The African National Congress of South Africa in Zambia: The Culture of Exile and the Changing Relationship with Home, 1964–1990**

Abstract

Liberal and other critics of the ANC in government in South Africa frequently refer to the malign influence of ‘exile’ on the culture of the party, citing alleged secrecy, paranoia and lack of internal democracy, as the inevitable consequences of the years spent abroad – but they do this without much knowledge of the real experience of exile. This article focuses on the ANC in Zambia, specifically Lusaka, and seeks to examine the history, geography and culture of exile in that place, to provide the missing dimensions of time and space, and to trace the changing relationship between the movement and its two main ‘homes’ – Zambia and South Africa. The article examines the changing status of the ANC in Zambia from one among many Zambia-based liberation movements in the 1960s and 1970s to a predominant position in the 1980s, as its exile population increased, and it developed the bureaucratic structures of a government-in-waiting. The ANC's headquarters in Zambia gained in importance as its members were pushed out of other front-line states in the 1980s. Meanwhile, Lusaka became, paradoxically, the destination of an increasing flow of emissaries from the burgeoning internal democratic movement, and from other interest groups. The article's major theses are that the culture of exile of the ANC in Zambia was more typical of its underlying culture than that in any other place and that this reflected the relative openness of Zambia itself. It is also argued that lessons learned by the ANC in Zambia about the one-party state, and about economic management, had a significant influence on the its own policies during the transition to democracy, and in government, after the return of the ANC to South Africa in 1990.