The Other McCain

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1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’

Posted on | December 6, 2013 | 79 Comments

When Margaret Thatcher died in April, the British Left reacted with the kind of ugly viciousness you would expect of the British Left. This is worth remembering today when liberals are demanding that everyone must now forget the reality of who Nelson Mandela was.

Thatcher’s death, in fact, was the occasion for the Left to recycle a misquote about South Africa intended to smear Thatcher. Her enemies claimed she said, “The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation… Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud cuckoo land.” The first sentence is a decontextualized misquote; the second is a distorted misattribution.

In the 1980s, the leadership of the ANC (African National Congress) included Marxist revolutionary Chris Hani, who was both an official of the South African Communist Party and the Political Commissar of the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (also known as “MK”). Hani, who had engaged in guerrilla warfare in Zimbabwe, set up “an underground infrastructure” for MK inside South Africa.

This background is necessary to understanding the Cold War context of the situation in South Africa during the ’80s, a context to which I alluded Thursday evening in recalling Mandela’s anti-American rhetoric. Liberals would now have us forget both those words, and the historic context of Soviet-backed “wars of national liberation” that characterized Moscow’s policy in the Third World.

Along with Ronald Reagan, Thatcher was a leader of worldwide opposition to communism and, in the 1980s, the West was under intense pressure to impose economic sanctions on South Africa, pressure which both Reagan and Thatcher resisted.

My conservative friend Joel Pollak’s reaction to historic evidence of Mandela’s alliance with communists reminded me that Pollak, born in 1977, can be excused for forgetting — as he was only a child at the time — when left-wing students on American university campuses staged protests demanding “divestment” from South Africa.

These protests were the kind of childish radical tantrums Pollak would certainly abhor. The “shanty wars” at Dartmouth, where conservative students were suspended for attempting to dismantle protesters’ huts on the campus green, were memorialized in a 2006 book, The Dartmouth Review Pleads Innocent. Pressure for “divestment” and sanctions against Johannesburg was a perfect example of how Western liberals enthusiastically embraced Soviet policy aims during the Cold War.

It was predictable: If the KGB wanted something, the hippie scum at American universities would march in favor of it, and whatever the Kremlin opposed, the hippie scum would denounce as an intolerable abomination. Hell’s bells, the fact that the United States doesn’t have more nuclear power plants today can be blamed on those idiotic Commie stooges in the “No Nukes” movement of the 1970s and ’80s.

Historical context is everything, you see, and in 1986, the communist leader of the ANC’s military wing, Chris Hani, warned that the ANC was “going to step up attacks against those factories, transnational corporations and monopolies, which exploit and maltreat the South African working class and in the process it is more than probable that white civilians will lose their lives.”

Communist ANC leader Chris Hani.

This was an outright threat of terrorism which Western leftists found perfectly acceptable, at a time when Fidel Castro had 40,000 Cuban troops in Angola where, with the Soviet Union’s active support, Cuban solders were fighting South African troops deployed in support of anti-communist UNITA insurgents in a bloody civil war.

The sanctions and “divestment” campaign against South Africa was therefore an effort to advance Soviet foreign policy aims in Africa by sabotaging the economy of a key Western ally.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

In October 1987, at a summit conference of the British Commonwealth held at Vancouver, ANC official Mfanafuthi Johnstone “Johnny” Makatini “said Britain’s refusal to support these measures would result in ‘the further intensification of the armed struggle’ and also in attacks on British corporations in South Africa.” At a press conference in Vancouver, Thatcher answered a question about these threats:

“When the ANC says that they will target British companies, this shows what a typical terrorist organization it is. I fought terrorism all my life and if more people fought it, and we were all more successful, we should not have it and I hope that everyone in this hall will think it is right to go on fighting terrorism. They will if they believe in democracy.”

You can read the rest of Thatcher’s October 1987 press conference and find a handy lesson on the nature of liberal media bias in the fact that so many of the media questions amounted to parroting Johnny Makatini’s demand for sanctions against South Africa. Thatcher said “apartheid is a totally repugnant system and must go,” but also pointed out the political, military and diplomatic reality:

So far as Britain is concerned, we believe that sanctions would only harden attitudes rather than promote progress . . .
There is a very considerable Soviet influence throughout Africa. There are main Cuban forces, as you pointed out, in Angola, but I understand that there are Cuban people or forces or advisers in something like twelve other countries in Africa and also there are of course East German advisers and, of course, as you know, a considerable number of the ANC leaders are communists. . . .
I will have nothing to do with any organisation that practices violence. I have never seen anyone from ANC or the PLO or the IRA and would not do so. Nor will we have any truck with any of the organisations; we never negotiate with hostage taking or anything like that. But please, I hope you will fight terrorism and violence and not in fact embrace it.

