Page 166 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

668 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Cuito Cuanavale]’ in November 1988 (Resister 58, October-November 1988: 12-13).
the committee also generated other agitational material, such as posters, pamphlets and
stickers which were distributed though aNC underground structures, promoting slogans su-
ch as ‘Resist Apartheid War’ or ‘Troops out of Namibia and Angola’.

cosawr’s Links to the Liberation movement and its secret work
Throughout its existence, COSAWR was at risk of infiltration or worse from the South
African security structures, which unsurprisingly regarded efforts to undermine the morale
and cohesion of its armed forces as a significant threat. A number of agents – mostly low
level – working for military intelligence or the security police were uncovered over the
course of the years, and a few war resisters returned to South Africa (after appropriate in-
ducements or threats against their families) to reveal usually rather fanciful details of the
horrors of exile and communist manipulation of the war resistance movement. There was in
effect an ongoing propaganda war between the SADF and COSAWR, which was sometimes
described as ‘the South African Communist Party/ANC/COSAWR alliance’ (Resister 67,
December 1990).
in part to guard against infiltration, and in part reflecting its rather undemocratic ethos
and its determination not to become a membership organisation, the main structure of CO-
SAWR remained a committee, the membership of which was usually obscure and which was
self-appointed. Exiles and activists were involved in a set of sub-committees through which
campaigns were run and literature generated and were often only vaguely aware of the main
committee. The committee was also responsible for maintaining links – usually kept discreet
– with the ANC and there was a constant tension between the need for COSAWR to project
itself as a broad-based structure and the need to maintain ‘the line’ put out by the ANC. This
was never really satisfactorily resolved.
Activities inside South Africa were not carried out autonomously, for reasons explained
earlier, but by a sub-committee of the ANC on which war resisters and ANC officials sat,
which was understandably an even more secret structure, going by the designation CRAW –
‘Conscripts Resist Apartheid War’. This monitored the activities of the white anti-apartheid
movement inside the country, met clandestinely with activists and sometimes recruited them
to aNC underground structures.
Perhaps the most covert of all the committee’s activities was intelligence, which was dis-
guised as ‘research’. While COSAWR maintained a legitimate research function, for exam-
ple explaining that it was analysing the militarisation of South Africa and war resistance,
and passing the information on to the solidarity movement, religious organisations and other
structures, it also maintained a secret intelligence-gathering function. Initially, this was set
up in London, but in the mid-1980s it was transferred to the ANC’s headquarters in Lusaka,
Zambia where it became part of ANC Military Intelligence.
The intelligence involved both covert and overt methods. While the SADF maintained a
strict information control regime, at the same time it produced a number of information and
propaganda publications such as the magazine Paratus. Apparently innocuous information
in these publications (for example reports on sports events), when put together, could assist
in building up a picture of structures, units, order of battle and so on. International military