Abstract

The 1984 mutiny in the Angolan camps of the African National Congress (ANC) has been the stuff of legends. For a long time two contradictory interpretations were prominent. One interpretation painted it as, completely, the work of apartheid agents and agent provocateurs. The other painted it as an instance where patriotic democrats took a stance for justice and they were crushed by an undemocratic ANC. The information that recently came out of the memoirs and biographies of former soldiers paints a more nuanced picture that reveals the situation to be more complex than the ANC's official view and those of its distractors. While there can be no way of absolutely ruling out enemy interference, all narratives point to the presence of genuine challenges that could have been handled better. The absence of senior leadership from the camps also ensured a weak response to these.

Highlights

  • The African National Congress (ANC) was formed in 1912 and it has led the struggle for liberation in South Africa

  • This article is wary of minimising the real security risk that ANC members lived with daily in dealing with an enemy that used spies to poison food in the camps and provide information that leads to cross-border raids that maimed and killed scores of ANC members (Greene, 2014)

  • Later-day narratives paint a more nuanced picture with details that suggest an intervention of circumstances that led to genuine frustration and demands, without discounting the possibility of some of these conditions becoming a boon for possible enemy agents

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Summary

Introduction

The African National Congress (ANC) was formed in 1912 and it has led the struggle for liberation in South Africa. In Ngculu’s account the unhappiness about staying a long time in the camps without being sent on operations was more evident in 1981, by 1980 there were already four comrades from one camp who were arrested by ANC security and FAPLA after they hiked almost 200 km to the headquarters in Luanda to express such frustrations (Ngculu, 2009).

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Conclusion

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