The status of the ANC as a terrorist organization — comparable to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Irish Republican Army — was quite clear to Thatcher, as was also the communist allegiance of many ANC leaders, who sided with the Soviets in Angola. The same Johnny Makatini who at Vancouver threatened “intensification of armed struggle” and attacks on British companies in South Africa, turned up a month later at an ANC meeting to denounce South Africa’s “criminal warpath” against “the People’s Republic of Angola.”

If it walks like a Communist duck and talks like a Communist duck . . .

Having supplied the proper historical contest to Margaret Thatcher’s (accurate) description of the ANC as a “terrorist organization,”  what about the “cloud cuckooland” part of the quote her enemies falsely attribute to her? This leftist smear stems from a question asked of Thatcher’s spokesman, Bernard Ingham, about the potential for a violent revolution in South Africa in 1987:

“When a Canadian reporter suggested that the African National Congress might [forcibly] overthrow the white South African regime, Thatcher’s spokesman responded, ‘It is cloud cuckooland for anyone to believe that could be done.'”

Wait a minute: Haven’t the liberal myth-makers told us that Mandela’s ANC was a peaceful movement? Why, then, would a reporter have asked in 1987 whether the ANC might stage a violent revolution? Well, if it walks like a Communist duck . . .

 

IRONIC FOOTNOTE: Chris Hani, the Marxist revolutionary who in the 1980s threatened violence against “white civilians,” was assassinated in 1993 by a Polish immigrant, Janusz Walus, using a pistol loaned to him by a pro-apartheid official, Clive Derby-Lewis. Hani’s assassination increased tensions and fears of further violence. Nelson Mandela gave a speech calling for peace: “Now is the time for all South Africans to stand together against those who, from any quarter, wish to destroy what Chris Hani gave his life for — the freedom of all of us.” The crisis sparked by Hani’s assassination is credited with hastening the first post-apartheid election in 1994 that elected Mandela president.


Category: History, Terrorism

Comments

79 Responses to “1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’”

  1. rsmccain
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:02 pm

    1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’ http://t.co/VFIwZmWlT9 cc @joelpollak @instapundit

  2. rsmccain
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:03 pm

    1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’ http://t.co/VFIwZmWlT9 @professsorquail @BoschFawstin

  3. MrEvilMatt
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:03 pm

    1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’: When Margaret Thatcher died in Apr… http://t.co/gFvPsen2kj

  4. CHideout
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:03 pm

    1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’: When Margaret Thatcher died in Apr… http://t.co/RCdr2eVAxr

  5. Resista38176897
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:03 pm

    1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’: When Margaret Thatcher died in Apr… http://t.co/wKBWVyekit

  6. jwbrown1969
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:03 pm

    1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’: When Margaret Thatcher died in Apr… http://t.co/hl8RKyZiYf

  7. Lockestep1776
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:03 pm

    1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’: When Margaret Thatcher died in Apr… http://t.co/8aVqKGdDBT

  8. Citzcom
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:03 pm

    1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’: When Margaret Thatcher died in Apr… http://t.co/i61F3tYCnZ

  9. diana_west_
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:07 pm

    RT @rsmccain: 1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’ http://t.co/VFIwZmWlT9 @professsorquail @BoschFaws…

  10. rsmccain
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:12 pm

    Who remembers campus “shanty wars” over South African “divestment”? http://t.co/VFIwZmWlT9 cc @IngrahamAngle @AnnCoulter @DavidLimbaugh

  11. rsmccain
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:13 pm

    @diana_west_ Yes, cited extensively here: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’ http://t.co/VFIwZmWlT9

  12. BoschFawstin
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:15 pm

    RT @rsmccain: 1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’ http://t.co/VFIwZmWlT9 @professsorquail @BoschFaws…

  13. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:17 pm

    The British Left (like all the far left) are scum. They treated Margaret Thatcher poorly. They deserve nothing but condemnation.

