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aCta
detentions and bans and free from state censorship, we could take a long view, develop and
inject ideas, create international support and lay the basis for wider action. Our links with
the broad anti-apartheid movement and the ANC were crucial in all this (Resister No 67,
December 1990).
During the period of negotiations (1990-1994) and immediately after, members of the
ECC and COSAWR, along with ANC and MK officials, set up a policy think-tank, the Mi-
litary Research Group (MRG). Although purporting to be independent, it was in fact closely
aligned with the ANC and was influential in establishing a framework for a post-apartheid
security and defence policy. To replace ‘total strategy’ the MRG introduced into South Afri-
can policy circles the concept of human security, which remains the bedrock of South African
security policy today. It also advocated principles of common or collaborative security in the
Southern African region and helped establish a framework for the integration and downsi-
zing of the military, and for establishing democratic political control over the security forces
and demilitarising society. In that sense, the anti-militarist work of the ECC and COSAWR
continued to bear fruit.

concLusion
This paper has traced the history of the war resistance movement in South Africa over
a period of 20 years, largely seen through the lens of the main exiled resistance movement,
COSAWR. It has demonstrated how a relatively small group of individuals, using exile as
base (a not uncommon feature of revolutionary conflicts) was able to exert significant po-
litical influence, though combining research and activism and public and covert activities
and through working with an existing liberation movement and an international solidarity
network. this in turn helped to create the conditions within which a domestic resistance mo-
vement, one of the largest ever amongst white South Africans, was able to emerge and play
an important role in laying the basis for a future non-racial South Africa.

referenCes

Bunting, B. (1986). The Rise of the South African Reich. London: International Defence and Aid
Fund.
Cawthra, G. (1986). Brutal Force: The Apartheid War Machine. London: International Defence and
aid Fund.
Cawthra, G. (1999). ‘From Total Strategy to Human Security: The Making of South Africa’s Defence
Policy 1990-1999’, Administratio Publica, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp 1-24.
Cawthra, G., Kraak, G. & O’Sullivan, G. (1994). ‘Resister and the Politics of the War Resistance
Movement’ in Cawthra, G., Kraak, G. & O’Sullivan, G., War and Resistance: Southern African
Reports. London: Macmillan.
CIIR (1989). Out of Step: War Resistance in South Africa. London: Catholic Institute for International
Relations.