INTRODUCTION¹

Although effective control of the military had long since passed out of Afrikaner control, the symbolic moment in the changing of the guard occurred on 29 May 1998, in the sports stadium in Thaba Tswane, Pretoria. Accepting a 17-gun salute, outgoing South African National Defence Force (SANDF) chief, General Georg Meiring formally handed over command of the SANDF. His successor is the former chief of staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), Lt Gen Siphiwe Nyanda. Until scant days earlier, Thaba Tswane had been known as Voortrekkerhoogte, reflected by the massive monument dedicated to the farmer pioneers of the Afrikaner nation which dominates the Pretoria skyline.

April had witnessed a strange turn of events during which Meiring had handed a report to President Mandela, alleging that Nyanda was involved in fomenting violent opposition to the government. At the end, it was Meiring, not Nyanda, who offered to step down. Yet, in spite of the preceding events, Meiring carried with him the grudging respect of his former adversaries. This respect was evident during the opening ceremony of the handing-over parade when President Mandela conferred upon Meiring the Order of the Star of South Africa (Military) Class 1, gold. This, Mandela noted, was "in recognition of his contribution to the transition to democracy, the transformation of the armed forces and the efficiency of the SANDF."²

Despite the events of the previous months, Meiring’s farewell speech reflected the professional soldier. He reinforced the importance of discipline and hard work, commented on the requirement for leadership and called upon the government to increase the defence budget. The most important section of Meiring’s speech, however, was devoted to a plea for reconciliation: "I believe that the time has come to forgive and forget. If we cannot do that, this nation will be polarised and will meet with conflict … We have inherited a past but we are building a future. This will not be possible if we cling to stereotypes and continue to view one another with suspicion. It will also not be possible if we continue to deny our mistakes and constantly search for a culprit to blame for past, present and even future failures."³

Few listening to these remarks could forget the events in the run-up to the elections in 1994 when the South African Defence Force (SADF) under Meiring, acted first in the political interests of the National Party (NP), then increasingly to protect its bureaucratic interests under a vastly changed regime. In the process, the SADF played a crucial role to ensure the momentum of the settlement process.

The true moment when power passed from the NP to the ANC probably occurred during March 1994 in the former Bophuthatswana homeland. With days to go before elections in April, the SADF would also step in to restore stability in Kathlehong when the ill-fated National Peacekeeping Force (NPKF) fumbled its way into predictable disaster. The sections below outline each of these developments when the myth of armed right-wing resistance was exposed.

DE KLERK AND THE RIGHT WING

To understand the emotions and events that would culminate in the key role that this tiny homeland would play in national events at that stage, it is necessary to briefly place recent South African political developments in the context of Afrikaner ideology and ambitions.

On 2 February 1990, President F W de Klerk started a process which would reverse the political patterns of the previous three centuries of South African history. In a matter of 35 minutes in what was generally expected to be a mildly reformist speech — at the occasion of the annual opening of the all-white Parliament — De Klerk set a process in motion which would demolish the Afrikaner vision of a white-dominated South Africa.

Twice the fiercely independent Boers had taken on the might of the British Empire at the height of its power. The two Boer republics eventually lost their independence in the dusty battlefields of the Free State and Transvaal, but by 1948, Afrikaner republican politics had triumphed. The NP would henceforth govern the Union of South Africa and subsequently the Republic of South Africa until the rising tide of international isolation and internal resistance would force their hand.

The victory of the NP, however, did not imply self-imposed isolationism, although apartheid would eventually isolate South Africa and its armed forces. In 1949, the Malan government responded to the Berlin blockade by releasing South African Air Force (SAAF) pilots for active service.⁴ Later, the Flying Cheetahs, an SAAF Squadron — initially flying propeller-driven Mustangs and then Sabre jet aircraft — participated as part of United Nations forces during the Korean War (1950-1953). This was the last South African contribution to Western or United Nations operations, before its politics turned the country into a pariah and made the SADF an unacceptable ally.