  14. Quartermaster
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:18 pm

    All pretty typical of the raving left.
    Hani didn’t die for anything other than a commie take over of SA. The ANC was an existential threat to SA, and that has never changed. SA is falling apart like the rest of black run Africa and whites are leaving if they can. They are wise to leave because the future of SA can be seen in Rhodesia, AKA Zimbabwe.

  15. CFLancop
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:24 pm

    RT @rsmccain: @diana_west_ Yes, cited extensively here: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’ http://t.co/V…

  16. rsmccain
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:40 pm

    Damned irony: I’m the guy making sure Chris Hani is not forgotten. http://t.co/VFIwZmWlT9 @diana_west_ @AmPowerBlog @EdDriscoll

  17. CFLancop
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:40 pm

    RT @rsmccain: Damned irony: I’m the guy making sure Chris Hani is not forgotten. http://t.co/VFIwZmWlT9 @diana_west_ @AmPowerBlog @EdDrisco…

  18. Professor_Why
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:41 pm

    1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’ http://t.co/xCDMeTRrDu

  19. M. Thompson
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:54 pm

    And note, Mandela was released after the Berlin Wall fell.

  20. AmPowerBlog
    December 6th, 2013 @ 12:55 pm

    RT @rsmccain: Damned irony: I’m the guy making sure Chris Hani is not forgotten. http://t.co/VFIwZmWlT9 @diana_west_ @AmPowerBlog @EdDrisco…

  21. screwtape1a12
    December 6th, 2013 @ 1:13 pm

    RT @rsmccain: Damned irony: I’m the guy making sure Chris Hani is not forgotten. http://t.co/VFIwZmWlT9 @diana_west_ @AmPowerBlog @EdDrisco…

  22. RS
    December 6th, 2013 @ 1:19 pm

    “Ya dance with the one, what brung ya.”

    Even if we grant pure motives to those in the West who wished to see an end to Kipling-esque colonialism, there is no question, such idealists allied themselves with Marxist-Leninist front groups, organized and trained as proxies during the Cold War. Of course, that is conveniently forgotten now, almost three decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, while the same idealists fall all over themselves denouncing those who fought on the other side. See e.g. from the same period, Jonas Savimbi of UNITA in Angola, the former Maoist turned Anti-communist supported by the CIA against the Cuban/Soviet backed MPLA. Fundamentally, the Left cannot forgive the West’s victory in the Cold War, because they see it as killing a work in progress which would’ve ultimately led to a Brotherhood of Man utopia.

  23. Josh_Painter
    December 6th, 2013 @ 1:20 pm

    RT @smitty_one_each: TOM 1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’ http://t.co/FBFB8tQmYb #TCOT

  24. Finrod Felagund
    December 6th, 2013 @ 2:06 pm

    The bozos promoting divestment from South Africa back in the day were the same set of bozos pushing for a nuclear freeze and every other idiotic leftist idea.

  25. JeffS
    December 6th, 2013 @ 2:16 pm

    Another comparison might be how Bush 43 was beat over the head about the false rumors of his grandfather’s support of the Nazis in WWII.

    If a false rumor is relevant to the electability of a US President, then the truth about the past of Mandela is at least equally relevant.

  26. Adjoran
    December 6th, 2013 @ 2:30 pm

    It is one of Stacy’s endearing and quaint qualities that he believes a recitation of the factual record could have any bearing on the policies of leftists or the permitted opinions of their politically correct thought control.

    The truth does need to be repeated, if only to ensure it isn’t completely buried, of course – but it never had any effect on the Left. They didn’t care for it in the ’30s, or the ’50s, or the ’60s, or the ’70s (just stop me if you begin to detect a pattern here).

    Mandela was part of terrorist bombings, assassinations, torture, etc., and these were why he was arrested in the first place. He was a violent man who headed the paramilitary force of the ANC. When their buildings were raided, among the weaponry was a stockpile of 144 tons of ammonium nitrate. The Oklahoma City truck bomb contained about one ton.

    It’s fine to recognize Mandela’s relatively peaceful – if corrupt – government service. That does not wash the blood off his hands, however.

  27. MrLTavern
    December 6th, 2013 @ 3:05 pm

    After attacking the legacies of Reagan & Thatcher, the left expects us to worship at the altar of Mandela http://t.co/bbqCgsQemI @rsmccain

  28. robertstacymccain
    December 6th, 2013 @ 3:09 pm

    The failings of the Left are brushed aside as insignificant, while the failings of the Left’s opponents are endlessly recited, chiefly because the Left dominates the education/media complex.

