A POINTLESS TRAGEDY OF MASS ACTION
On the 30th anniversary of the Bhisho massacre, Patrick Bulger recalls being a witness to chaos and slaughter
Massacres have been bloody milestones on SA’s often violent path to a new constitution and beyond. Each mass killing, usually of organised, unarmed protesters, was both a symptom of historical conditions and a shot across the bow to portend what the future held. In nearly every case the perpetrators have not faced due punishment, nor have the principals had to take responsibility. The people in whose name history is said to unfold are trampled underfoot. The Bulhoek Massacre of 1921, in which Eastern Cape colonists killed 163 amaXhosa acolytes of the land-prophet Enoch Mgijima, spoke of the ruthlessness of the settler mentality and the staunchness of resistance. Sharpeville in 1960 was a precursor to a crackdown on all African nationalist politics in the 1960s and the starting gun for the onset of armed struggle. The Soweto uprising in 1976 marked the beginning of the end of apartheid and the shift to containment and negotiations. Marikana showed the ANC elite taking a leaf from the colonial and apartheid playbook, reinforcing the South African legacy of wage slavery amid spectacular mineral wealth.
In most cases, these unfortunate blots on our history were as avoidable as they were inevitable, given the habitual resort to heavy-handed tactics and the hardening of attitudes on both sides. Yet arguably none was as avoidable as the tragedy that unfolded on the outskirts of Bhisho, the capital of the Eastern Cape, on September 7 1992, 30 years ago this week.
There, on an early spring afternoon, 29 protesters were mowed down by soldiers loyal to the Ciskei homeland despot Brig Oupa Gqozo, a jumped-up prison warder from Kroonstad who had been elevated to head-of-state status of the nominally independent Bantustan. This was a puppet whose strings were pulled from Pretoria but who was increasingly easily manipulated by defence elements whom he employed to help wage his war on the ANC and its allies in his play republic.
The Bhisho massacre has gone down in infamy, a classic example of illegitimate military might brought to bear against a defenceless and pacific throng, who sought by their heroic actions to change the trajectory of history. And make the world a better place; the intention of struggle is to improve the human lot and advance the cause of liberty, fraternity and justice for all.
A classic case of the masses acting at the urging of their leaders without knowing what was going on behind the scenes
An elaborate game of political one-upmanship
Yet in the case of Bhisho, none of the potential gains of this confrontational form of people’s struggle was obviously evident. Though people lost their lives, and though 80,000 people marched that day for political freedom, the massacre was more a result of internal politics and struggles, both within the ANC-led alliance with Nelson Mandela at its head and in the government and security forces nominally led by former president FW de Klerk.
The people, including, alas, those who died in the debacle, were incidental to an elaborate game of political one-upmanship that was taking place behind the scenes, both in the Union Buildings and in Shell House, the ANC’s HQ. Negotiations on a new constitution had broken down, and for the radicals in the ANC-led alliance this meant that a resort to more militant forms of struggle was needed to jolt De Klerk back to meaningful talks.
The early optimism of Codesa 1 in December 1991 lasted less than six months, being quickly displaced by bitter disagreements over percentages in a constitution-making body and the form of an interim government. But this only disguised the reality that neither side was ready to strike a deal, and so the “winter of discontent” of 1992 was also the age of
“rolling mass action”, a show of force by the alliance militants in the face of violence highlighted by the Boipatong massacre in July that year, with clear signs that the IFP was involved.
Towards mid-1992, Cyril Ramaphosa, then secretary-general of the ANC, entered the talks arena at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park to inject a more impatient and strident tone. His intervention — effectively rejecting a minority veto on a new constitution — single-handedly ended the Codesa 2 phase of talks. Ironically, perhaps, his cutting of the Gordian knot to scuttle the talks strengthened the hand of the radicals, who saw De Klerk’s intransigence as evidence of his insincerity and the meagre freedom harvest that awaited at the end of a drawn-out and legalistic constitutional negotiation.
