‘Past History Has Not Been Forgotten’: The ANC/ZAPU Alliance – the Second Phase, 1978–1980

The apparent camaraderie displayed by Presidents Jacob Zuma and Robert Mugabe, and President Thabo Mbeki’s ‘tilt’ towards Mugabe in electoral controversies in Zimbabwe, have created the impression among many in South Africa that the African National Congress (ANC) and Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) were allies in the struggle against apartheid. The history of the ANC/Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) alliance has been neglected. This article focuses on the almost unknown second phase of the alliance in 1978–80 and its consequences. The history of ZAPU, which lost the struggle for power in Zimbabwe in 1980, has been largely erased, while the ANC has no reason to celebrate an alliance which bedevilled its relationship with independent Zimbabwe for many years. This article reconstructs the story of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) participation with the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) in Zimbabwe in the year or so before the Lancaster House talks in 1979. It then examines the consequences of the alliance for the relationship with ZANU during the 1980s. The second half of the article looks, largely from an ANC perspective, at what was seen by participants as the negative influence of ZIPRA training methods, as transmitted to MK members in ZIPRA camps in Zambia, and by MK veterans of the Zimbabwe war in the Angolan camps, on the political culture of MK. It discusses the allegedly apolitical and anti-intellectual impact of the toyi-toyi, and of songs or chants, such as ‘kill the Boer, kill the farmer’, which were seen as in conflict with the non-racial ethos of the ANC. The article looks finally at the continuing relevance of this anti-intellectual culture, and of Zimbabwean models, in South Africa today.