Until the forties, black nationalist politics had generally been unco-ordinated and often existed at the national level only as a reaction to white, race-based politics. After the Second World War, the impact of industrialisation — which gave rise to unprecedented urbanisation of the South African population — started a social process which would reinvigorate the pre-eminent black national party, the African National Congress. By the mid-fifties, mass black protest had come to South Africa, albeit briefly, before being crushed during the sixties. By then the newly established Republic of South Africa was enjoying exceptional economic growth. The future of the white tribe of Africa as a bastion against the onslaught of communist black African nationalism seemed secure.

For the NP leadership, internal uprisings, such as the Sharpeville riots in March 1960, were part of the total onslaught on South Africa, which was, they believed, the result of external forces. The focus of defence efforts therefore remained oriented against an external aggressor in the form of a conventional assault by the combined forces of the Front-line States, supported by proxy forces from the Soviet Union and its allies. Far-fetched as the threat analysis appeared to be, Cuban forces were deployed en masse by the mid-seventies, with massive Soviet support in Angola. Ironically, their deployment was largely aimed at halting the advance of the South African armoured columns. In this ‘Operation Savannah’, the South Africans would eventually advance to within sight of the outskirts of Luanda before turning back when American executive support for the invasion ran foul of the US Congress.

Things deteriorated dramatically in the seventies for the NP. Black consciousness became a driving force within the country and the effects of the independence of Angola and Mozambique, and soon thereafter Zimbabwe and Namibia, stripped white South Africa of the cordon sanitaire that had effectively served as a bulwark against the advance of the black independence movements in Africa. By 1976, violent riots swept through Soweto and soon thereafter the country was engulfed in extensive riots, generally targeted against schools, local government and the system of so-called Bantu education. A nominal degree of law and order was established by 1977, but this proved only to be a temporary respite. Mass violence would soon re-surface.

By 1990, De Klerk and the South African state were under severe pressure. The country was isolated, its currency and balance of payments weak, caught in a structural economic decline with business confidence low and many capable entrepreneurs, mostly whites with the necessary financial and other means, leaving the country as part of a significant ‘brain-drain’. By that stage, the country was under a limited state of emergency and, since 1984, under a national state of emergency that accorded the security forces unprecedented powers of search, seizure and incarceration with little recourse to the judicial system. Yet, bad as it was, the situation was not yet critical.

The security agencies, the SADF in particular, were undefeated and coherent. Although they could not crush black resistance, they could repress and contain it. There was no question of any imminent overthrow of the regime, and South Africa was successfully fighting a war — military, economically and diplomatically — in a number of neighbouring countries. In the process, the ANC was first ousted from its forward bases in Lesotho, and soon thereafter from Swaziland and Mozambique. As part of the New York Accords, which led to the independence of Namibia in terms of UN Resolution 435 in October 1989, the ANC also had to leave its main training bases in Angola.

The homeland system and the Group Areas Act effectively served to isolate white suburbs from violence in the townships, while censorship ensured that white tranquillity was not unduly disturbed. This complacency, however, was not shared by the State Security Council — P W Botha’s ‘kitchen cabinet’ which effectively ran the country. Served by a massive intelligence system, the state could not have been under any illusions about the rising tide of internal resistance that was threatening to engulf the country.

A sense of impending crisis and danger alone, however, was insufficient to push the ruling NP under Botha’s leadership beyond incremental reform. Two other events eventually proved crucial in the decision of the NP to make its remarkable ‘leap of faith’ which De Klerk announced on 2 February 1990. The first was the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the apparent implosion of communism as a coherent ideological and military threat. The close linkage which the NP believed to exist between black nationalism and communism appeared to pull the rug from under the ANC. The second was the replacement of an increasingly belligerent P W Botha by De Klerk as leader of the NP and soon thereafter as President of the country.

By the late eighties, the various reforms initiated by Botha — notably the 1983 tricameral constitution — had patently failed. The country found itself in a political cul-de-sac with Botha relying increasingly on the security agencies to maintain power as his political options steadily decreased. When he took over from Botha as caretaker President on 15 August 1989, De Klerk had a difficult choice.⁵ He could continue the lone fight against rising internal violence and international sanctions and isolation, but the longer term outcome of this option was both predictable and bleak. On the other hand, he could seize the historic opportunity that the collapse of communism had provided and negotiate in the belief that Western values, which the NP purported to represent, would prove irresistible and that a power-sharing arrangement would be possible with its erstwhile opponents.

