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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 It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

Jordan, Pallo [Second Interview: Notes]

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Conducted by Howard Barrell,

Johannesburg, January 31 1991

1. Strategy and Tactics Committee, set up by the Kabwe Conference, to report back subsequently comprised Jordan in chair, Simon Makana, Mac Maharaj, and Joe Slovo, among others. But those named formed basis of committee and turned up for meetings. There was nobody from the military attending the committee's meetings after Slovo resigned as Mk chief of staff to become SACP general secretary.

2. By the time the committee reported to the NEC, shortly before Sisulu was released from prison, "there were problems" - the committee "found it had been overtaken by events". The "peace process had started".

3. Asked why the committee should take so long (four years) to produce a report on a crucial issue, Jordan said this was because "people serving on it had so many other responsibilities... It indicates that people were overloaded... the tendency to cast the net into too small a pool" of people for tasks of this kind. "All the other people who served on the committee had other functions which they were serving on a full-time basis... Slovo was on the PMC and in the SACP leadership... Maharaj was on the PMC and involved in this other stuff [presumably reference to Vula]... I was serving on the constitutional committee, deputy head of DIP, head of research and on the NEC secretariat."

[End of notes]

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