Paramilitary wing of the Pan Africanist Congress from 1961 to 1994
The
Azanian People's Liberation Army
(
APLA
), formerly known as
Poqo
,
[1]
[2]
[3]
was the military wing of the
Pan Africanist Congress
, an
African nationalist
movement in
South Africa
. In the
Xhosa language
, the word 'Poqo' means 'pure'.
After attacks on and the murder of several white families the APLA was subsequently classified as a
terrorist organisation
by the South African
National
government and the United States, and banned.
[4]
APLA was disbanded and integrated into the
South African National Defence Force
(SANDF) in June 1994.
[5]
Etymology
[
edit
]
In 1968 the "Azanian People's Liberation Army" (or APLA) replaced the defunct name "Poqo", which means pure in Xhosa, a local South African language, as the armed wing of the PAC.
[6]
Its new name was derived from
Azania
, the ancient Greek name for Southern Africa.
The name Azania has been applied to various parts of southeastern tropical
Africa
.
[7]
In the
Roman
period and perhaps earlier, the toponym referred to a portion of the Southeast African coast extending from
Kenya
,
[8]
to perhaps as far south as
Tanzania
.
History
[
edit
]
Formation and early resistance
[
edit
]
Poqo was founded in 1961 following the
massacre of PAC-led protestors
at the hands of police outside the
Sharpeville
police station the previous year.
[1]
Potlako Leballo
, the chairman of the PAC at the time of the formation of its military wing in the 1960s, modelled APLA on the
Chinese People's Liberation Army
, with
Templeton Ntantala
as his deputy.
Members of Poqo targeted the town of
Paarl
in the
Western Cape
on 22 November 1962, when a crowd of over 200 people armed with axes,
pangas
and other home-made weapons marched from the Mbekweni
township
into Paarl and attacked the police station, homes and shops.
[9]
Two white residents, Frans Richard and Rencia Vermeulen were killed.
[9]
This attack was followed by the murder of a family camping at
Bashee River
in the
Transkei
on 4 February 1963. Norman and Elizabeth Grobbelaar, their teenage daughters Edna and Dawn, together with Mr Derek Thompson, were hacked to death in their caravans.
[10]
Leballo had planned a massive revolt for 8 April 1963, but Basotholand police managed to track down and raid the PAC's headquarters, seizing a complete list of Poqo members. In the following government crackdown, nearly 2000 Poqo members were sent to prison, almost wiping out the entire organization. Consequently Poqo ceased to be an important participant in the anti-Apartheid struggle during the remainder of the 1960s.
[3]
In 1968, the Poqo was renamed APLA and unsuccessfully attempted to form diplomatic and political ties to foreign states and movements. It received some support from China, which attempted to shift the group toward
Maoism
. PAC leaders, who had been vehemently
anti-communist
, nevertheless accepted the aid by attempting to rationalize it as being due to the fact that the Chinese were "non-white" and that their value system had not been "tainted by European thought" as they deemed the
South African Communist Party
to have been. The result was the formation of a small Maoist faction within the APLA that contrasted the strong anti-communist currents within the PAC as a whole. However, the organization's ties with China were short-lived and the pro-Chinese members were soon after purged from the group.
[3]
Leadership struggles in exile
[
edit
]
After the
Soweto uprising
in 1976, a number of students went into exile in APLA camps elsewhere on the African continent. In 1976, APLA received 500 recruits, including 178
Basotho
, for a new
Lesotho Liberation Army
(LLA), to be formed as an offshoot of the exiled-
Basutoland Congress Party
under the leadership of
Matooane Mapefane
, who was a senior instructor of APLA in Libya.
[11]
Ntantala's original group of 70 APLA soldiers felt threatened by the influx of new recruits, leading Ntantala to attempt a
coup
against then commander,
Potlako Leballo
in
Dar es Salaam
. This was prevented by LLA soldiers, a move which exacerbated tensions within two PAC factions,
[12]
the "Diplomat-Reformist" (DR) and "Maoist-Revolutionary" (MR) factions.
Vusumzi Make
's appointment as Leballo's successor sparked a mutiny at
Chunya
, an APLA camp in Tanzania, on 11 March 1980, during which several APLA forces were killed and the rest further factionalised and confined to different camps; many escaped to Kenya.