The stage for this had already been set by Botha who, since 1985, had been extending feelers to the ANC and its imprisoned leader Nelson Mandela. These negotiations by proxy largely occurred through a series of clandestine meetings, initially between Minister of Justice Kobie Coetzee and Mandela in Cape Town, but soon with a much larger group until, on 5 July 1989, Mandela met P W Botha. Little more than a month later, Botha would be forced to step down from the presidency in favour of De Klerk. By that stage, the first direct contacts between the ANC in exile and the NP government, through the National Intelligence Service, were already in process.

RISING WHITE FEARS

In the eyes of many ordinary white voters, the political process which gained momentum after February 1990 and which led to the elections of April 1994, appeared to realise their worst fears. A black nationalist party, strongly suspected of being controlled by a communist élite — a belief following years of NP indoctrination — was, by 1994, on the brink of seizing power from the Afrikaner. In hindsight, it is evident that De Klerk and the NP believed that they would be able to control the negotiation process and thereby effectively determine the outcome. Many believed they were negotiating from a position of strength. Yet, once the genie had been let out of the bottle, it was impossible to control. The ANC and its allies could not be put back in the bottle.

For many Afrikaners, De Klerk had embarked upon political suicide. At the negotiating table, the NP retreated from one attempt at political power by proxy to the next. "First to go was the idea of ‘group rights’ and group representation ... Next went the ideas of enforced coalition and a rotating presidency. In the end permanent power-sharing itself was discarded."⁶ The reality of what was happening at the negotiation table was in stark contrast to the public utterances of senior NP politicians who continued to insist that there was no chance of black majority rule. By 1993, it was clear that this was patently untrue.

The bitter resistance to De Klerk as a sell-out was led by the Conservative Party, but soon joined by a number of other parties and organisations, notably the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) under the leadership of Eugene Terre’Blanche. A whites-only referendum which the NP had won handsomely in March 1992, bought the Party limited time among right-wingers.

By mid-1993, negotiations had again ground to a halt. The ANC and its allies turned to the streets in a massive display of ‘rolling mass action’ which undercut the boost of confidence that the NP had received after the referendum. In Boipatong, thirty-eight people were slaughtered in a single incident — followed by widespread evidence of police complicity or implicit support in a Third Force. Within factions in the ANC, there was increased talk of the so-called ‘Leipzig option’ — a reference to the mass demonstrations in the streets of that city and others that had toppled Erich Honecker’s East German regime three years earlier. This campaign would eventually focus on the homelands.

Since it was unable to hold meetings or organise branches in three of the self-governing homelands — Ciskei, Bophuthatswana and Kwa-Zulu — the ANC accepted a discussion paper on 23 August 1993 which suggested that these areas should be targeted for mass action. The Ciskei was first in line.

The subsequent march on Bisho ended in tragedy on 7 September, when ANC marchers led by Ronnie Kasrils attempted to outflank the soldiers of Ciskei who had been deployed to halt the march. Twenty-eight marchers were killed and more than two hundred wounded in the carnage that ensued. The limits of protest had become horrifically evident. Meetings between Mandela and De Klerk resumed as circumstantial evidence of Security Force involvement in violence and crime again mounted. Eventually, it was Communist Party leader Joe Slovo who would suggest a compromise, propagating a so-called ‘sunset clause’ — a temporary commitment to share power for a number of years on the basis of proportional representation.

The subsequent Record of Understanding of 26 September committed the two sides to resume multiparty negotiations. This occurred during March 1993 at the World Trade Centre, driven, more than ever, by the interests of the two major negotiating parties, the ANC and the NP.

It was against this background that an increasingly isolated Chief Minister Buthelezi formed an alliance with the right-wing Conservative Party, Brigadier Oupa Gqozo of Ciskei and President Lucas Mangope of Bophutatswana. The Concerned South Africans Group (COSAG) was an unlikely alliance which grouped right-wing Afrikaners with an ethnically-based black Zulu party.

