Description
Dr Yutar resumed his cross-examination of Walter Sisulu on this day with a maintained focus on Operation Mayibuye and various documents associated with it. The overarching suggestion made rather explicitly by Dr Yutar on this day was that the 18 month period of sabotage, the sending of over 300 recruits out of the country for training, and the extensive research on the feasibility of armed struggle in South Africa, was all an indication that Operation Mayibuye had been adopted and the first stage of its plan had been set in motion by the MK in partnership with the ANC and SACP in South Africa.
Throughout Dr Yutar’s question Walter Sisulu maintained the position that all of the studies and research done by Harold Wolpe, Arthur Goldreich, and Denis Goldberg (amongst others), had been completed in order to facilitate a discussion of the feasibility of adopting Operation Mayibuye. This was in contrast to the state’s suggestion that these studies were evidence that the plan described in Operation Mayibuye had been adopted, and its first phase set in motion, long before the document itself had been drafted in mid-1963.
Walter Sisulu’s Evidence
Dr Yutar began on this day by asking Walter Sisulu if he knew Wilton Mkwai. Walter Sisulu said that he was a member of the ANC from Port Elizabeth but would not admit that his pseudonym was BreeBree or that he had been at Rivonia. Dr Yutar did not pursue the matter any further and informed the court that he would be returning to Operation Mayibuye and hopefully finishing his line of questioning in regard to this document soon. In this regard, Dr Yutar began by asking Walter Sisulu why Operation Mayibuye had supposedly not been adopted after the 18 month period of sabotage had only resulted in further repression and not a granting of concessions by the South African government. Walter Sisulu explained that he and many other leading figures in the NLM had not lost hope that the local and global contexts were such that positive change could be fostered without resorting to the kind of military conflict envisioned in Operation Mayibuye.
Walter Sisulu argued that just before 1960 a number of leading Afrikaner intellectuals, who were also leading members of the NP, had begun “to move and meet with African leaders” as they had started to view the situation in South Africa with “grave concern”. This coupled with the fact that national independence on the African continent was a growing reality moving closer and closer to South Africa’s borders, was according to Walter Sisulu, a clear indication that sabotage and continued non-violent political organisation by the NLM would be sufficient for bringing about the desired change in South Africa. While Dr Yutar did not challenge Walter Sisulu’s position directly he did challenge it in an in-direct way by reading closing from Operation Mayibuye with the aim of exposing how many of the operations described therein had already been completed or at least initiated by MK in partnership with the ANC and SACP.
The details of the operations which constituted Operation Mayibuye can be found clearly in the nine page document. In summary, Dr Yutar first suggested that the acts of sabotage committed inside South Africa and the sending of recruits outside of the Republic for guerrilla warfare training were two cornerstones of the Operation Mayibuye plan which had already been manifested in reality by the MK, ANC and SACP. Furthermore, he argued that the stolen stores of dynamite found by police near the SK Building in Orlando was indication (and not the only one mentioned) that the organisations involved in the conspiracy had also done much to fulfil another key aspect of the Operation Mayibuye plan which was to collect and store arms and ammunition in secret locations across the Republic in anticipation of the trainees’ return at which time they would be used for guerrilla war followed by a general mass armed uprising.
Walter Sisulu denied that the acts of sabotage committed by MK or the sending of recruits out of the country facilitated by the ANC had been done in fulfilment of the first stage of the plan as set out in Operation Mayibuye. Dr Yutar then turned attention to the various committees detailed in Operation Mayibuye and the Intelligence Committee in particular. Walter Sisulu conceded that there was evidence that Harold Wolpe had been associated in some capacity with the Intelligence Committee and that it was Harold Wolpe who had complied the various studies which made reference to demographic and geographical factors and the feasibility of smuggling arms into certain the areas of the Republic (Exhibit Nos.62, 63 and others). Dr Yutar then turned attention to Exhibits T.33, T.34 and T.226, which were all maps, copies of which were found in the possession of ANC members, which marked various roads, police stations, SADF military facilities and other points which Dr Yutar suggested were the sites of “enemy forces” which Operation Mayibuye instructed must be identified.
Walter Sisulu admits that these studies had been done in terms of researching the feasibility of Operation Mayibuye but not in actually implementing the plan. Rather, these studies had been done at the request of the National High Command in order to create the necessary conditions in which they had enough information and data to begin to discuss and contemplate the possibility of what such a plan would look like in practice in South Africa. Walter Sisulu went on to argue that the sabotage carried out by MK had been a political attack on the government in and of itself and not merely a means to some other end – total revolution – as was being suggested by the state. He explained that the state’s suggestion that sabotage was done in order to “spark” guerrilla warfare tactics and then full-scale war was not a correct understanding of how this repertoire of struggle had been conceived and practiced by the MK as part of the NLM.
