Politicsweb very kindly published my critique of the first and second editions of the biography, Chris Hani: A Life Too Short, by Janet Smith and Beauregard Tromp, on 17 April, under the headline "Chris Hani: A question still unasked", in which I investigated whether "the late MK leader did - or did not - order the murder of two MK dissidents in 1990".
At the end of my critique, I mentioned very briefly another biography, written by Hugh Macmillan, titled simply Chris Hani, which had been issued first by Jacana Media in South Africa in 2014. Macmillan's book has now been re-published in a second edition this year by Ohio University Press in the United States. I commented simply, "As with Smith and Tromp, the author provides no satisfactory examination of Hani's retribution against the 1976 generation in exile."
Other biographies of South African political leaders in this series, titled Ohio Short Histories of Africa, are of Albert Luthuli, Govan Mbeki and Thabo Mbeki. This gives global attention to Hani as one of four of the most significant figures in South African politics over the past three generations, as leaders of the African National Congress. In this context, the reliability, or lack of reliability, of the book is a crucial issue.
On its back cover, Jonny Steinberg, professor of African studies at Oxford University, describes Macmillan's book as "the standard account" of Hani, whom Steinberg describes as "a man increasingly enveloped in myth".
Arianna Lissoni, historian and researcher at Wits History Workshop, goes further. She describes the book on its back cover with adulatory praise as "both accessible and academically rigorous, providing the best available introduction to Hani's life, leaderhip style, political vision, and human qualities, which make him one of South Africa's liberation struggle's most beloved figures."
Given that Hugh Macmillan, author of this book which is now published by Ohio University Press, is listed on its back cover as a research associate at the African Studies Centre at Oxford University, the research shown in my article, "Chris Hani: A question still unasked", relates not only to Macmillan but to Steinberg and Lissoni, whose own study into Hani's life is revealed (using Steinberg's phrase) as "enveloped in myth". I am making a serious criticism here of academics at universities of global standing.
There is minimal in Macmillan's book which relate directly to the planned murder in Mthatha in Transkei on 13 April 1990 of Sipho Phungulwa and the attempted murder of Luthando Dyasop, two former soldiers in Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) who had fought in the ANC's army in the Cold War in Angola. They had returned to South Africa after the unbanning of the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP), of which Hani shortly afterwards became secretary general - the same position as that of Joseph Stalin in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the state which had provided Hani with political and ideological training, as well as military training, at first hand. Sipho Phungulwa and his close friend, Luthando Dyasop,were both isiXhosa-speakers from what is now Eastern Cape, as was Hani.
In his study covering 124 pages of text, Macmillan covers this murder and attempted murder in only two sentences. He writes: "Although there is no evidence to support the allegation, Hani has also been held responsible for the murder by MK members in the Transkei in 1990 of another former Quatro detainee, Sipho Phungulwa, who had been one of his bodyguards.
"There is no way of proving or disproving allegations of this kind, but it is curious that Hani, who was one of the sternest critics within the ANC leadership of the security apparatus and its excesses, should be blamed for them." (p.91)
There is no other mention of Phungulwa in the book, and no mention of Dyasop, whose autobiography, Out of Quatro: From Exile to Exoneration, published by Kwela Books in 2021, is essential reading for a thorough investigation into this issue. As reported by Macmillan in the passage above, Hani knew Phungulwa, who had been his bodyguard when Hani had been commander in charge of training MK recruits in Lesotho in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and Hani also knew Dyasop, who had been one of his trainees in Lesotho.
As in the biography by Smith and Tromp, which was published first in 2009 and which is now available in an expanded second edition issued last month, what is critical here is that there is no mention of the fact that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission published its Final Report report in 1998, available online, giving the names of Phungulwa's assassins, in a way that was available to Macmillan as well as to Smith and Tromp long before they published the first, let alone second, editions of either of their biographies.