The potential of right-wing acts to destabilise the settlement process was dramatically evident when, on 10 April 1993, extremists killed MK commander Chris Hani — the most popular black leader after Mandela. In the aftermath of the assassination, it was clear that both the NP and the ANC were increasingly concerned about the potential of the right-wing to undermine the negotiation process. Six weeks later, on 25 June, a raucous mob of some three thousand right-wing Afrikaners marched to the World Trade Centre, crashed an armoured car into the front hall of the Centre and temporarily occupied the building. Afrikaner Volksfront leader, former chief of the SADF General Constand Viljoen, pleaded in vain for restraint as the AWB under Terre’Blanche ran riot. Concurrent calls by the Pan-Africanist Congress for ‘one settler one bullet’ simply added fuel to the fire. As radicalism on both the right and the left increased, the negotiation process gathered urgency.

The final constitutional agreement, arrived at in November 1993, included a temporary Government of National Unity composed of all parties that won more than five per cent of the vote in the April 1994 one-person-one-vote elections. Cabinet seats would be awarded proportionally. The leader of the strongest party would become President with two deputy presidents from the runners-up. The cabinet was to rule by majority vote and not by consensus — the final in a series of concessions that the ANC extracted from De Klerk. While this interim constitution was in place, parliament would also serve as an elected constitutional assembly, drafting a final constitution.

Inkatha, Ciskei, Bophuthatswana and the right-wing parties were ominously absent from the subsequent celebrations.

In splendid self-isolation from the negotiations, the COSAG grouping was united in their hatred and fear of the ANC and contempt of the NP. Collectively, they held the implicit threat of a massive armed secessionist movement.

Occasionally, white right-wing anger and frustration hit the media spotlight. On 7 May 1993, for example, fifteen thousand right-wingers gathered at a rugby stadium in Potchefstroom to vent their anger at the NP government. Tensions ran high as General Viljoen emerged as the newly found leader who could save the Afrikaner volk from the unholy alliance which had been forged between De Klerk and Mandela. The Afrikaner Volksfront was established, and included a directorate of four retired generals, headed by Viljoen, and tasked with the establishment of a ‘Boer People’s Army’, drawn from farmers, miners, the Citizen Force and commando’s, among others.

Yet, while organising and mobilising on the one hand, Viljoen served as a moderating force among the right-wing on the other. Ever the conciliator, Viljoen and some of his co-leaders engaged in exploratory meetings with the ANC in the final months of 1993. The demand of the right-wingers was for a volkstaat with Pretoria as capital — something that the ANC did not reject out of hand, but used as a ploy to string the Volksfront along as the date for the crucial April elections came closer. There was a mounting feeling in the country that the elections would be the decisive moment. Should the elections be concluded relatively peacefully, it would legitimise both the ANC and the settlement process while emasculating the much smaller, if increasingly vociferous, militant opposition groups — including the Afrikaner Volksfront and the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging.

Realistically, the demand for a volkstaat was one which the ANC could not countenance, although it did eventually agree to the establishment of a Volkstaat Council and the possibility of using the general elections as a means to test support for a proposed volkstaat. Any autonomy granted to the Afrikaner would open the door for Buthelezi and Kwa-Zulu to claim the same. An intensive and bitter campaign of accusation and counter-accusation developed between the Volksfront (particularly the Conservative Party) and the NP — each claiming to represent the Afrikaner. Having steadily been forced back from one negotiating position to the next, the NP, appeared indecisive and weak by 1993. NP negotiators had repeatedly been demoralised and outwitted by a rampant ANC. Frustrated by the delays as the days slipped by, Afrikaner right-wing pressure for armed action to halt the perceived slide to ANC/Communist Party dominance increased.

Events in Bophuthatswana would shortly provide such an opportunity.

Early in March 1994, President Lucas Mangope announced that he would not participate in the April elections and that Bophuthatswana would stick to the independence granted to it by South Africa in 1977. This was a direct challenge to the government and to the Transitional Executive Council (TEC). It threw down the gauntlet to the whole negotiation process. In terms of the agreement negotiated between the ANC and the NP, all black people in the homelands had their South African citizenship restored on 1 January 1994.

