SOUTH AFRICA
ANC leader speaks about Chris Hani
Govan Mbeki spent more than two decades on the infamous
Robben Island prison with Nelson Mandela and other political
prisoners and was not released until he was in his mid 80s. His
son, Thabo Mbeki, is the new president of South Africa visiting
the United Nations this September. Govan was also the organizer
who brought a young Chris Hani into the movement as the African
National Congress was being banned in 1960 and the ANC was
setting up underground structures. Govan pioneered organizing
the underground, both for the South African Communist Party
(banned ten years earlier) and the ANC. Key Martin and Johnnie
Stevens conducted this interview for an upcoming
documentary--Chris Hani Viva--about the slain ANC and SACP
leader.
I was fired from the teaching profession by Dr. Hendrick
Verwoerd. Then, immediately I took up an appointment as a
journalist for the "New Age" here in Port Elizabeth. There were
problems at the University of Fort Hare and I went there to
investigate.
I was also establishing contacts with the students at Fort
Hare. They were eager to know about the situation in the
country. Among them was a youngster in his late teens. His name
was Martin Thembesile ["Chris"] Hani.
He was intolerant of anything that smacked of relationships
with the government of the day, with Verwoerd, with the
Nationalist Party government that had come into power in 1948.
They had relationships with the Nazi Party of Germany. When
Hitler came to power in 1933 all top Nationalist party leaders
studied in Nazi Germany and absorbed and embraced Nazism.
The Nazis hated the Jews, and the object of the hatred of
the Afrikaaner nationalists in South Africa became the Blacks
and the Africans. And the difference between Nazism and
Afrikaaner nationalism in South Africa was only in degree.
So the young Hani was part of the group who were committed
to struggle against "Afrikaaner nationalism" in South Africa,
against apartheid. Already it had become very difficult to
organize openly and they wanted to know how best to organize
themselves at the university so that they would not be exposed
to the authorities. In other words, they were developing
methods of operating in underground conditions at the
university.
We also gave them the additional tasks of organizing the
students at the big high schools near Fort Hare, Lovedale and
Hilltown. He was amongst the leading cadres for that. In
addition I recruited Martin Hani into the Communist Party along
with a number of other Fort Hare students. They worked
hard.
In 1960 the government declared the first state of
emergency. At Sharpeville people in large numbers were going to
burn [identity] passes. They were met by police bullets.
Sixty-nine people were left dead and Archbishop Reeves said
most had wounds in their back. For five months the activists
were thrown into jail. Some were students from Fort Hare.
Then the ANC decided to hold an illegal conference at
Lobatsi in Botswana. Martin Hani--he was still Martin then--was
there. That conference was designed to plan how to organize
under underground conditions.
Every top level of the ANC had already decided that it was
going to embark on the armed struggle but we did not disclose
it to the membership there for fear that it might reach the
ears of the enemy before we were ready. In January 1961,
Umkhonte we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, was formed.
Martin Hani was one of the foremost youngsters to join
it.
I was appointed as a contact between the students of the
University of Fort Hare and the ANC. One of the first steps we
took was to organize a group of Fort Hare graduates to study in
the Soviet Union. A number of those students are today
occupying key positions within the government of the ANC. Some
of them are at cabinet level, as ambassadors and other key
positions of government. And they were all post-graduate
students from Fort Hare who studied in the Soviet Union.
Martin did not go.
Instead he went to Cape Town to study law. He was embraced
by the Communist Party as well as the ANC. He did unusual
things. He went to the sports field and started organizing the
youth in Rugby, football, cricket. He organized thousands of
them into sport and gave them the ANC message. They accepted
him and they accepted the message he brought with him.
He was one of those who formed Umkhonto units in the Cape
Town area. He was very active. Then one day he and Archie
Sibeko and Looksmart Goodle, who was [later] killed by the
security in jail in Pretoria, were caught in a car full of ANC
pamphlets they were going to distribute.
The case went to court. They went on appeal and continued to
work underground. Most of the leadership of the ANC was banned.
I was one of a very few who were not because I passed as a
journalist. While I did my political underground work, I also
covered meetings and activities of the ANC. And that left me
free for some time.
I was sent to Cape Town to do some work both for the
Communist Party and for the ANC. And while I was there the
report came back they had lost the case.
What then was to be done? Were we going to allow them to go
to jail -- there's nothing to be gained to serve that long
period in jail, rotting away -- or were we going to find some
other work for them to do. We decided they should get out of
the country.
We planned their departure very carefully. They slipped out
of Cape Town. And they got safely into Johannesburg and into
exile, as we drove them across into Botswana and from Botswana
they disappeared into Tanzania and those places. He was by then
Chris Hani, not Martin Hani. He was known by that name to the
end of his life.
He was a courageous man. He loved the struggle and he fought
hard for it. And when Chris went down [he was assassinated in
1993], we organized a huge national funeral. It was big. To
send down a hero. Chris was a good leader. He inspired other
people. At the first conference within the country he was
elected second to Nelson [Mandela]. That shows to what extent
he had endeared himself to the people.
[After his exile Chris Hani went on to become one of the
main organizers of the underground and chief of staff of the
Umkhonto we Sizwe army. He was General Secretary of the SACP
when he was cut down by an assassin's bullets. The massive
outpouring of grief and anger at his funeral was the pivotal
event that finally forced the apartheid government from the
scene. Nelson Mandela and the ANC emerged as the new leaders of
the country.]
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