proclaimed friend of capitalism whose policies have forced the United States' working class to depend on charitable soup kitchens for its sustenance --this representative and leader of arch-reaction has the arrogance to make this insulting statement while presenting himself as the epitome of a universal benevolence.' In 1985 Oliver Tambo, Acting President of the ANC, exulted that ". . . the democratic, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist revolution in Afghanistan has been saved with the support of the Soviet Union.' These remarks--and thousands like them, made by hundreds of people-- were not discovered under a rock by Keith Campbell: They have been part of the public record for years. Yet, the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group, in its report of June 1986, declared that "detached analysts . . . question the picture . . . of the ANC as a component of international Communism, dedicated to the pursuit of revolutionary power.'

While Moscow seems alternately toaffirm and deny the connection between the African National Congress and the Communist Party, the ANC itself does not deny the link. Neither does the SACP, although it is at pains to reject allegations that it dominates the ANC. Nevertheless, Campbell, in his brief history of the ANC from its founding in 1912 to the present, clearly demonstrates, its sublimation by the Communists and makes a conclusive case for its adherence to the long-standing Communist strategy of creating a nationalist revolution as the first stage toward a socialist one. By comparing statements made by the CPSU, SACP, and ANC on such subjects as politics, economics, and society, political systems, party alliances, and foreign policy, Campbell further demonstrates how ideas originally fabricated in Moscow have been (ever so lightly) laundered by the SACP and strung on the wash line by the ANC. His elucidation of the "Freedom Charter'--that document of "liberal' reform unveiled with much fanfare by the Congress of the People at Kliptown in June 1955, in which the ANC claims to find so much inspiration and which was, in fact, drafted in secret, principally by Communists and fellow-travelers--is devastating.

As to the ANC's regard for theLeninist doctrine of the uses of violence for the effectuation of utopian ends, we have the image of Mrs. Nelson Mandela herself to instruct us, clenching her fist for the TV cameras as she cries: "Together, hand in hand with our matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country!'