Mangope and his advisors had not attended this process where it was decided that the homelands themselves were due to be absorbed into the country’s nine new provinces on election day, 27 April 1994. According to Mangope, the South African government had granted his country independence and therefore had no jurisdiction over Bophuthatswana. He was clearly out of step with what was happening in the rest of the country. He was equally unaware of the lack of popular support for his government and party within his own territory. For the ANC, this was an untenable situation. Mangope had to go before the elections. Their response was rapid and took the form of mobilisation and mass action.

For COSAG and the Afrikaner right-wing, it was an equally crucial moment. Mangope had a defined territory with a formal legal status which he could claim — something the Volksfront could only dream of. Together, they could provide the solid basis for the creation of a viable alternative to the ANC.

Within days after his announcement that his ‘country’ would not participate in the April elections, a strike by Bophuthatswana’s twenty-two thousand civil servants effectively paralysed the territory. Since the country would ostensibly disappear on 27 April, civil servants demanded that their wages and pensions be paid out before the elections.

Members of the Bophuthatswana police started joining the strike. Violence and looting intensified. By Wednesday 9 March 1994, Mmabatho, the capital, was in chaos — hospitals were closed and staff had seized control of the Bophuthatswana Broadcasting Corporation and taken Eddie Mangope, its chairman and the son of Lucas Mangope, hostage. Students had taken over the university and civil servants had extended their demands to include participation in the elections, as well as Mangope’s deportation. At this point, Mangope appealed to the Volksfront for help. Eugene Terre’Blance was the first to respond by broadcasting a call for all members of the AWB commando units to head for Bophuthatswana.

In the meanwhile, Viljoen mobilised his Boerekrisis-Aksie to move into Mmabatho and establish themselves at the town’s airport. They were to go in unarmed and would be issued with arms from the armoury of the Bophuthatswana Defence Force upon arrival. Judging by the speed of the mobilisation and the accompanying discipline, it was clear that the Volksfront had been preparing for just such an eventuality. Within a day, Boerekrisis-Aksie operational commander, Douw Steyn, had one thousand five hundred men moving to the airport and another three thousand on standby. In Mmabatho, the renowned retired SADF special forces commander, Col Jan Breytenbach, was to assume command of the Volksfront force.

Despite the best efforts by Viljoen and others, cars full of AWB men had arrived in the meantime in Mmabatho — some six hundred in total. In contrast to the Volksfront forces the AWB men had no clear command structure apart from an appeal to ‘go and help’. The worst nightmare for the embattled Mangope had become a reality. His black government and those members of the Bophuthatswana security forces still loyal to him were in apparent collusion with a motley group of white racists who were driving through Mmabatho yelling insults at blacks and shooting at random. It was an untenable situation, effectively undermining any chance of consolidating the anti-ANC alliance.

Those black troops still loyal to Mangope mutinied in reaction to the provocation of the AWB, and sided with the rioters. There was no question now of the Volksfront army getting weapons from the Bophuthatswana armoury. "… Steyn … ordered his army to withdraw. Leaving his one hundred and fifty armed men to hold the airport until they could hand it over to the South African Defence Force, Steyn and his Volksfront volunteers went out the way they had come, with a few rearguard skirmishes on the way."⁷ Not so the AWB, whose members were causing a fair degree of mayhem. In the skirmishes that followed, two AWB members were wounded and subsequently executed in full view of the international media as they lay next to their vehicle. More than any other single event, this public execution undercut the AWB myth of racial supremacy.

By this time, Georg Meiring had ordered the SADF to enter Bophuthatswana and had forces deployed around the South African embassy in Mmabatho, awaiting instructions from the Union Buildings.

Eventually, a delegation led by Foreign Affairs Minister Pik Botha conveyed the news of his imminent dethronement to Mangope and the SADF moved in to begin restoring order. South African Ambassador to Bophuthatswana, Tjaart van der Walt, was installed as administrator of Bophutatswana, to be joined soon thereafter by ANC co-administrator Job Mogoro.

