The ANC Youth League

4. The return of the youth, 1961–1990

72 4 The return of the youth, 1961–1990 Between 1960 and 1964 the internal structures of the ANC and PAC were eviscerated by overwhelming state repression. A wave of detentions, bannings and show trials put an effective lid on opposition. Both the ANC and PAC officially adopted armed struggle by 1961. As they regrouped in exile, they set about forming armed wings and external missions to coordinate resistance. Several key ANC leaders, most notably Oliver Tambo, left South Africa in 1960 and 1961 to set up a foreign mission. Many others stayed in the country. Led by Nelson Mandela, they ran an underground movement, including a sabotage campaign. But the internal movement was systematically broken by the security police. The most prominent leaders, including (eventually) Mandela, were rounded up and given life sentences in the rivonia Trial of 1964. The ANC then focused on its exile structures, particularly in 73 establishing an armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK). Over time the ANC was able to hold itself together in exile and provide support and a political home for loyal activists who fled South Africa. It eventually opened over 20 offices worldwide, ran a school in Tanzania and operated training camps in several countries. The ANC in exile did not maintain the Youth League.Itwasdifficultenoughtoholdoneorganisation together in extremely adverse circumstances. Youths who left South Africa and sought out the ANC were usually directed to the ranks of MK. Some who showed the necessary aptitude were sent to study at foreign universities, making use of funds raised from sympathisers for bursaries. Some were sent for advanced military training in the east Bloc. The PAC was far less successful in exile than the ANC. To start with, it lacked the depth of leadership and tradition of the ANC. It had had barely a year of legal operation to establish itself. Most of the prominent PAC leaders were arrested in the postSharpeville clampdown. While Sobukwe remained in jail until 1969, most of the others received jail sentences of two to three years. Leballo, released in 1963, left for Basutoland in an attempt to coordinate an exile movement. Mda, who managed to avoid arrest between 1960 and 1963, also left for Basutoland; he 74 set up a law practice and became surprisingly inactive politically. Though he was regarded as something of an ideological father figure, his heart had never been fully in the secession from the ANC. Several other PAC leaders left for newly independent African countries. Without Sobukwe at the helm, and with the gradual withdrawal of Mda, Leballo, who was never a levelheaded organiser and strategist, had to shoulder much of the responsibility. His bullish style triggered a leadership dispute, which at times got very bitter, even violent, and was never fully resolved throughout the 1960s. The PAC, divided into squabbling factions, lost credibility as an opposition movement. By 1964 the ANC and its Communist Party allies were convinced that most of their energy should go into armed struggle. They were deeply impressed by the examples of Cuba, Algeria and Vietnam, and argued that a sustained guerrilla war could be successful in South Africa. But they had little success in this throughout the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s. The strategy received a boost when Portugal suddenly decolonised in 1975, leaving pro-ANC leftist governments in Angola and Mozambique: MK was consequently able to get some of its soldiers into South Africa via these ‘frontline’ states and hide arms caches in the countryside. But it was becoming increasingly clear that a guerrilla war was never going to succeed 75 on its own in toppling the South African government. Internally, opposition to apartheid all but disappeared in the 1960s and early 1970s. The ANC’s attempts to develop internal political structures were very limited. At the 1969 Morogoro conference the ANC and the Communist Party (SACP) made a strategic decision that their best hope for a revolution lay in a combination of guerrilla warfare and an uprising of the black working class internally. The working class was seen as inherently revolutionary; it would spontaneously rise in support of an effective guerrilla movement. Ultimately, it was internal black opposition, with virtually no direct links to the ANC, that reignited the struggle. Moreover, the opposition came from a quarter the ANC and SACP had never expected: students. The ANC and SACP had failed to take adequate note of two game-changing internal...