Page 165 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

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made contact with black South African exiles and engaged in solidarity activities.
By this stage in South African politics a new division had emerged within the broad
Marxist-influenced consensus, between ‘workerists’ and the more mainstream liberation mo-
vement: a division sometimes incorrectly posited as ‘Trotskyites’ vs ‘Stalinists’ (although
some strands of that old schism were evident). COSAWR-Netherlands, as it became know,
was deemed by the ANC to have been infiltrated by the ‘workerists’ and certain individu-
als were therefore necessarily to be excluded if the organisation was to become part of the
mainstream. The ‘Purge of Krasnapolski’ (named after one the main hotels in Amsterdam
where the event took place) therefore ensued, with a few of the already tiny group of war
resisters expelled by the ANC’s Chief Representative in London (who subsequently turned
out to be working for South African intelligence).
The USA, where SAMRAF retained its only presence, proved a more difficult nut to
crack. Making claims to only a tiny number of war resisters, SAMRAF had set itself up as
solidarity movement, with aims of building a white resistance movement inside South Afri-
ca. The organisation developed an ‘underground’ newletter, Omkeer (‘about turn’ in Afrika-
ans) which it circulated with some success inside South Africa and made links with black
liberation as well as anti-apartheid organisations in the US, although many of them found it
hard to deal with their somewhat overblown rhetoric and romantic revolutionism (apparently
at one stage they had recruited a shaman in the Mojave desert to prepare them for infiltra-
ting South Africa from Botswana). COSAWR stuggled for many years to get to grips with
the intricacies of US anti-racist and ‘anti-imperialist’ politics with which they had become
entwined. Although SALSCOM moved much closer to the ANC as the balance of power in-
ternationally and within South Africa shifted, the crunch came in 1981 when one of the war
resisters working with them defected back to South Africa (with attendant media publicity)
and the ANC formally broke off relations. SALSCOM faded away during the second half of
the 1980s.
The research and publicity work COSAWR carried out was largely showcased in its bi-
monthly journal Resister, which, according to the book which was based on it, ran for over
11 years to 67 issues, and put out 750 000 words (Rauch 1994). The journal – it was more of
a magazine - was distributed internationally, largely through the extensive Southern African
solidarity movement, and was also widely read in the military camps of the ANC’s armed
wing uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), where it was understandably popular, demonstrating as it
did to the young comrades that enemy morale was suspect, and carrying out analyses and
reporting on the South African Defence Force (SADF) and its activities. From an initial print
run of 300 for the first issue, circulation rose to around 3000.
It was also circulated inside South Africa, clandestinely as anyone caught in possession of a
copy could face a stiff prison sentence. In part distribution was done through the normal postal
services although many copies were of course intercepted in the extensive postal monitoring
system the South African regime operated, and in part through using the ANC’s propaganda
and information distribution systems. It combined information with campaigning – for exam-
ple in support of individual resisters (see below) or in support of the international arms em-
bargo against South Africa, and occasionally it produced agitational pamphlets, for example
one entitled ‘Pamphlet – photocopy, pass on – Angola: What really happened? [at the battle of