With the option of armed resistance now in tatters, Constand Viljoen registered a political party — the Freedom Front — to participate in the elections literally ten minutes before the midnight deadline. A potential civil war had been averted and Afrikaner resistance to the settlement process institutionalised.

In the aftermath of events in Bophuthatswana, the knock-on effects had Ciskei leader Oupa Gqozo resign and an interim administration was also appointed to run the Ciskei. With the exception of a few bomb blasts in the days immediately before the elections, white armed resistance to the election process had effectively ended.

THE NATIONAL PEACEKEEPING FARCE

The idea of an alternative South African ‘peacekeeping’ force — the short-lived and ill-fated National Peacekeeping Force — was attractive to the ANC and those parties who distrusted the apartheid state. In accordance with a cabinet decision, the NP had deliberately isolated the SADF from the negotiation process since 1990. The military was kept ‘in reserve’ until late 1993, ready to intervene should the country spiral into violence or, more ominously, if the NP wished to intervene in the settlement process through force of arms. The ANC and its allies were hesitant to be solely dependent upon the SADF and the South African Police (SAP) in the run-up to and during elections. Both forces were known to be heavily involved in ongoing attempts to discredit and undermine the ANC by covert means.

The task of thrashing out solutions to a myriad of problems and challenges facing the creation of a single, national defence force after the elections, only began in earnest in January 1994 — a scant four months before the election date. As a result, the SADF of March 1994 was little changed from the military monolith which had been so powerful before the start of the negotiations.

Formally, the concept of establishing the NPKF received a huge boost when the Technical Committee on Violence at the World Trade Centre recommended the creation of such a force in its fourth report to the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum on 2 June 1993.⁸ This hugely ambitious recommendation reads as follows:⁹

"The Committee proposes the establishment of an independent peacekeeping force with a multi-party composition to function as the primary peacekeeping force for the election. Its functions thereafter should be determined by the elected Government in consultation with relevant parties. The force should be specially trained, should be constituted in such a way as to have legitimacy across the political spectrum and should fall under the control of either the Independent Electoral Commission or under multi-party executive control."

Eventually, the determination of the TEC and its Sub-Council on Defence to train and deploy the NPKF within a few months before the elections would spell disaster. The obligation on the Sub-Council to effect command of the NPKF through a large Command Council — although perhaps politically correct — was to prove a fatal flaw. Management by committee was bad enough. Command by committee would prove disastrous.

Even the most basic understanding of the military made the failure a foregone conclusion. All Meiring needed to do, was wait to prove that only the SADF had the ability to provide the degree of security required in the heady days before South Africa’s first democratic elections.

Originally, the SADF and MK would have contributed to the Force in equal numbers, making up some two thirds of the Force in total, with the rest provided by various other military and police forces. The Kwa-Zulu Police Force, the Bophuthatswana Defence and Police Force and those of the Ciskei were not part of the NPKF planning and preparation process, although the latter eventually did subscribe to the TEC Act and participated in the NPKF. As a result, the NPKF would eventually be composed of members of the SADF, the SAP, MK, armed and police forces of the Transkei, Ciskei and Venda, as well as members of the police forces of five of the six non-independent ‘national states’.

Eventually, only one of the three battalions of the NPKF was ready for deployment by April 1994. The subsequent decision by the TEC to deploy this force in the violence-torn area of Katorus was an act of remarkable stupidity. For its part, the SADF — better trained and better equipped — with much more experience in the area, had deployed three battalions on the East Rand.

An advanced team of NPKF soldiers was deployed on 11 April 1994 on the East Rand. A report in The Star dated 11 April quoted the IFP central committee as saying that "it was alarmed to hear MK members within the NPKF were moving into the East Rand and warned of grave consequences." In the week of 15 April, the rest of the battalion was deployed and promptly came under fire from hostel dwellers. The IFP said they were not welcome and preferred the police and the SADF. Running gun battles developed between hostel dwellers, residents and NPKF soldiers in Thokoza. In three days, fifteen people had been killed, including a well-known photographer, Ken Oosterbroek — shot by an NPKF soldier.¹⁰

The SADF was eventually called in to restore calm — a move welcomed by residents. By 20 April, sixteen people, including one NPKF soldier, had died and forty were injured in unrest-related violence. On the streets, Self Defence Unit members were calling the force the ‘NP killing force’ and demanded that they leave, while those in the hostels accused it of assisting MK. Amid the chaos, the SAP claimed that police vehicles and policemen had come under attack by the NPKF in Thokoza on at least three different occasions in two days.¹¹ The IFP called for the withdrawal of the NPKF from the East Rand.

Less than a week after their deployment, the NPKF was withdrawn from the East Rand and operationally restricted to certain areas, as the SADF moved back into the area to restore order.¹²

When the dust had settled, no-one could point a finger either at Meiring or the SADF or accuse them of deliberately undermining the NPKF. The Sub-Council of Defence, the National Peacekeeping Command Council and the various technical advisors to the negotiations required little assistance in ensuring its failure. Yet, there could be little doubt that the very public failure of the NPKF was abetted by a studied, but careful hands-off approach by the SADF. In this process, Meiring had effectively ensured that the future of the armed forces would be built around the core of the SADF.

CONCLUSION

On 12 March 1994, in the glare of the international media, Afrikaner right-wing armed resistance to the negotiated settlement in South Africa faltered when faced by a possible confrontation with the SADF. The country staggered back from the brink of a civil war. In the aftermath, the right-wing decided to participate in the April elections and to continue their battle along constitutional and legal channels. March 1994 in Bophuthatswana was decisive for the country. It was a turning point in modern South African history.

In the end, it was the actions of three men that would prove crucial. The one was Eugene Terre’Blanche, whose interference lost the right-wing their last chance of delaying or subverting the April elections. The second was Constand Viljoen, who refused the spectre of a civil war, which would have pitched Afrikaner against Afrikaner. The third was Meiring, the Chief of the SADF, who faced off the right-wing.

Less than five weeks later, on midnight of 24/25 April, the SADF, the various liberation forces and the armies of the four ‘independent’ homelands ceased to exist. From this loose amalgamation the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) was born. Registration, assembly, placement, integration and training occurred in terms of an agreement reached by the Joint Military Co-ordinating Council (JMCC) and negotiated during the weeks immediately prior to the elections. Within a matter of months, the arch-enemy of the former SADF, ANC military commander Joe Modise was appointed Minister of Defence with Communist Party stalwart and head of the ANC’s propaganda and intelligence section, Ronnie Kasrils, as his Deputy. Serving under them as Commander of the SANDF was General Georg Meiring, the former commander of the SADF, and the man that had been tasked with the military campaign against the ANC.

Meiring’s appointment as Chief of the SANDF was not a foregone conclusion. Ultimately, the choice was between him and retired Lt Gen Pierre Steyn. Steyn was the previous Chief of Defence Staff of the SADF — a position from which he had retired in October 1993 after having concluded a confidential report on the involvement of the military in third force activities. To this day, his report has not been released, despite the fact that it had resulted in the forced early retirement and resignation of a number of senior SADF officers. The Steyn-report would, however, cost Steyn the job as Chief of the SANDF. His former colleagues considered him to have been disloyal to fellow SADF officers — despite the fact that he was tasked to expose illegal and criminal activity. As a result, when cabinet had to consider the position of Chief of the SANDF, they decided in favour of Meiring despite the fact that he was a conservative Afrikaner and emotionally very much part of the ‘old order’. Meiring, not Steyn, they concluded, could command the loyalty of the large contingent of former SADF officers and of the large part-time component which collectively formed the bulk of the SANDF.

After a brief spell as a senior research fellow at the Institute for Defence Policy (the forerunner to the ISS), Steyn would have the last laugh. He was appointed as Secretary for Defence on 1 September 1994 and became the head of the Department less than two years later. Financial accountability was eventually transferred from Meiring to Steyn. As Meiring’s resistance to transformation became an increasing obstacle within the Department, there would be a brief attempt to dilute his powers by moving towards a joint staff system during 1996/7. The events of May 1998 would make this unnecessary.

With Meiring’s early retirement in May 1998, and the imminent retirement of a clutch of senior, former SADF officers, such as the Chief of the Army and Acting Chief of Military Intelligence, control over the SANDF is now firmly in the hands of the post-apartheid South African government. Defence transformation had come full circle. The pariah has become a partner.