Dr Yutar continued for a long time with his strategy of describing certain existing structures and practices of the NLM in the language of Operation Mayibuye. Walter Sisulu complained about the way in which Dr Yutar was prompting the court to draw unfair inferences from his evidence. He clarified that while certain aspects of the work done by the Technical Committees of the MK coincided with the work described in Operation Mayibuye the two were not synonymous. Dr Yutar asked Walter Sisulu for a comment on almost every aspect of the plan laid out in Operation Mayibuye and spent much time making the suggestion the Arthur Goldreich had arranged for a future supply of weapons and ammunition to be sent into the Republic from socialist states such as East Germany and China. Walter Sisulu explained, with the support of Judge De Wet, that he had already stated that Arthur Goldreich had been tasked by the National High Command to make arrangements for the supply of explosives from these socialist states but the conservations he had had in relation to the supply of guns and other weapons necessary for military conflict was done without instructions and as a personal venture.
In regard to the lectures written by Arthur Goldreich, Walter Sisulu explained firstly that Govan Mbeki had only contributed to the historical analysis portion of the lectures and that the rest was solely the work of Arthur Goldreich. Walter Sisulu continued to say that the lectures were designed for the purpose of educating MK recruits and organisers on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare if and only if a decision was ever taken by the NLM to adopt such militaristic tactics in the South African struggle. Walter Sisulu explained once again that in spite of the fact that Operation Mayibuye might not be put into operation in South Africa at all, if it was not accepted by the various authorities of the NLM, preparations for militaristic modes of resistance politics were being prepared for:
There were definitely preparations. You had an army which was being trained. In the same way you have Russia preparing for atomic bomb, you have America preparing for atomic bomb, it doesn’t mean that thereby there will be war… I am not denying that we were preparing.
Much of the discussion on this day concerned Arthur Goldreich who Walter Sisulu openly admitted was one of the authors of the document Operation Mayibuye, as well as many other documents advocating the adoption of guerrilla warfare tactics in South Africa, and described Arthur Goldreich as a “dreamer” who truly believed that the plan laid out in Operation Mayibuye was the best and only means by which to achieve political freedom for black people in South Africa in the context of 1963. The document entitled “Speaker’s Notes” (Exhibit R.54) was one of a number of documents written by Arthur Goldreich which was placed under intense scrutiny by Dr Yutar during Walter Sisulu’s cross-examination. The suggestion being made by the state based on a reading of this and other associated documents was that Arthur Goldreich would never have gone through all of the trouble of creating these documents if a decision to turn to guerrilla warfare and other militaristic forms of struggle had not been taken by the NLM in some form by early-May, 1963.
Walter Sisulu maintained the line that the plans and operations detailed in the works of Arthur Goldreich only would have been taken up in practice in some future stage of the struggle which had not yet been reached in South Africa. Judge De Wet asked Walter Sisulu, “I take it when you come to this phase then you wouldn’t worry about injuring or killing people anymore, or would you?” Walter Sisulu thought for a while and then replied, “You would still worry about the type of people you kill… but when there is war the aim would be for killing…” Walter Sisulu did not seem to finish his thought but Judge De Wet interjected “So policemen and soldiers are fair game” to which Walter Sisulu replied, “Yes”.
Keeping his focus on the written works of Arthur Goldreich, and Exhibit R.54 in particular, Dr Yutar argued that sabotage and guerrilla warfare were two operations which jointly constituted the first step on the path to “total revolution”. In the context of this suggestion being made by the state Walter Sisulu said to Dr Yutar:
The way you put your questions, you want to give the impression that Umkhonto was engaged in guerrilla warfare, and I say no, and I’m saying that this statement [Exhibit R.54] is a statement of proposals of what ought to be done.
Dr Yutar said that he would accept this “for the time being” and went on to ask Walter Sisulu if the events at Sharpeville and Langa were not examples of the kind of organised mass uprisings Arthur Goldreich identified as a key component of the teleological progression to total revolution mapped out in Operation Mayibuye and other documents. It seems as though Walter Sisulu had been prepared and waiting for Dr Yutar to make even the slightest reference to Sharpeville because his response was swift and bold when he said: “Sharpeville, the massacre, was done by the Government. The world over knows that. The unarmed, innocent people were killed not by Africans…” Dr Yutar interrupted Walter Sisulu and said “According to propaganda…” but Walter Sisulu spoke over the feeble voice of the state prosecutor and stated:
Not by Africans… If only in this country people had realised the serious situation which existed. No less that a Cabinet Minister, [inaudible name], himself said that a new page was opened. I only hope that a new page is open and that people understand. You can’t bring that to us and talk about Sharpeville…
Dr Yutar did not engage Walter Sisulu on his comments which had the effect of forcing the prosecutor to move on with his examination without getting the concessions he wanted in regard to the existence of mass uprisings in South Africa out of Walter Sisulu . Eventually Dr Yutar summarised that Walter Sisulu’s overarching position was that Operation Mayibuye had been drafted by Arthur Goldreich in early-May, 1963; that it had been under consideration for two months until the arrests at Rivonia took place; that the document had not yet been accepted by the time of the arrests; and finally, that Arthur Goldreich was aware that the document was still under consideration and had not yet been accepted since he first drafted it.
