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publications were also scoured and analysed. More covert information was generated by
interviewing deserters (for example, about the location and strength of military units) and by
sourcing information from covert operatives inside the defence force. Even military mobili-
sation papers (known as call-ups) could be a source of information: for example if a signals
unit was mobilised then it was reasonably safe guess that the entire battalion to which it was
attached would be mobilised, and this information could be passed on to the ANC and its
Angolan and Cuban allies. In this way, COSAWR gained a reasonably accurate picture of
South African military structures and strengths – far more accurate than usually reputable
sources such as The Military Balance which tended to rely on South African propaganda
and disinformation. This knowledge became particularly useful when the ANC had to enter
negotiations with the defence force about the integration of military forces.
A further strand of covert work was the attempt to build resistance within the SADF. This
was extremely dangerous work and was left to the ANC’s underground structures, althou-
gh COSAWR provided a supporting framework. By 1990, it had borne considerable fruit,
although almost entirely in South Africa’s homelands or bantustans. The four nominally
‘independent’ homelands, Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei all had their own
mini-armies: each was infiltrated to varying extents by the ANC and engaged in mutinies and
military coups aimed at prizing the homelands from the grip of apartheid (Resister 66, third
Quarter 1990: 28-31).

the rift over exiLe
War resisters continued to go into exile in ever-increasing numbers (as noted above, as
many did not need to apply for asylum it is impossible to give accurate figures). However,
this was not without its tensions. Within the white student movement, for example, there
were many anti-apartheid activists who argued that exile was a debilitating experience and
that it was preferable for activists to remain inside the country and contribute to the domestic
struggle, even if this meant undergoing military service (although trying to ensure that this
was in a non-combat role). Two positions thus emerged (and these were replicated within the
ANC). According to the editors of a book on Resister:
The former group wanted to help build a non-racial resistance movement inside the coun-
try in which white democrats would play a role. They felt that taking a prescriptive position
on the issue of military service would narrow the role of white democrats to that of resisting
the draft. Thousands would be condemned to prison, a twilight existence of evading the mi-
litary police, or forced into exile, choices which would deplete the democratic movement of
internal activists. The latter group wanted to build a mass draft-resistance movement along
the lines of the movement that opposed US involvement in Vietnam and so provoke a crisis
of control within the white establishment (Cawthra et al 1994: 18)
as noted above, CoSaWR wanted both to build a mass war resistance movement and
an internal resistance within the SADF, and while it sympathised with those who wanted to
retain activists within the country, it felt that participation in the defence force would drive a
wedge between black and white democrats rather than uniting them. It therefore persuaded
the ANC and its allies to issue a general call to ‘resist apartheid war’ but to allow some le-
eway in terms of how conscripts interpreted this. This debate was eventually resolved when