For the newly appointed Chief of the SANDF, the sense of insecurity palpable among the large contingent of former SADF officers who still occupy many of the senior management ranks within the military, is an obvious priority. General Nyanda was unequivocal in his short acceptance speech on 29 May 1998 "… it is mostly the question of expectations and fears that I wish to address … It would be tragic if White South Africans, particularly Afrikaners, were to feel that they were no longer important in the SANDF and that it had become an institution in which only Black people served … As we accelerate the affirmative action programme, we need to ensure that we manage it in such a way that its long-term effects do not result in an exodus of other nationalities — or in the impression among Black members that they alone should look to the future of leadership in the SANDF."¹³

Yet, the challenges which face the new command cadre are formidable. Successive budget cuts over several years had left the SANDF a hollow shell of the former SADF. Morale is low and effectiveness under increased scrutiny as incidents of ill discipline, theft and wastage mount. Similar to most other government departments, virtually the entire budget is devoted to operating and personnel costs and there is little practical evidence of equipment replacement. Non-commissioned officers, the heart of the armed forces, complain about significantly declining standards of discipline and motivation appears driven more by commercial reward than by a sense of duty. In short, the lengthy processes of integration, transformation and change have left the SANDF suffering from a severe case of transformation fatigue and institutional overstretch.

With the change of command from Meiring to Nyanda, trust between the government and the leadership of the armed forces, however, is assured. There is now some chance of an end to the constant processes of re-engineering and restructuring which had not only proven to be unnecessarily cumbersome, complex and drawn out, but had also been massively expensive and thus far, frustratingly inconclusive. Collectively, the consultative White Paper on Defence and subsequent Defence Review have absorbed the energies of the entire command staff of the SANDF at enormous cost. The result has been the legitimation of the SANDF, but the Department is still some way off from an affordable and appropriate defence force design, structure, roles and missions. In fact, Nyanda admitted in his acceptance speech that "[t]he force design reflected in the Defence Review is unaffordable given the budget allocation provided for in the medium term expenditure framework."¹⁴ This is indeed a severe indictment of a process which is touted as the most ambitious restructuring of the armed forces yet undertaken, as senior defence secretariat officials so readily claim. Provided that the Department of Defence can settle down and gain some institutional coherence, Nyanda’s appointment could also lead to an incremental shift in focus in the role definition of the SANDF — away from a narrow focus on conventional defence to a greater emphasis on the use of the SANDF as a force for crisis prevention and crisis intervention. In this process, secondary roles, such as peacekeeping, border security and support to the police service, may increase in relative importance. Not only is such a focus an increased regional imperative, but much more in tune with the political instincts of the governing party and its support base.

ENDNOTES

This account relies heavily on A Sparks, Tomorrow is Another Country, Struik, Sandton, November 1996.



Handing-over of Command Parade: Address by Gen G L Meiring, SANDF Bulletin, 30/98, 29 May 1998, p. 2.



Ibid., p. 1.



Sparks, op. cit., p. 104.



De Klerk was subsequently inaugurated as President on 20 September 1989, following the general elections on 6 September of that year.



Sparks, op. cit., p. 13.



Ibid., pp. 211-2.



The members on the Technical Committee on Violence were Mr W Felgate (later replaced by Ms S Vos), Mr P Hatty (chairperson), Mr S Mufamadi (later replaced by Mr M Phillips), Mr G B Myburgh, Mr V Ntsubane, Adv P Oosthuizen, Prof A Seegers, and Prof H W Vilakazi. The IFP later withdrew from the Committee.



For an analysis of the recommendation, see J K Cilliers, A South African Peacekeeping Force — Is It Practicable?, South African Defence Review, 11, 1993.



The Star, 19 April 1994.



Business Day, 20 April 1994; The Citizen, 20 April 1994; The Star, 20 April 1994.



Pretoria News, 20 April 1994.



Handing-over of Command Parade: Address by Gen S Nyanda, SANDF Bulletin, 31/98, 1 June 1998, p. 1.



Ibid., p. 2.