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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JULY 26, 1985
PAGE 9
English-speaking communities. They ranged from liberal through moderate to
decidedly conservative points of view. The visitors also included four
officials (plus one businessman) from two of the black national states
(homelands) within South Africa, the states of Lebowa (consisting primarily
of the North Sotho people) and Gazankulu (made up largely of Shangans).
Three of the officials were parliamentarians, the fourth was the Chief Min
ister--head of government--of Gazankulu, Professor Hudson Ntsanwisi. All
those I talked to--black, white, Indian, Coloured--deplored the violence
taking place. At the same time they were firmly opposed to disinvestment
--the demand in some quarters of the United State� that American businesses
pull out of South Africa.
There was no doubt in the minds of those I talked to as to who was largely
responsible for the current state of unrest--radical groups inside the
townships (the white cities are unaffected to date) who have been inciting
school-age and unemployed youths to violence. South Africa's pronounced
economic recession has resulted in an increase in unemployment, especially
in the Eastern Cape Province around Port Elizabeth. The radicals have thus
had the chance to tap more "recruits" to their cause.
Often, the radical groups fight among themselves. Recently, four members
of the African National Congress--an organization supported by the Commu
nist Party of South Africa--were slain. It is highly unlikely that the
police, as some charged, were responsible for these particular deaths.
Officials I spoke to believe that those responsible were very likely mem
bers of AZAPO--the Azanian People's Organization, an even more radicalized
black-power group that, unlike ANC, does not permit any nonblacks in its
organization.
The ANC and AZAPO are bitter foes--and neither of them
cooperate with yet another group, the United Democratic Front. Each has
its own exclusive vision of what a future black-ruled South Africa (or
Azania) should be like.
The ANC, which is headquartered in Lusaka, Zambia, has vowed to make the
black areas of the country "ungovernable." At its recent conference in
Lusaka, the ANC called for a full-scale uprising against white rule. It
urged black soldiers and police to "earn your place in the free South Africa
that is coming by organizing to turn your guns against your masters." ANC
President Oliver Tambo said that an intensified guerrilla war would make it
difficult "to distinguish between soft and hard targets." An ANC official
elaborated: "In the past we were saying the ANC will not deliberately take
innocent life. But now, looking at what is happening in South Africa, it is
difficult to say civilians are not going to die."
The ANC, in one respect, is fighting for its own life, in competition with
AZAPO and the UDF. After South Africa announced peace accords with Mozam
bique and Lesotho last year, the ANC lost its main close-in sanctuaries.
And the very reform policies of the government threaten the power base of
the ANC.
Whether it's a result of the ANC or AZAPO, Marxist-style revolutionary
views are taking hold. At a recent funeral-turned-political-procession, a
speaker called for the establishment of a "Communist-socialist state" in
South Africa and said that only an "armed struggle" could bring it about.
Whites are associated with capitalistic "exploitation." The hotheads grab
the headlines but by no means do all blacks, not even the majority of them,
feel this way. As the June 26 INTELLIGENCE DIGEST of Britain reported: