This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.
26 Aug 1992: Myeni, Musa
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POM. Let me ask you first about the relationship in the IFP, which I know is now a multi-racial party, and the KwaZulu government, Dr Buthelezi and the Zulu nation in the sense that many or most people that we have talked to would regard the IFP really as Dr Buthelezi's party, that it is his mouthpiece, so to speak.
MM. Firstly, let me state that the IFP has about 43% of its total membership as non-Zulus, 43% non-Zulus. Secondly, the two Provinces of Natal and the Transvaal constitute about 70% of the total population of South Africa and therefore strategically we decided to concentrate on these two provinces because they are the most populous. The Transvaal alone has about 40% of the total population, between 40% and 46% - the figures are not quite the same, depends who did the count. In the Transvaal, I am mentioning this because in the Transvaal we have members and branches in non-Zulu areas such as the Western Transvaal which is 98% Tswana; in the Northern Transvaal, places like Pietersburg, we have members and places like the Eastern Transvaal, let alone the Reef because the Reef, which is Johannesburg and surroundings, is more cosmopolitan. So in other words our membership spreads far beyond KwaZulu boundaries and far beyond Zulu ethnic boundaries.
. Thirdly, in terms of KwaZulu government as an institution it is true that KwaZulu Legislative Assembly consists of members who were elected on the Inkatha ticket and all other parties fizzled out in the end because they could not stand the test of time. Eventually every member in the KwaZulu government is therefore a card carrying member of the IFP because that's how she or he was elected.
. Notwithstanding that, there are many Zulus in KwaZulu also who are not card carrying members of Inkatha Freedom Party. With a total membership of over 2.2 million the Inkatha Freedom Party still has a lot of other people among Zulus who are not card carrying members. We have a population of about 8,6 million Zulus but we have a total membership of 2.3 million. 43% of those are non-Zulus which means that because of the support we enjoy from His Majesty the King and from Zulus generally we can still claim that a lot of Zulus will still vote for the IFP despite the fact that they are not card carrying members. Furthermore the IFP was established in 1975 after Chief Buthelezi had taken over in 1971, I think, as the Chief Counsellor of the ten KwaZulu Territorial Authorities. I was one of the founding members and it was then that we decided that Chief Buthelezi had to use KwaZulu as a launching pad to launch a liberation movement which would be national in its dimension and interest. It was then in 1975 that the Inkatha Cultural National Liberation Movement was established which was later on transformed into a political party, as you know, in 1990 July. I think I should start there.
POM. You served on Working Group number?
MM. Three.
POM. Three.
MM. That dealt with the transitional arrangements or interim government.
POM. Before we look at that, the violence which has been endemic in the country, particularly since 1990, a lot of it is taking place between supporters of the ANC and supporters of the IFP. In the last two years have you sat down with members of the ANC and tried to hammer out some kind of a resolution to the violence in the townships?
MM. Yes and no. Firstly, it seems to be that when you have a kraal with too many bulls and each one of these bulls feels very strong, and strong enough that it would not sit down and talk to the other bulls, then you have a problem. It would also seem to be that theoretically perhaps it can be proven empirically that unless people fight it out, and unless all parties get tired of fighting, it does not seem probable that members of such fighting factions will sit down and map out or cut out a lasting resolution. It is for this reason that after signing on 29th January 1991, with the ANC signing with us, the IFP, our first Peace Accord, that it was violated on the very afternoon of signing by the ANC because Mr Harry Gwala, their Stalinist Executive member of the Communist Party and at the same time Chairman of the Midlands region of the ANC, stood up on that very day of signing and vowed that this accord would not be binding upon his region and upon his members. As a matter of fact four people were attacked that day and the following week 18 members of the IFP were hacked to death on their way from a peace rally that the IFP had called in Pietermaritzburg to explain the Peace Accord that we had just signed with the ANC and one bus was ambushed.
. As you now know, it's a matter of history that on the 14th September 1991, later on in that same year, a National Peace Accord was signed in Johannesburg at the Carlton Hotel. On that very afternoon two members of the IFP were killed by members of the ANC and since then many more, tens and tens of leaders of the IFP have been assassinated and hundreds of ordinary members have been killed. It would seem to me, therefore, that despite the so-called local Dispute Resolution Committees in which we participate and sit down with the ANC and with the South African security forces and other interested local parties, nothing has actually led to any meaningful fruits.
POM. Why do you think it is that in terms of propaganda the ANC are far more adept at portraying the violence as either IFP violence, IFP inspired violence, or as IFP acting in collusion with the police force?