In the TRC Commission Final Report. Vol 2, section 1, chaper 4, subsection 7, there is this passage:
"54. Mr Sipho Phungulwa [JB00420/01ERKWA] was part of a group of exiles who were held in ANC detention camps in Angola. The group included Mr Mwezi Twala, Mr Norman Phiri, Mr David Mthembu and Mr Luthando Nicholas Dyasop. They returned to South Africa along with fellow exiles and prisoners and approached various organisations, including the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) for assistance in exposing the hardships they had endured in Angola. Phungulwa was shot dead in Umtata on 13 June 1990, apparently while he and Dyasop were trying to seek an audience with the Transkei ANC leadership. Mr Ndibulele Ndzamela [AM5180/97], Mr Mfanelo Matshaya [AM7016/97] and Mr Pumlani Kubukeli [AM5180/97] were granted amnesty on 13 August 1998 in connection with this incident."
The full report of the Amnesty Committee on this issue, issued on 18 August 1998, is also available online, providing further information.
Another report of the TRC's Amnesty Committee, issued in 1999 following a separate application made by Kubukeli, states the following: "Kubukeli was at the time of the commission of the offences a member of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC). He was deployed in Umtata and reported directly to the Chief of Staff of MK, the late Mr Chris Hani."
Here we have two government documents issued in 1998 and 1999 stating that Pumlani Kubukeli, one of the four assassins responsible for the murder of Phungulwa and attempted murder of Dyasop, had been "deployed in Umtata and reported directly to the Chief of Staff of MK, the late Mr Chris Hani."
Yet there is no mention in Macmillan's biography of Hani, or in the book by Smith and Tromp, that one of the murderers of Phungulwa had been ""deployed in Umtata and reported directly to" Hani or any discussion of what the implications could be. That reflects a remarkable lack of historical curiousity.
Macmillan also fails to make any adequate examination of Hani's order to his personal MK functionaries, quoted in Macmillan's book, that they should "neutralise Mwezi Twala and his band of counter-revolutionaries" (p.91). "Neutralise!". What could that mean other than "kill"?
Given that Twala, Phungulwa and Dyasop had all been subjected to the horror of the ANC's Quatro prison camp in Angola, had arrived back in South Africa without weapons and with zero evidence of intent or means to carry out violent actions, Hani's words here - as with his concept of "askari" - were largely an instruction to his personal, deployed staff to kill individuals who were critical of ANC and SACP policy.
As I noted in my article, "A death in South Africa: The killing of Sipho Phungulwa", published less than a year after Sipho's murder in the banned exile magazine, Searchlight South Africa (January 1991) and republished in 2009 in my book, Inside Quatro: Uncovering the Exile History of the ANC and SWAPO: “Phungulwa fought alongside his prison comrades from Quatro to reverse this system of administrative decree. At the annual general meeting of the Zonal Youth Committee (ZYC) in Dakawa [in Tanzania] on 14 December [1989] - in the presence of the SACP leader Rusty Bernstein, of the Regional Department of Political Education - he argued that ANC officials should not dictate 'who should be elected'.
"He opposed the idea that individuals elected to the Regional Political Committee should agree to participate in an appointed 'dummy structure'. A person who was elected by the people, he stated, 'should serve the interests of the electorate not certain individuals. As the ANC has taught us, we should elect people of our choice', (minutes, signed by Neville Gaba, 28 December 1989)."
This expression of Phungulwa's moral philosophy can be read online from the text of my original article, reproduced on South Africa History Online.
He was murdered for this sincere expression of a genuine democratic sensibility, by operatives of Hani, a man trained in the ethic of Stalinist Russia, by operatives of Hani who had themselves been trained in the Communist former German Democratic Republic. (Kubukeli's Linkedin page states that he was trained in military technologies at Teterow, in the German Democratic Republic in 1982/84).
My book, Inside Quatro: Uncovering the Exile History of the ANC and SWAPO, was published in 2009, prior to both editions of Macmillan's biography of Hani, and well before the second edition of Smith and Tromp's biography. Macmillan includes it in his bibliography. Yet these authors never bothered to consider my report in the book of Phungulwa's statement above, made only six months before he was murdered.
