South Africa, Apartheid and Terror

excerpted from the book

State Terrorism and the United States

From Counterinsurgency to the War on Terrorism

by Frederick H. Gareau

Clarity Press, 2004, paper

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Apartheid

... the Republic of South Africa in 1949, the year the Nationalist Party came to power and prepared to formulate and to institute its policy of apartheid. The term itself means "separateness" in Afrikaans. It sought to impose extremes in segregation to an already segregated and racist society. Apartheid aspired to create a total pigmentocracy created by, and combined with, massive oppression and exploitation.

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The Nationalists came to power in South Africa in 1949 with great expectations to institutionalize white domination of blacks, but without having spelled out just how apartheid was to be achieved. With larger and larger mandates in subsequent (white-only) elections, they pushed through progressively restrictive legislation enforcing racial segregation in white areas for Africans, the colored, and Asians. And they sought to establish separate Bantustans for the separate tribal development of the Africans. Ideally, they would force all Africans into these "homelands," each one restricted to one of the many ethnic groups into which the Africans at one time were divided. The Bantustan was a centerpiece of the apartheid plan to remold and to restructure the racial architecture of South African society.

THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION REPORT

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The TRCR's investigation was limited to what it called "gross violations of human rights" that occurred during that period. These violations were defined by the TRCR to mean killings, abductions, torture, and severe ill treatment of any person, or any attempt, conspiracy, incitement, or command to commit such acts. Included also is what this volume calls terror.

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Before agreeing to the death of apartheid and the birth of majority rule, de Klerk insisted on amnesty provisions. These were written into the new constitution. There is doubt that he would have agreed to the new dispensation without these provisions. The political situation of the time as well as the commission that wrote the TRCR were subject to cross pressures, not unlike those existing at the initiation of other truth commissions. The Africans had the votes, but the whites had the guns and the economy. The whites were generally unrepentant, sometimes arrogant, hidden away as they were in their all-white neighborhoods and generally unaware of the plight of the Africans. The possibility of a coup existed. Whites learned from the hearings that were held of what had been done in their name, that is, if they bothered to listen.

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Gross Human Rights Violations: Pretoria and the Inkatha

... the report of the commission was voluminous, consisting of no less than 2,759 pages, distributed in five volumes. Despite the deficiencies noted above, the commission expressed confidence in the validity of its findings. I regard it as a fine basis, the best I have seen, upon which to evaluate the terrorism and the violations of human rights that occurred in South Africa from 1960 to 1995. The commission found that "the predominate portion of gross violations of human rights was committed by the former state through its security and law-enforcement agencies." This is the beginning of an answer to a central question posed by this study: whether the terrorism committed in South Africa was state terrorism committed by the government or private terrorism committed by the opposition. Moreover, in the period from the late seventies to the early nineties the state "became involved in activities of a criminal nature," including the extra-judicial killing of political opponents. In doing so, the Botha and de Klerk administrations acted in collusion with other political groupings, most notably the lnkatha Freedom Party.

The commission went on to explain that the administrations before Botha killed opponents, but not in the systematic way introduced by his administration. During its first five to seven years in office, the Botha administration implemented its "total strategy" by invading neighboring countries and waging counterinsurgency warfare against them. This strategy led to the deaths of some 1.5 million victims in neighboring countries. The TRCR mentioned this slaughter only in passing. Its estimates were confined to what had happened within the Republic of South Africa itself. When the conflict intensified within South Africa itself in the mid-eighties, the tactics that worked abroad were applied domestically. A military style of opposing internal dissent became the hallmark of the State Security Council, whose decisions were almost always accepted by the cabinet. Actually, all of its key members sat on the council as did the leadership of the security forces. The South African military began to play an increasing role in domestic security, and the military way of destroying the enemy was transferred from the external to the internal and became more and more common practice within the country. The public rhetoric of the cabinet and security forces as well as their internal documents mirrored this change as they began to be laced with terms such as "take out," "neutralize," "wipe out," "remove," "eliminate," "cause to disappear," and "destroy terrorists." The word 'terrorist' was used constantly, but never defined. ) Botha himself called Mandela a "communist terrorist." No distinction was drawn between activists engaged in military operations or acts of terrorism and those who opposed apartheid by lawful and peaceful means. All were lumped together as one target, a single category of persons to be killed. The kill rate perpetrated by the government increased accordingly, as did the use of torture, abduction, arson, and sabotage. The commission alleged that Botha, as head of the state and as chairperson of the State Security Council, contributed to a climate in which gross violations of human rights could and did occur. It concluded that he was responsible for such violations.