MM. There are many reasons and factors. Firstly, the ANC has been in the business of propaganda for years in exile. They have been using Radio Freedom in Ethiopia and Radio Lusaka to beam into South Africa whatever propaganda they wanted. Secondly, they are all communist trained and we now know as a matter of history that communists are masterminds of propaganda. Even you as Americans have had tough times negating KGB and other propaganda, mercenaries. Furthermore, the ANC is well funded. They have the wherewithal that is required, not just training but also funds. They have the support of a lot of journalists who are card carrying members of the South African Communist Party. They planned this some years back by ensuring that a lot of students who were undergoing training at Wits University for journalism and other institutions of learning for the same profession were their members working underground like certain research professors at various universities who for a long time claimed that they were independent scholars. But we now know that since the ANC was unbanned that they have now assumed full time positions in certain organs of the ANC/Communist Party alliance. You know some of them yourself who are so-called political scientists, who have been inundating the reading market with lots and lots of reading material but we now know that they were always cued in their findings and now it's a matter of history and fact that in fact they have always entered a side.
POM. Are there some that you can specify?
MM. Raymond Suttner is one of them. Dr Suttner, he's UCT, he's one of them and many other scholars at the University of Western Cape, UCT. Even when you go to UCT there is now a new Institute for Energy Research which is funded from overseas, full time experts in matters of electricity and energy generally are manning that Institute because they are now trying to penetrate electrification programmes in South Africa so that they can use electricity as a tool, as an instrument and as a carrot for those regions who support the ANC but as a whip to those regions to those regions who do not support the ANC - using electricity, such a basic requirement.
. So, to go back to your question therefore, I would say, yes, journalists in South Africa are either members of the ANC or the Communist Party alliance or they have been thoroughly intimidated. A lot of them have in fact confided in me saying, look we are damn scared, if we do this, we publish a positive article about the IFP, then we are in trouble. We can't walk through these gangsters or comrades of the ANC, they will kill us. But if we publish something that the ANC has done positively then we are OK. And if they ignore blunders of the ANC then they are OK. For instance, how many members are you aware of already and incidents in which ANC Executive members have been caught red-handed wearing South African police uniforms and South African defence force uniforms, molesting and killing and mowing down innocent civilians. Just this week, this week, six family members in the Midlands region were killed by people wearing the South African defence force uniforms and with one white man, calling themselves 'security forces', demanding weapons from our members in that family, and once they had the weapons, these were official weapons, they were all lined up to be massacred like that. And the ANC is conveniently silent about it.
POM. Do you think in that context that there has been over the years a lot of talk about third forces or about rogue elements in the military or cliques in the military that are fomenting the violence? In The Star over the last two days they have had the revelation that this Colonel Hugo had plans within the military for a silent coup if the ANC were on the threshold of seizing power. Do you believe that De Klerk is in full control of his security apparatus or that there are constraints in terms of how far he can go to either discipline people or remove people?
MM. If I were to answer that question in either way, either yes or no, that would imply that in fact I know a lot about Mr de Klerk and the way he manages his security forces. Unfortunately I don't know. And it would also imply that indeed there are security forces who are doing these things as alleged. I can say to you that I know for a fact that, yes, there are certain individuals within the security forces who have been found guilty of such atrocities and basing my argument on those judgements I can then conclude that, yes, there are certain individuals within the security forces who are guilty of these activities. But I also know that Inkatha Freedom Party has lost many members at the hands of South African security forces. But I can also go a step further and say the third force in my view are the runaways of the ANC military wing. They too are conducting what you might call pseudo operations. They have uniforms from the security forces so it is difficult to tell apart between a man wearing the South African defence force and he's a bona fide member of the defence force and an ANC military man wearing the same uniform.
. For instance, I can tell you that we know it from experience that some ANC members have been arrested wearing the IFP uniform, carrying IFP membership cards, and these members are executive members of local branches and local regions of the ANC, committing acts of violence but wearing our uniform. Therefore, the ANC, in my judgement, and the Communist Party alliance, because they are one, they are real masterminds of the present state of violence in South Africa. Then they are the first ones to go public as to who is guilty of the same offence. Take this case of this man, a farmer, De Villiers I think was his name, who was assassinated recently in the Eastern Cape, the following morning the ANC were the first ones to call a press conference to announce who was guilty of this assassination. Then later on, a few days later, ANC/Communist Party military wing members of uMkhonto weSizwe were arrested and they have confessed to killing this man.
POM. Confessed?
