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Illicit History - 2 - The Fall of Apartheid South Africa ft. Mike Hanna (Patreon)

Published:
2017-09-10 18:54:36
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Michael discusses several key moments that precipitated the fall of apartheid in South Africa with Mike Hanna (@mjahanna), longtime journalist and news presenter who was working in South African media in those late stages of apartheid. Mike talks about his time at the independent Capitol radio, which provided an outlet to push back against apartheid legalism and propaganda. 


Comments

Dael Morris

Mike's recollection of the unbanning announcement struck me forcefully. I was 17 years old, turning 18, and a very unhappy conscript in the South African Defence Force at that time. I'd been forcibly radicalised through that experience, included in which was the threat of jailing as well as beatings and a period of forced committal to a mental institution for questioning what was happening. We were kids, deployed as additional man power to the police, theoretically to maintain civil order, but very quickly realised that the police were causing a significant part of the problem. I have so many intense and strange memories from that time, one of which was to see professional officers and warrant officers stunned by this announcement. I had a special forces Sergeant Major, tough as nails, recently withdrawn from illegal cross-border operations and genuinely on the edge of craziness, and when we were discharged, he sought me out and just cried and cried. Amazing. The CODESA process was the stripping of key left elements from any future government, a mainstreaming of the ANC and the coalition, as well as the realisation by both the ANC and the then National Party that they relied heavily on media coverage to avert a backlash by the security forces, much of which had gone solo.

Dael Morris

First time I ever voted was to open negotiations with the ANC. The original referendum that started the formal process, and then in 1994. The latter also the last time. What Mike didn't have time to go into in any great detail was the underbelly of the movement, that's now come to the fore in the score settling, murder and ethnic divisiveness of the Zuma government. It's insufficient to pin it on a personality when the cracks we're seeing now were inherent in the activities of these same parties well before liberation. There are real structural problems. The "roots" that Mike refers to towards the end are encapsulated in the Freedom Charter, but the work of extrapolating that into policy never meaningfully occurred and was derailed in the CODESA process. They remained meaningful at grass roots level for some time, but towards the end of the nineties there was a concerted effort by the Mbeki government to shut down leftist dissent, and they succeeded. It's that success that made it easier for the ethnically divisive, factional wing of the ANC headed by Zuma to pretty much reverse course in almost every way while paying lip service to "freedom", an idea that has become a fig leaf for all sorts of significant illegalities, violent repression, and outright corruption. Anyway. Another conversation for another time.

TMBS

Dael, this is incredible feedback!! Thank you. Do you think things would have been different if mbeki stayed in power at all?

Dael Morris

I thin the breakdown would have been slower, perhaps, but ultimately the same. You have to remember that Mbeki suffered similar violent civil disturbances, for similar goes if service delivery to the poor. (That was the reason he clamped down on the grass roots movements.) And you have to remember that the arms deal, the paradigm case for delineating South African corruption happened on his watch. It wouldn't have had the ethnic thuggery element that Zuma brought, nor Zuma's factional patronage approach, nor the sheer numbers of political killings that follow Zuma around, but it would still have led to the poor remaining poor, and getting worse. The decisions about economics, structural decisions, were made during transition. Patrick Bond is good on this and I'll dig some of his stuff up for you.

Dael Morris

Typing on phone - lots of autocorrect failures :). I imagine you get the gist.