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The commission returned to its principal charge against the South African state. It used these words: "The state-in the form of the South African government, the civil service, and its security forces-was, in the period 1960-1994, the primary perpetrator of gross violations of human rights in South Africa, and from 1974, in southern Africa." It re-asserted this accusation in its discussion of apartheid, which it characterized as a crime against humanity. The commission

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Archbishop Tutu argued that Soviet communism played a pivotal role in the politics of the apartheid era, with nations defining themselves in terms of their relationship to communism. The communist threat was regarded as being so serious that prominent democracies such as the United States supported the world's worst dictatorships, such as that of Pinochet, rather than countenance social change on the scale that communism promised. Similarly, so the Archbishop charged, the United States had been willing to subvert democratically elected governments merely because the governments were communist-influenced. And the United States did not care much about the human rights records of their surrogates. The Archbishop concluded that the South African government in its own crusade against communism was far from being an exception.

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The Guilt of Civil Society

The commission quite wisely concluded that civil society was also guilty, through acts of omission and commission, of supporting an apartheid regime that committed gross violations of human rights. Quite appropriately, the commission introduced this subject with a quote from Major Craig Williamson made at a commission hearing on the armed forces. He was "handled" by General Johan Coetzee, who later became the commissioner of the police. A member of the security forces, the major allowed himself to be recruited by the ANC. He then set up what was ostensibly an ANC cell, but actually it consisted entirely of members of the security forces. A specialty of the major was to provide pamphlet bombs to the ANC. This procedure led to entrapment operations in which ANC operatives were caught and killed. At the hearings the major said:

It is therefore not only the task of the security forces to examine themselves and their deeds. It is for every member of the society which we served to do so. Our weapons, ammunition, uniforms, vehicles, radios, and other equipment were all developed and provided by industry. Our finances and banking were done by bankers who even gave us covert credit cards for covert operations. Our chaplains prayed for our victory, and our universities educated us in war. Our propaganda was carried by the media, and our political masters were voted back in power time after time with ever-increasing majorities.

The commission granted that the sectors of civil society generally were not directly involved in the gross violations, but they were structurally part of a system that was. At the broadest level, the white electorate gave the National Party the mandate to do what it did, and this party's popularity increased after the 1948 elections as it embarked upon its program. Singled out for specific blame and mention were the health sector, organized religion, business, the media, and the judiciary. The media and organized religion exerted immense influence on the formation of ideas and moral codes, as did professional bodies of doctors and lawyers who were often seen as the custodians of scientific knowledge and impartiality. Although there was little evidence of direct involvement of health professionals in gross violations, they failed, among other things, to provide adequate health care for black South Africans and to draw attention to the negative health effects of apartheid, torture, and solitary confinement. The commission took f health religion to task for promoting the ideology of apartheid in a range of different ways that included biblical and theological teachings. The churches provided chaplains who wore the uniforms of the police and armed forces, enjoyed the ranks of armed personnel, and some even carried side arms. On occasion they accompanied the troops engaged in internal conflicts or invasions of bordering countries.