MM. Oh yes. This is our information so far. Therefore what are we really talking about? We are talking here about a very sophisticated propaganda machinery masterminded by well trained Stalinists and Leninists who are doing it so well that they will confuse the whole community and international community to really believe that it is the other guys who are guilty and not them. Even Mr Chris Hani during his press conference admitted that a lot of their so-called self-defence units who are well trained are actually running amok committing all kinds of atrocities and nobody can account for their activities. And one can ask a question, two questions. Firstly, why is the ANC continuing recruiting youngsters for military training? Why is Transkei government allowed to raise its military defence budget, doing training overseas? Why is the ANC still training in Uganda, in Libya, in Cuba, in Angola and in Tanzania and in India? Why are they training? When you have trained people what do you do with them once they are back in the country? Can they account for the thousands and thousands of AK47s and Makarov pistols that are in private hands in the country? Does Mr Chris Hani, or any of the military leaders of the ANC/Communist Party alliance, know where each one of these AK47s are? They don't know.
POM. The obvious question is: why would they be the main perpetrators of the violence? Let me give you their argument and then you can respond to what they said. They say it's the government, the government complicitly or explicitly, and the government is mounting this campaign of violence to destabilise their organisations in the townships, in their neighbourhoods, to weaken them, to prevent them from organising and simultaneously the government itself is trying to make inroads into what it would call the moderate black population. So the purpose is to undermine, to make them weaker. So what does the ANC gain from the violence?
MM. First of all the ANC for the past 30 years has been in the game of the so-called armed struggle and their training has always been in destruction. To expect them to make a 180 degree turnabout is to expect too much, I suspect, and furthermore communists throughout history, as far as I can read my modern and ancient history, or let's say modern history because communism belongs to that category, have never negotiated their way into power, they always seize power. We can cite many, many examples. So, negotiations to the AND/Communist Party alliance is a way to mollify or maybe even to dupe, if you like, everybody else, misleading, it's a deceitful tactic to say we want to negotiate.
. But in the final analysis the ANC wants to seize power, absolute power. That's what they want and their reasoning is as follows. Firstly, let us eliminate any future possible opposition and the IFP is the only real opposition against their wish to establish a one-party Marxist state, we are the real force. And then they believe that if the IFP can be wiped out then they will be able to mobilise every other black person behind them, to then say to the government, yes you go out, we are in the majority. This is a fallacious premise but in the back of their minds, and if one may use the expression, at the top of their awareness they are saying to themselves, sharing power, negotiating power will not enable them to come up with the kind of constitution that they would like to have. Therefore, exploit the existing miseries created by apartheid because apartheid is abominable to every thinking human being; let us harp on that so that we can conceal, so they reason, we can conceal our true intentions while everybody says, yes the apartheid regime is responsible for this violence, yes the apartheid regime is trying to go for the moderate black, etc., etc. Because then it is easy to win sympathetic support from multitudes of people by isolating the apartheid regime and highlighting their iniquities. It would then be easier also to find another guy who is a possible real opposition, make him smell together with the real guy who is in power and they have then identified the IFP to be that guy. So they do everything to try and form linkages even where linkages do not exist between the two - and then they appear clean.
. I pulled out, by the way, from CODESA voluntarily because after listening to all these debates I predicted as early as February that CODESA 2 was not going to succeed, it was therefore a waste of my time every Monday, Tuesday to sit there with the ANC/Communist Party alliance. I had calculated that these guys had also calculated beforehand that they would need, even in February - on the 4th February 1991 Mr Mandela threatened the international community with mass action. So this concept of mass action has been on their plans ever since. So I knew that this was not going to succeed and I can even predict that each time there is a deadlock the ANC will behave in the same manner. And then I thought that it was a waste of my time.
. So they are buying time, they are busy infiltrating, demoralising the security forces of South Africa so that they can all lack confidence in the system. This is one way of attacking institutions; instil a sense of low confidence, instil a sense of total negation or total rejection of all institutions created by the system, make the system stink so that everybody who still participates or benefits from existing institutions and structures of society will lose confidence in those structures. And then they come up with alternative structures.
. They started with township councils, black councils, then they established what they call civic bodies as alternative structures to existing structures, highlighted the wrongs of the present structures. They tried with the KwaZulu police and the KwaZulu government to try and dismantle that, they didn't succeed. Then they are looking at the main centre now which is the central government. Go for the heart of that centre, show to the world just what you think of it, how bad it is, so that everybody can then lose confidence and then the centre should start crumbling bit by bit and then when the centre cannot hold then they know that chaos will ensue and it will be in that chaotic situation that they will emerge as masterminds of the whole process, they will emerge with an alternative, which alternative will then look much better than the crumbling old structure. And then they are in power.