Certainly, as Macmillan argues, Hani was a man who showed what he calls "physical courage." (p.116) But it's a fake to say, as Macmillan does, that Hani "continued to show moral courage ...". (p.129)
As I showed in my article, "Chris Hani: A question still unasked", on 17 April, Kubukeli and Matshaya continued to work as Hani's bodyguards both in exile and after their murder of Phungulwa and their attempted murder of Dyasop. After the murder, they also acted on occasion as bodyguards also for Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela.
As Kubukeli asserted in an article headed "Our ultimate betrayal", published on the Calusa website on 18 January this year, "we were assassins. We were poised to eliminate targets that were to be pointed to us by the Military Headquarters and most of all, we were to eliminate Askaris (sellouts) like the ones who sold us out!"
There is a further major connection to consider. As Gcwelumusa Chrysostomus ("Castro") Khwela points out in a paper presented in March 2019 to the University of Stellenbosch, Hani was the Army Political Commissar and "the overall commander" when MK high command "decided to involve cadres to fight against UNITA alongside the Angolan armed forces [FAPLA] in August 1983".
It was this military campaign on the Eastern Front in Angola, operating across the Cuanza River in the direction of Malanje in November and December 1983, which led directly to the so-called "mutiny" by MK forces from the June 16 and Moncada detachments, representing roughly 90 percent of its troops in Angola. Drawn from a mass of young recruits from the generation of the school students' march in Soweto against apartheid on 16 June 1976, whose principal political influence had come from the Black Consciousness Movement led by Steve Biko at a time when the regime had largely eliminated the influence of ANC and SACP, this deployment under Hani was a political humiliation for ANC and SACP, and in particular for Hani as overall commander.
Khwela argues that "as a result of insufficient equipment to fight such a war, since there were no helicopters, reconnaissance aircraft, heavy artillery or mortars to seek and destroy the enemy, the conflict proved disastrous for MK towards January 1984, with heavy casualties being experienced in the battlefield. Accordingly, this led MK combatants to rebel, beginning in December 1983 when disturbances were reported in Cangandala [after] a company of MK combatants was engaged in combat in co-operation with FAPLA. Problems emerged when MK cadres were directed to cross the Kwanza River to attack UNITA bases, which MK Army Commissar Chris Hani also opposed, as a result of inadequate reconnaissance being conducted."
It was at this moment, as Khwela reports, that "Chris Hani left the front." According to Macmillan, bizarrely for a top military commander in such a campaign, Hani went "on holiday with his family in the Soviet Union." (p.86) He returned to the front in Angola in mid-January 1984.
Macmillan does not adequately investigate what led the June 16 and Moncada fighters to explain their collective withdrawal from combat on the Eastern Front and their return to Viana camp outside Luanda, where they elected a Committee of Ten to present their grievances to the MK command.
By comparison, Luthando Dyasop's crucial memoir, Out of Quatro: From Exile to Exoneration, makes it plain how disgusted the troops of the June 16 and Moncada detchments felt at oppressive actions taken by their commanders against ordinary black African villagers, in which they too were forced to take part. As Dyasop reports, "The assault on the menfolk was upped and became vicious, bordering on cruelty. Fine, we had reasons to be incensed, but it was blind, unbridled rage. ... The assaults turned to torture." (p.105) There was also " a worrying concern about the behaviour of our Angolan co-fighters in FAPLA." (p.112) As Dyasop explains, "I was one of those who defied participating in any further missions. I had a feeling that sooner or later I would be spilling blood for people who viewed me as an intruder." (p.116)
Macmillan explains that when Hani did return to the front, "he met some of the mutineers there. They had a number of demands: that they should be sent into action in South Africa; that the security department should be suspended; that the Quatro (Camp 32) prison camp should be investigated; and that [Oliver] Tambo [the ANC president], who was in the country, should address them." Hani remembered being asked, "why are we here, why are we fighting here and not fighting at home?'" (p.86)
For a top military commander to go on holiday in the middle of such a war, only for his army to rebel, considering themselves intruders in what was not their war - what a humiliation for Hani.
It is reasonable to wonder to whether Hani's rage at this humiliating embarrassment might have led to the murder of Phungulwa and the attempted murder of Dyasop, soldiers who had abandoned the front only after their commander abandoned them to go on holiday. There is a personal issue here.