Having pointed out that South African society was divided not only on racial lines, but on class lines as well, the commission argued that business was central to the economy that sustained apartheid. Most businesses benefited from operating in a racially structured context-those especially favored were mining, white agriculture, and the industry that supplied the military. The commission noted in its hearings that the business sector failed to accept responsibility for its involvement in state security initiatives. More than 100 laws were passed to restrict the media, their impact after 1985 amounting to pre-publication censorship of information about state-sanctioned violations. The commission found that the racism that permeated white society permeated the media as well. Moreover, mainstream English-language media adopted "a policy of appeasement towards the state, ensuring a large measure of self-censorship." With rare exceptions, the Afrikaans media provided direct support for apartheid and the activities of the security forces.

The commission criticized the judiciary for its collusion with the police regarding the torture of detainees and its collaboration in producing the highest capital punishment rate in the" Western world," an execution rate that overwhelmingly impacted poor black males. It found both the judiciary and the organized legal profession "locked into an overwhelmingly passive mind set" in the face of the injustices of apartheid. They had a choice of opposing such injustice, or taking the honorable way out by resigning.

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Despite changes in administrations Washington supported a racist Pretoria from 1960 to the late 1980's.

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Washington provided military support ... In this period, the South African military bought arms in the United States as a matter of course. Such a deal in October 1952 provided for a purchase of $112 million in weapons, and the contract specifically noted that the weapons could be used for internal security. In a visit to the United States in 1950, the South African finance minister failed to get the full amount of a projected $70 million loan he sought. But after the two countries and Britain agreed to the development of South African uranium production, the financing was forthcoming from the World Bank and other sources. The 1950 agreement on the development of South African uranium was followed by years of nuclear cooperation between the African country and the West. In 1976 Dr. Roux, President of the South African Atomic Energy Board, ascribed "our" degree of nuclear advancement "in large measure to the training and assistance so willingly provided by the USA during the earlier years of our nuclear programme." With help from the West, Pretoria did develop a nuclear bomb...

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White rule in South Africa was preferred not only because it was adamantly anti-communist, but also because it brought stability to the country. This was good for business and trade, and investments in South Africa grew apace. Moreover, South Africa was strategically located, and had sizeable uranium deposits. In an address to a branch of the African National Congress in 1953, Nelson Mandela reminded his fellow party members that "there is no easy walk to freedom anywhere."

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... all of the administrations from Truman to and including that of Carter provided support for a racist Pretoria and for other racist and colonial regimes in southern Africa. This support increased during the Reagan years.

... Soon after taking office, President Reagan strongly endorsed friendship with South Africa on nationwide TV. He initiated a policy that his administration called "constructive engagement."

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Archbishop Tutu declared that this was a period in which Washington enthusiastically supported any government however shabby its human rights record was so long as it declared itself to be anti-communist. "Thus the apartheid government benefited hugely from President Ronald Reagan's notorious 'constructive engagement' policy." While paying lip service to anti-apartheid sentiment, the Reagan administration said that it could more likely bring about change by maintaining relations with Pretoria than by isolating it. After receiving the Nobel Prize for peace in 1984, the archbishop engaged in some private diplomacy in Washington and London. He tried to get both Reagan and Thatcher to impose economic sanctions on South Africa. He met with Reagan and his cabinet, but to no avail. The president was a bit shocked when the archbishop showed him his travel document. He was not allowed a regular South African passport. The shock was caused by the entry in the space for nationality. The entry read "Undeterminable at present."

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Violent demonstrations in South Africa escalated to the level of civil war. Human rights groups estimated that between September 1984 and mid 1986, 2,500 were killed, nearly all Africans. At least 30,000 were detained, including 300 youngsters under eighteen. These demonstrations were triggered by a new constitution that provided for Indian and colored representation, but not for African representation and by a defiant speech delivered by Botha. The violent street reaction in South Africa was matched in the United States by peaceful demonstrations instigated by African Americans, students, churches, and others. Some six thousand protestors were arrested picketing the South African embassy and its consulates, including eighteen members of congress, one being a Senator (Senator Weicker). Pressure was put on universities, local government, and businesses resulting in divestiture and the refusal of banks to role over loans for South Africa. More than half of the American firms with direct investments in South Africa withdrew them between 1984 and the end of 1986. The value of the rand plunged. A declining economy and a volatile political situation induced South African business to pressure the government for change.