POM. Do you think that they were able to exploit and manipulate the massacre at Boipatong?
MM. Oh very much. Absolutely. I would not be surprised that they engineered a lot of it. I can even tell you that when the ANC is weak in a township then they come up with a squatter camp next to that township. Then the squatter camp will mount attacks on that particular township. The same thing in Boipatong. The IFP has a very strong presence in Boipatong township. Then they came up with Joe Slovo squatter camp which is a new establishment, relatively new establishment. And then they have more support in that area. A few days before the highly internationalised Boipatong massacre ten houses belonging to IFP houses were destroyed in the township by attackers from the squatter camp. OK? But that did not make news because it was IFP people. I can then say, well what they do, they knew that the IFP from Boipatong would probably retaliate. They calculated this. What they always do also when there is an IFP march or funeral, they provoke a reaction, well calculated reaction. They make a statement beforehand, a week or two weeks before, that such and such a march by the IFP should be prohibited by government because this march will lead to more deaths. Then they know that the government will not do it because the government allows all marches to take place. Then they put a few guys at strategic places, occupying houses particularly where people are drinking socially, where there is a tavern in that particular area, where they are sure that there will be a lot of innocent people in that area. Then they plant guys to be part of those people drinking, etc., but those guys will be armed. Then they will shoot from those houses, which do not belong to those fellows - the attackers will shoot at the marching IFP. They know that the IFP will not run away, it doesn't run away, it fights back. So they know beforehand that the IFP will definitely fight back but in the process all the bystanders will suffer, all the onlookers will suffer because when you go to a house from which bullets came from, you don't ask who shot, you hit back at everybody in that particular house. They calculate these things. So in Boipatong they initiated an attack and they knew that those people will attack back. Then they were already out of CODESA, but then they used that incident as a pretext for their withdrawal from talks, but they were already out. So what I'm saying is that I might not be there when the world comes to terms with these new sophisticated methods by the Communist Party, and I am saying deliberately and advisedly that when we talk of the ANC we are talking of the Communist Party. To give you a few statistics in this regard to support my premise: -
(1). out of 105 members of the Executive Committee of the ANC, 54 of those are all Executive Committee members of the Communist Party. 54 of them out of 105, plus 17 ordinary members of the Communist Party. So you have in total 74 out of 105 Communist Party Executives in charge of the National Executive Committee of the ANC.
(2). out of 26 National Working Committee, the Cabinet of the ANC, out of 26, 19 are all top brass of the Communist Party - Chris Hani, Joe Slovo, etc.
. Then furthermore, maybe a question: at what stage would Joe Slovo cease to speak as National Chairman of the Communist Party but speak to you as top Executive Cabinet member of the ANC? When does he stop? When does he change his hats? Furthermore, the Communist Party has co-opted into their Executive Committee the leadership of the ANC's Youth League and, secondly, they co-opted the top leadership of COSATU, the labour movement, into their top Executive - Communist Party. Thirdly, they are still in charge of the military wing of the ANC, uMkhonto weSizwe. Ever since Joe Slovo was the Chief of Staff or the Commander at one stage, Chris Hani was next and Chris Hani is today the Secretary General of the Communist Party and the MK is still loyal to him. If you take these three wings, the youth, the labour, the military wing out of the ANC what remains of the ANC? Nothing. I can tell you - nothing. If you look at the various rallies of the ANC you will notice that the youth is no longer wearing T-shirts with Mr Mandela's face. They are wearing red T-shirts with the communist sickle etc. And when you look at the flags displayed at these marches, there are more red flags now than the ANC flags.
. My predictions are therefore that when the ANC comes into power with the Communist Party it will be the Communist Party which will take over and it is my conclusion also, based on these analyses, that in fact the Communist Party of South Africa is the party of the future, not so much the ANC proper. I would also go a step further and conclude by saying that if you ask any Executive member of the ANC to mention to you just one policy area where the ANC differs from the Communist Party position you won't find one policy area where they differ. You will never also read about meetings and decisions of the meetings of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party. When do they meet? What do they decide? You will never read about that but you will read about decisions of the ANC Executive Committee because what they do, they meet clandestinely, take decisions, channel through the Executive Committee of the ANC.
POM. Can we continue this over the phone from Boston?
MM. You're welcome.
POM. OK. I could sit here all day -