SACP intellectuals mused in earnest papers about the so-called Leipzig option, which entailed the seizure of power through a people’s insurrection. Among them was Jeremy Cronin, who argued the merits of this approach but concluded that it probably wasn’t the best idea while De Klerk still held a near-monopoly on armed force. While Cronin seemed to suggest caution, there were others in the alliance, notably the firebrand Ronnie Kasrils, who openly espoused a more militant approach, and it was no coincidence that Kasrils was at the centre of the tragic events at Bhisho on September 7.
Amid this distrust between the radicals and moderates in the ANC camp, there was an almighty struggle unfolding within the security cluster headed by De Klerk.
Even when he displaced PW Botha in 1989, De Klerk’s presidency signalled a shift from the reliance Botha had placed on the military. De Klerk’s presidency, which was designed to continue the talks that Botha was forced into, relied more heavily on the strategic input of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), whose then head Niel Barnard had been central to the first contacts with the still-jailed Mandela. Barnard even acted as something of a spokesperson for Mandela in top-level meetings with De Klerk and his ministers and security strongmen.
If the opening up of the political space was becoming unfriendly and hostile for unreformed defence force elements under De Klerk, the Ciskei offered a new playing field for elements of the then South African Defence Force-sanctioned Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), an assassination and dirty tricks outfit. They had found an eager employer in the impressionable Gqozo, bombarding and terrifying him with the anti-insurgency propaganda that informed the murderous war he was waging on the ANC in the homeland, and which was the ostensible reason for the march on Bhisho. In the rest of SA, the ANC was relatively free to organise, but Ciskei had become a no-man’s land.
One man, Kasrils, was intent on changing all that. And some may argue that he did, but the incident came to define much of his style of political contribution. On several occasions he has expressed regret for his role, while insisting though that he never thought Gqozo’s troops would open fire on unarmed protesters.
As a political reporter on Business Day I had spoken to SACP people during the planning stage of the march and had written stories about it; a contest of political wills was looming. In the build-up, Gqozo warned that under no circumstances would it be tolerated, but a court ruling on the eve of the march allowed it to proceed legally. No occupation of Bhisho was to be permitted as demanded by the alliance.
Late on September 6, a news editor directed me to cover the events, so I boarded a plane to East London.
September 7 dawned; we gathered at the stadium in King William’s Town and after much singing the march began. It was a heavyweight affair, with Ramaphosa, Chris Hani, Harry Gwala, Makhenkhesi Stofile and other big struggle names in procession towards Bhisho, a walk of 6km. I’d covered many of these marches, and had grown used to their rhythm and chants, the hope and fervour of those who took part, the hard-working marshals and attendants, the hovering security helicopters, the razor wire, the sense of history in the making.
The march had aimed to occupy Bhisho, but with a cordon of razor wire strung across the road between the marchers and the town it was clear that this would not be happening. Thus, the heaving mass of humanity was halted at the razor wire after several hours on the march, and talks were held over enemy lines as it were.
By accident, I happened to notice Kasrils darting off to the side, followed by several marchers, towards the Bhisho stadium. I instinctively ran after him and noticed he was headed towards the stands in the far corner, and then running beyond those stands and towards the perimeter fence. There were a few people sitting in the stands, so I thought it strange that we seemed to be running away from the stadium we’d only just entered.
I was fairly close when I noticed for the first time the infamous “hole in the fence’’ that became the defining motif of the Bhisho massacre. I thought nothing of going through the hole, which was more a flattened section of fence than a hole, and following Kasrils and a group of about 60 people. I remember running through the dry scrub beyond the stadium, and seeing what appeared to be an armoured personnel carrier a few hundred metres ahead. Among those I remember running were Kasrils, the Eastern Cape activist Crispian Olver and the Newsweek correspondent Joe Contreras.