Washington finally imposed sanctions on South Africa in 1985 and 1986.

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The Republican platform for the 1988 election reaffirmed its support for the Reagan administration's policies in South Africa and opposed sanctions. In contrast to this, the Democratic platform called for comprehensive sanctions and named South Africa a "terrorist state."

In 1989 T.W. de Klerk replaced P.W. Botha as head of the ruling party in South Africa and as head of the government. The Botha government had waged a war on the home front and one abroad as well. It invaded neighboring countries, pillaging and terrorizing their civilian populations. On the home front, Africans had become more and more militant, and were in open rebellion. The government declared martial law and states of emergency, detained prisoners without trial and tortured them, censored the press, banned political meetings, committed political murders, and organized death squads. Domestic support for apartheid was dwindling, and the Reagan administration, despite its own feelings and policies, was forced by Congress to impose meaningful economic sanctions. One of the last straws occurred when the Dutch Reformed Church, a beacon of moral leadership for most Afrikaners, switched theological positions on apartheid. Whereas before the church argued that apartheid had been mandated by the Bible, after the switch the church declared apartheid to be immoral. It was in this context that apartheid legislation was repealed and Africans and other nonwhites were allowed to vote.

De Klerk released top African leaders from prison, including Nelson Mandela, the head of the African National Congress. He then initiated negotiations with the former "saboteur," "terrorist," and prison inmate, to lay the groundwork for a democratic regime. Mandela had served some 28 years of a life sentence under the Suppression of Communism Act for involvement in sabotage. Just four years and two months after his release from jail, he became the president of South Africa.

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... the general impact of Pretoria's total strategy upon neighboring countries. Both were commissioned by United Nations agencies. The first is named South African Destabilization: The Economic Cost of the Frontline Resistance to Apartheid. Initiated by an economic task force appointed by the Secretary General, its purpose was to determine the impact of South Africa's total strategy on the prospects for development of the region. The second source is entitled Children on the Frontline: the Impact of Apartheid, Destabilization and Warfare on the Children of Southern Africa. It was commissioned by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Its publication resulted from a decision made by UNICEF's executive board in 1986 to assess the impact of military and political activities in the region upon women and children. It has four authors. They are Reg Green, a fellow at the Institute of Development Studies of the University of Sussex; a UNICEF staff member; a UNICEF project officer; and the UNICEF representative for Mozambique and Swaziland. The preface to the report enlarged upon the reason for the initiation and publishing of the report. It alleged that apartheid itself and South Africa's incursions into surrounding countries have been universally condemned. But it went on to say:

But the extent to which South Africa's policies of apartheid, economic disruption and de-stabilization have seriously affected the lives, health, and welfare of children in other countries of southern Africa has been hardly reported upon, and almost certainly too little appreciated. To help remedy this situation, UNICEF has commissioned this paper.

The above quote singles out children as the victims of these massacres since UNICEF's mandate is with these innocents. Obviously, the massacres affected adults as well, and their fate was not widely advertised either. The ignoring and minimizing of the massacres and terror committed by Pretoria against neighboring African populations is an extremely significant point. Despite my longstanding interest in Africa, I was unaware of its extent. But these phenomena of minimizing and being ignorant of abuse have come up again and again in connection with other massacres and terror described in this volume. The report returned to this subject a few pages later, but from a new angle. Its reference shifted from the exclusive concern with the welfare of children, the chief human victims of the total strategy, to reflect on the general situation in Angola and Mozambique, the chief territorial victims of the strategy. The report declared:

Since independence Angola and Mozambique have been beset by internal fighting and external attacks from South Africa. Hardly a week has been passed in peace.