Walter Sisulu agreed that the above was an accurate enough understanding of his position. He added yet again that it was his and many other leaders in the NLM’s belief that negotiated settlement was still a feasible means by which freedom could be attained in South Africa and that a decision to turn to guerrilla warfare tactics was therefore not yet necessary. One of the suggestions being made by the state was that whilst the ANC thought that it was using the SACP for its own means the reality was actually that the SACP was using the ANC for its own ends. Walter Sisulu obviously denied this suggestion but was not given room to elaborate on his position before Dr Yutar continued. Judge De Wet eventually summarised that the main suggestion being made by the state was that “The document Operation Mayibuye was simply putting into words something which had been agreed on and which had been planned all the time, that the suggestion”. In response to this Walter Sisulu stated that the fact that the document had been written in an argumentative manner was in itself a clear indication that it was a proposal and not a statement of existing facts.
At one stage in the discussion of the various propagandist documents produced by Arthur Goldreich, including Operation Mayibuye, Dr Yutar made the following observation:
You say Goldreich told you that he was a commander in Israel. Well, I can tell you when he arrived in Israel: on the 8th of September, 1948… and he stayed there until the 15th of September, 1948, when the Israeli War was over… So if he ever was a commander there he was a commander for seven days.
Walter Sisulu said that he could not dispute the above information.
Thereafter attention was brought back to the hand written notes of Nelson Mandela and Exhibits R.24 and R.25 in particular. In regard to these notes, Walter Sisulu argued that the state had misinterpreted Nelson Mandela’s intentions. Walter Sisulu explained that these notes, such as “political power comes from the barrel of a gun”, were direct quotations Nelson Mandela had copied from books one could buy from bookstores across the world such as Che Guevara’s “Guerrilla Warfare”. These notes, argued Walter Sisulu, should therefore not be seen by the state as the personal opinions or political beliefs of Nelson Mandela himself.
Dr Yutar focused explicitly on those sections of Nelson Mandela’s notes which spoke of sabotage as “an arm of guerrilla warfare” and Walter Sisulu insisted that the writing reflected general ideas and did not necessarily apply to the position in South Africa. He went on to argue that sabotage had been taking place in South Africa without guerrilla warfare and that even Afrikaners had engaged in acts of sabotage in this country. Walter Sisulu argued that documents handed in by the state, such as Exhibit R.1, showed the suggestion that South African’s should learn not only from the guerrilla warfare described by Che Guevara but also from “the guerrilla warfare of the Boers”.
Dr Yutar went on to produce a group of 14 documents (all of which had been discussed in some manner prior to this stage of Walter Sisulu’s cross-examination) which he claimed showed the great extent to which certain aspects of what was set out in Operation Mayibuye and Exhibit R.49 had been initiated or completed already. Dr Yutar suggested that all the information collected by Arthur Goldreich, Harold Wolpe and Walter Sisulu (in regard to one document on the population of South Africa) was done as part of the implementation of Operation Mayibuye. Walter Sisulu stuck resolutely to his position which he told Dr Yutar was “not complicated at all”. Judge De Wet put Walter Sisulu’s position succinctly as admitting that this information had been collected but denying the suggestion that this meant that the plan had already been put into operation because this information had been collected.
Thereafter, Dr Yutar continued to take Walter Sisulu through each of the documents in his selected group of 14 but was cut short by Judge De Wet who said that the witness was looking very tired. Judge De Wet decided to adjourn the court until Monday at which stage Walter Sisulu would be called back to the box yet again.
Sources
Dictabelts: (Vol.53/6A/34e) (Vol.53/6A/35e) (Vol.53/6A/36e) (Vol.53/6A/37e) (Vol.53/6A/38e) (Vol.53/6B/39e) (Vol.53/6B/40e) (Vol.53/6B/41e) (Vol.53/6B/42e).
Percy Yutar Papers:
Handwritten notes from the prosecution for 24th April, 1964, (Ms.385/36/1).
File containing details about Accused Nos. 1-7: TS, Walter Sisulu (MS.385/31/3/2).
W M Sisulu continues. Marked AA2, [section missing], (MS.385/7).
WITS Historical Papers:
Analysis of Defence Evidence: Walter Sisulu’s Personal Position (AD1844.A30b9).
Statement on which Walter Sisulu’s evidence was led (AD1844.Bc2).
Key Words
Walter Sisulu, Operation Mayibuye, Communists, Arthur Goldreich, Total Revolution, Guerrilla Warfare, Sabotage, Sharpeville, Che Guevara, Rivonia Exhibits.
This mp3 file is watermarked to protect copyright. Please contact the National Film, Video and Sound Archives to get full access.