Kasrils and the ANC would later insist that the fence was left open as a trap to trick the marchers into accessing it, thereby walking into an ambush. And it does seem odd that, amid the tightest security, a hole was left in the fence.
In any event, I was running, trying to keep an eye on Kasrils, when the first cracks of gunfire sounded. Someone running alongside me fell to the ground, and I saw to my left another person falling. It was happening so fast, there was so much dust and noise, and incessant gunfire, and I realised bullets were hitting the ground around me. I dived into a shallow ditch, hitting my right shoulder against the ground with a crunch, and lay there thinking about survival. I wondered if the soldiers, having fired their first volleys, would follow up on foot, finishing off the victims they had wounded and anyone who hadn’t fled.
I began to crawl and scramble back to the stadium, probably about 300m away. I managed to pull myself along the ground far enough to reach what seemed to be safety and went back through the hole in the fence, and over the seats back to the middle of the stadium. Everywhere there was hysteria and blind panic, gunfire had erupted somewhere else, and there was a sense that people could be hunted down and killed in the stadium. You could hear the scared breathing of people, their eyes wide with terror.
It was then, almost in the centre of the field of the stadium, that I spotted a vehicle and with relief thought I would possibly be able to get shelter in or behind the car. I approached it, and it was difficult to believe what I was seeing. There were three dead people inside. They’d clearly just been shot, one of them in the stomach. One in the driver seat, one in the passenger seat, and one lying on the back seat. It was a shocking sight, and I turned from it to notice nearby a white 4X4 vehicle with the word “Press” printed on a piece of cardboard in the passenger window.
Obviously, I thought, here were some media people; I’ll try to connect with them. I went over to the vehicle, with its darkened windows closed. I stood at the passenger side and a man opened the window and looked out at me. I said, “Are you guys media?” But as I said it realised that I didn’t recognise them and they weren’t media but much more typically military types.
The guy in the passenger seat of this “press” vehicle silently began reaching next to his seat, and I dropped to the ground, fearful that I could be a target. I’d stumbled into something, I still do not know what, but I wondered too what their connection was to the dead men in the nearby car. Was it too fanciful to imagine that I had chanced upon an otherwise hidden gunfight involving ANC members who planned to use the stadium to launch an armed assault on Bhisho and that Military Intelligence in the person of the two burly “press” men had prior knowledge of this and acted in advance? Fanciful perhaps, but given the circumstances it seemed a logical conclusion. No inquiry or report that I have seen sheds light on this incident inside the stadium.
Shortly after returning to Johannesburg I got an unusual phone call from a man who identified himself as a member of the NIS, and who wanted to speak about Bhisho. I consulted some people, and my editor, and met him quite openly at a gloomy restaurant in Midrand. From him I got the sense that the NIS was aware that the CCB and other old defence force elements were involved in an elaborate series of operations in the homeland, and De Klerk supported this inasmuch as it played into his idea of conservative regional partners aligning with his National Party. By then he had realised that negotiations would not shift the ANC’s bottom line, as Ramaphosa had recently made clear.
But strong conservative allies should not be that strong that they could derail the talks entirely. In spite of what the militants preached, the mainstream ANC wanted the talks with De Klerk to continue, and was not interested in any insurrectionist fantasy.
Even as the masses marched and died, a secret channel for negotiations was being kept open, involving Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer, De Klerk’s chief constitutional negotiator, and the result was the Record of Understanding later that month, which got talks back on track.
As for the Bhisho massacre, there was an inquiry by judge Richard Goldstone, Kasrils was admonished, two Ciskei soldiers faced charges and the matter got a hearing at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Perhaps the truth will never be known, but what is certain is that the deaths of the 29 people were almost certainly in vain. As massacres in SA go, it has gone down as among the most pointless.
It was a classic example of the masses acting at the urging of their leaders without the benefit of knowing what was going on behind the scenes. It was mass action, but the people were both heroes and pawns.
There was so much dust and noise, and incessant gunfire, and I realised bullets were hitting the ground around me