The widespread and continuing conflict in these two countries has been virtually ignored as most of the world has concentrated its attention on events within South Africa and Namibia. It is necessary to outline here its instruments, its economic and social costs to the region and, above all, the human costs in the lives of the region's children.

Tom Brennan, a consultant to the U.S. Committee for Refugees, complained of the lack of coverage of the violence in the American media. He registered this complaint in a publication written in 1986, affirming that the crisis had been ongoing for eleven years and had steadily grown more violent. He asserted that human suffering and human displacements were truly massive in scale in the entire southern third of the African continent and that there existed a potential for catastrophe. He continued:

Until very recently, however, little has appeared in the American media regarding the domestic situations in Mozambique or of the other nations in southern Africa, or regarding their relationships with each other and with the South African government. Even less has appeared on the impact that the existing and potential armed conflicts in the region--stemming from ideological as well as ethnic and racial differences-are likely to have on the civilian populations of the area as the struggle to eliminate apartheid gains momentum.

The UNICEF report indicated that Mozambique and Angola had the highest infant and children mortality rates in the world. This is ironic since these two countries gave priority in the post independence period to public health measures designed to improve the health of the population, especially infants and children. Their governments created networks of health centers and posts, thousands of health workers were trained, and mass vaccination programs were implemented. The groundwork for this ambitious public health program was laid in the immediate post colonial period. It took root and blossomed in 1979 and 1980, only to be poisoned after that. It is no accident that this setback occurred at the very time that Pretoria started seriously to apply its total strategy. The UNICEF report charged that the war and the destabilization campaign (total strategy) chose health and educational facilities as targets. It offered as examples the 718 health posts and centers destroyed in Mozambique since 1981 and the schools for 300,000 primary school children. The destruction of the health posts and centers deprived two million people of health care. In areas of southern Angola and in much of rural Mozambique vaccinations were no longer given because of lack of security. Many health workers were maimed, wounded, kidnapped, or killed. The result was that easily preventable diseases and curable illnesses "are now taking a hideous and rising toll on the vulnerable age group of infants and children under five."

In 1986 one hundred and forty thousand children under the age of five in these two countries lost their lives because of South Africa's "war and destabilization" campaign, what we refer to as its "total strategy." The number of deaths was expected to increase in 1987. But it was not merely the state of the children in these countries that "is grave and getting worse." All fifteen million children in the region whose countries border South Africa were considered to be in the same perilous situation. They were caught up in the throes of an external civil conflict and an economic de-stabilization campaign (total strategy). While the report set forth a number of conditions responsible for undermining the health of children in these two countries and the others in southern Africa, war and de-stabilization were identified as the major causes. And the report concluded that all countries in the region suffered economic losses either directly from South African aggression or from its destabilization campaign or indirectly by having to spend more on defense. Mozambique spent 42 percent of its budget on defense, one of the highest percentages in the world. This diminished the revenue left over for social services, for example, for children. The dislocation of the population also contributed to malnutrition and starvation. This was particularly evident in the case of Angola and Mozambique where 9 million people became refugees at one time or another. After 1981 sabotage units were particularly active. The principal targets were transportation and power infrastructure, but major production units came under the gun as well, especially those earning foreign exchange. The destruction of the transportation systems of neighboring countries made these countries more dependent on South Africa's system for the export of their commodities.

The UNICEF report argued that what is called here Pretoria's "total strategy" went beyond seeking merely to destroy military and economic targets to include those that sustain the very social fabric of nations. The report gave as examples of the fruit of this objective the destruction of health and educational facilities, the dislocation of communities, the loss of food production, and the reduction of the health and water budgets because of expenditures for defense. In another section, some of this type of destruction appeared again, but as the result of mass terrorism:

One of the deadliest weapons of the war is the mass terrorism carried out by forces which have burned crops and farm houses, pillaged and destroyed schools, clinics, churches, mosques, stores and villages, poisoned wells by throwing bodies down them, and attacked the transport system which is a vital part of rural life. Members of religious orders, mainly South Africa, Catholics, have been murdered and kidnapped. So too have foreign aid workers from both West and East. In Angola and Mozambique teachers, nurses, agricultural technicians, engineers, and geologists have also been killed and kidnapped, maimed and mutilated.