[13]
Leballo himself relocated to
Zimbabwe
in late 1980 along with senior intelligence and air force personnel from the MR faction. Pressure from Tanzania, however, resulted in his deportation in May?June 1981,
[14]
as well as the deportation or imprisonment of the others. Make was replaced by
John Nyathi Pokela
[13]
(who was released from
Robben Island
in 1980), but his ineffectual term of office was marred by further mutinies, executions and assassinations. Following Pokela’s death, Leballo made a comeback through support from Libya, North Korea and Ghana. After his sudden death in January 1986, the DR faction, outmaneuvered by the ANC, fell into disarray leaving behind the legacy of a semi-national socialist political front.
Attacks on white civilians
[
edit
]
After 1986, APLA rejected the MR faction's concept of the guerrilla as a social reformer and instead adopted an ultimately disastrous rallying cry of "
One Settler, One Bullet
". In the 1990?94 period, the organisation became known for its attacks on civilians despite the progress in negotiations at the
Convention for a Democratic South Africa
.
[5]
Operation Great Storm
[
edit
]
Notable massacres committed during Operation Great Storm by the Azanian People's Liberation Army between 1990 and 1994.
In 1991 APLA launched
Operation Great Storm,
[15]
a violent paramilitary campaign aimed at displacing white farmers to reclaim land for black Africans and obtaining arms and funding.
[16]
[17]
[18]
Initially APLA attacked and robbed farmsteads in the Free State and Eastern Cape provinces resulting in a number of farm deaths.
[15]
[19]
[20]
Attacks would later expand to urban civilian targets such as churches, hotels and drinking establishments. The APLA’s chief commander,
Sabelo Phama
, declared that he "would aim his guns at children - to hurt whites where it hurts most."
[21]
Phama proclaimed 1993 as "The Year of the Great Storm"
[17]
and sanctioned the following attacks on civilians:
In total thirty-two applications were received for attacks on civilians. In these incidents, 24 people were killed and 122 seriously injured.
[24]
The
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
concluded that the PAC-sanctioned action directed towards white South Africans were
"gross violations of human rights for which the PAC and APLA leadership are held to be morally and politically responsible and accountable"
.
[25]
End of the armed struggle
[
edit
]
In April 1992, PAC President
Clarence Makwetu
declared during the PAC's Annual Congress that his party would now not oppose participation in the
multi-racial
negotiations to end the apartheid
.
[26]
In spite of their failure to achieve their goals at the negotiations, the PAC decided to participate in the
1994 elections
, and PAC leader
Clarence Makwetu
ordered APLA to end its armed struggle.
[27]
Post-1994
[
edit
]
In 1994, APLA was disbanded and absorbed into the new
South African National Defence Force
, although members of the MR-faction refused to accept this agreement. Attempts by MR officers to regroup in
Vietnam
,
North Korea
, and
China
were unsuccessful, although links were maintained with the
Tamil Tigers
and Maoist groups in Nepal and India.
[
citation needed
]
Occasional propaganda leaflets distributed within South Africa focus on disparity of wealth and the issue of land.
Awards
[
edit
]
See also
[
edit
]
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Leeman, Lieutenant-General Bernard “The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania” in
Africa Today
, A Multi-Disciplinary Snapshot of the Continent in 1995 Edited by Peter F. Alexander, Ruth Hutchison and Deryck Schreuder The Humanities Research Centre The
Australian National University
Canberra 1996, pages 172?195
ISBN
0-7315-2491-8
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
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- ^
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.
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b
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.
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.
Archived
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- ^
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.
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.
Archived
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. Retrieved
30 April
2018
.
- ^
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- ^
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, (Lalibela House: 1961), p.21
- ^
a
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.
- ^
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.
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Archived
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. Retrieved
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.
- ^
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.
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:
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. p. 252.
ISBN
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.
- ^
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. Unisa Press. pp. 17?.
ISBN
978-1-86888-406-3
.
- ^
a
b
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. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. pp. 209?.
ISBN
978-3-905758-12-2
.
- ^
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.
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. Archived from
the original
on 4 March 2016
. Retrieved
20 October
2015
.
- ^
a
b
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.
sabctrc.saha.org.za
. Retrieved
27 January
2024
.
- ^
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.
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. 1997
. Retrieved
27 January
2024
.
- ^
a
b
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(PDF)
.
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.
44
(1): 9.
ISSN
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– via Scientific Electronic Library Online.
- ^
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.
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. Retrieved
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2024
.
- ^
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.
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. Retrieved
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.
- ^
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"
.
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.
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- ^
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- ^
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.
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.
- ^
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.
- ^
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. Mail and Guardian. 24 April 2014.
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.
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