The carnage has been indiscriminate, with infants and children not exempted. The results are clear and tragic: death for many, and for the survivors fear and flight, destruction and displacement. About 8.5 million Angolans and Mozambicans__. roughly half the rural population of the two countries-have been displaced or are internal refugees in their own countries.

The costs of the war are cumulative, have been escalating since 1981, and are likely to continue to do so.

South African Destabilization, a report initiated by a task force appointed by the Secretary General of the United Nations, provides an estimate of the total economic and demographic cost to the victims in neighboring countries of the implementation of South Africa's total strategy. Its purpose was to provide a synthesis of the impact of South Africa's total strategy upon neighboring countries. It concluded that the cost to these countries from 1980 to 1988 was over $60 billion at 1988 prices, reflecting the loss in gross domestic product attributed to the implementation of this strategy by South Africa and its accomplices. The report added that the losses promise to extend beyond 1988. The report indicated that Pretoria's strategy killed the inhabitants of neighboring countries in three ways.

The first was directly by war or terrorism, the victims being military personnel or civilians. The second was through a combination of malnutrition, disease, and the destruction of rural health networks. Those killed by this method were usually infants and young children. The third consisted of famine-related deaths as a result of the lack of food caused by drought in combination with general insecurity. The report concluded that by the end of 1988, 1.5 million had been killed in these three ways. Over half of the fatalities were infants or children under five. The report estimated that almost half of the populations of Angola and Mozambique had been driven from their homes at least once, usually with the loss of possessions. It calculated that at the time of the writing, 1.5 million were refugees abroad and 6.1 million were displaced internally.

The estimate of the task force that 1.5 million were killed can be compared with a 1988 study commissioned by the U.S. State Department that concluded that the guerrilla group, the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), alone killed 100,000 civilians in Mozambique. By the time of the study Washington was supportive of the Mozambican government, rather than opposing it as before. This guerrilla group was established by Southern Rhodesia's intelligence organization around 1975, and after that colony became African-governing in 1980, the South African Army adopted it. Until the middle of 1979, it had little more than nuisance value. But with South African supplies and support it witnessed a marked improvement in its destructive power. It became active in all parts of Mozambique and, besides its propensity to kill, it was responsible for much of the damage to the country's transportation system. RENAMO carried on guerrilla operations differently from the way the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FREIJMO) did when it was leading the fight against Portuguese rule. FRELIMO sought only to disrupt economic activity and used a selective targeting system for civilians. In contrast, RENAMO "has often completely destroyed economic infrastructure and has been generally )_discriminate in its attacks on the civilian population."

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WASHINGTON, SOUTH AFRICA AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

Chemical and Bacteriological Weapons

The commission discovered that the apartheid governments developed a chemical and bacteriological warfare (CBW) capability. The TRCR based its investigation of the CBW program on more than 150 documents, affidavits, amnesty applications, and interviews. Given the code name Project Coast, this program was under the general management of the chief of staff of the defense force, the chief of staff of intelligence, the surgeon general of the army, and Dr. Wouter Basson, the project director. Its goals included the manufacture of cholera, botulism, anthrax, chemical poisoning, drugs of abuse allegedly for crowd control, lethal microorganisms for use against individuals, and "applicators" (murder weapons) developed for their administration. As examples, anthrax was "applied" in cigarettes, botulism in milk, and paraoxon in whiskey. A company was enlisted secretly to act as a front for the project. The commission concluded that toxins had been used by the security forces against anti-apartheid activists. Although the production of a thousand kilograms of methaqualone (mandrax) was started, its production was stopped in 1988, because its ability to incapacitate was found to be too slow to act as an efficient agent for crowd control. Work on its analogues continued. A British scientist alleged that South African troops used a chemical agent against guerrillas from Mozambique in a military encounter along the South African-Mozambican border in January 1992. Other investigators, including the United Nations, could not verify the charge. The commission concluded that the matter remained unresolved.

The commission concluded that "without some level of foreign assistance, the (CBW) programme would not have been possible." The assistance was forthcoming from Belgium, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the early eighties, Dr. Basson attended a conference on the subject held in San Antonio. "Other documents reveal links between the surgeon general (of the South African army) and Americans who were part of the United States CBW programme, and demonstrate their willingness to assist South Africans." Dr. Basson visited the United States in 1981, and later Dr. Knobel, the surgeon general, had contact with scientists who were part of the American CBW program. As 1993 drew to a close and the ANC seemed closer to taking over the government, both the Unites States and the British governments expressed concern lest a government under the control of the African National Congress take over the program. At a hearing of the commission both Dr. Basson and Dr, Knobel testified that these governments told them that they did not want this to happen.

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Nuclear Weapons

Much earlier Washington helped Pretoria develop a nuclear capability. In 1957 Washington signed a 50-year agreement for nuclear cooperation with Pretoria, and the latter has received "extensive assistance in the nuclear field" from the United States. In 1961 South Africa purchased a Safari 1 research reactor from the United States. There has been some variation between administrations in the intensity of the collaboration. The Carter administration sought to impose more restrictive parameters on the sale of nuclear technology than the Reaganites. They approved the sale of vital equipment that could be used, for example, to simulate nuclear explosions and to test warheads and re-entry equipment. A study by the General Accounting Office found that in 1981 South Africa was the second leading country purchasing "dual-purpose, nuclear related" equipment from the United States. In 1984 a substantial number of the licenses issued by the Commerce Department for export to South Africa were for material that could be used in producing or testing nuclear weapons despite the fact that Pretoria had refused to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Britain, West Germany, France, and more recently Israel were heavily involved in assisting as well. When challenged, the political elites of each country insisted that their collaboration was for peaceful purposes only. The General Assembly of the United Nations on numerous occasions called for a stop to such collaboration, but it continued. Efforts to exclude South Africa from the International Atomic Energy Agency failed, because of the opposition to exclusion by the Western nations. There was evidence that Pretoria conducted nuclear tests in 1979, 1981, and 1987. Despite strong evidence to the contrary, Washington claimed that there was no "corroborating evidence" for the first test or that the evidence was "inconclusive". In like manner, it shrugged oft the other reported tests as well.

Western collaboration with South Africa continued, and "it paid off." In August 1988 Foreign Minister PK Botha announced that South Africa had a nuclear capability, and in March 1993 President de Klerk acknowledged that the apartheid state had produced six nuclear bombs in 1989.

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South African society under apartheid was not only structured by race, but also by class. Africans were not only discriminated against socially and generally humiliated, they were found at the bottom of the national pay scale. At the other end was the business class, which benefited from the low wages that existed in the racist society. Especially favored were mining, white agriculture, and the defense industry. Besides criticizing business, the TRCR singled out for dishonorable mention organized religion, the health sector, the media, and the judiciary. The judiciary was charged with collusion with the police in the torturing of prisoners; the media with self-censorship or support for apartheid or repression; the health sector for not calling attention to the negative health effects of apartheid, torture, and solitary confinement; and organized religion for promoting the ideology of apartheid. Churches provided chaplains for the military and police forces, and sometimes the chaplains were armed.

One reason given for the establishment of a truth commission in South Africa was to inform the white population as to what had happened. Safely tucked away in their all-white segregated sections of the cities, the whites were unaware of what was happening in the African townships. I was reminded of the public in the United States separated by distance and propaganda from knowing that its government was helping rightwing governments commit state terrorism. In the case of South Africa, this help extended so far as to aid in the development of weapons of mass destruction.

State Terrorism and the United States

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