  29. xthred
    December 6th, 2013 @ 3:17 pm

    RT @MrLTavern: After attacking the legacies of Reagan & Thatcher, the left expects us to worship at the altar of Mandela http://t.co/bbqCg…

  30. OwainPenllyn
    December 6th, 2013 @ 3:22 pm

    1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’ http://t.co/eBec4OvUn0 via @rsmccain #tcot

  31. 17OnAMission76
    December 6th, 2013 @ 3:23 pm

    If lying leftists stopped rewriting history-they would have no stories to tell. Good riddance #Mandela http://t.co/9RBiWFfSLm via @rsmccain

  32. PatDissent
    December 6th, 2013 @ 3:36 pm

    Another swing of the ol’ Cluebat for “Conservatives” : If *ANYONE* is posing for a picture, and the hammer & sickle in the background is *BIGGER THAN ANYONE IN PICTURE*, you may want to think twice before waxing poetic about that individual.

    Especially if that individual is a goddamned Commie terrorist!

  33. charles w
    December 6th, 2013 @ 4:12 pm

    Lets not forget Winnie’s necklacing gangs running the townships.

  34. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 6th, 2013 @ 4:13 pm

    And they are almost always wrong, and they (in their heart of hearts, in that place they are afraid to go) know it.

  35. DaveO
    December 6th, 2013 @ 4:15 pm

    Including one each Barry Sotero, later Barack Obama, when he needed bona fides.

  36. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 6th, 2013 @ 4:20 pm

    That is absolutely true–although there was a lot of blood on a lot of hands in South Africa.

  37. DaveO
    December 6th, 2013 @ 4:25 pm

    Mandela’s passing may provide the Left with enough of a distraction to escape Obamacare and Healthcare.gov, which is still some 2 years from working according to concept.
    For me, the bigger villain is Winnie Mandela, whose fondness for the Soweto Necklace put her in a rare league of sadists and serial murderers. The movie, starring Naomi Harris, is another Leni Reifenstahl-esque paean to a butcher. The critics, however, are comparing her favorably to Gandhi.

  38. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 6th, 2013 @ 4:49 pm

    Mandela will dominate the news cycle (especially for the left) till his state funeral. But Obamacare and healthcare.gov will be making Obama opponents for a long, long time. It’s architects hoped it would eventually collapse private insurance. What they did not anticipate that it would be almost immediate.

    The backlash to Democrats when millions start losing their employer plans and have to pay significantly more for coverage (or go without) will be enormous.

  39. DaveO
    December 6th, 2013 @ 4:59 pm

    What will be interesting the reaction of ordinary Americans toward unions and government workers who are getting cash back on their investment in Obama. How many people will be rushing to join a union or get a government job in order to get some relief from the tax crush. Will we see the effective end of unions?

  40. richard mcenroe
    December 6th, 2013 @ 5:57 pm

    Mandela’s Legacy Shines On… http://tinyurl.com/mdmrvcl

  41. JoyKeller1
    December 6th, 2013 @ 5:57 pm

    1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’ http://t.co/4pmEwg3irE

  42. ‘They Started to Fight Over Her and I Knew She Was Going to Be Raped’ : The Other McCain
    December 6th, 2013 @ 6:22 pm

    […] Well . . . context, says our friend Drew when he derides David Swindle as a “conservative juiceboxer” for Swindle’s remembrance of Nelson Mandela’s communist past. Certainly I have labored to supply the necessary Cold War context of what the ANC actually meant during the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher refused to be intimidated by “further intensification of the armed struggle.… […]

  43. Quartermaster
    December 6th, 2013 @ 6:53 pm

    Most of it is on Mandela’s and the people he left in charge. We must not minimize that.

  44. Quartermaster
    December 6th, 2013 @ 6:55 pm

    The latter is about his only accomplishment. As I pointed out elsewhere, it’s damning by faint praise.

  45. Jeff
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:29 pm

    The left may have lost the battle, but they are winning the war. The left never surrenders. It is aided (goals obtained more easily) by the “useful idiots” a.k.a. low information voters and flat out moochers who feel entitled and deserving. The left rebrands: Environmentalist. The left is subtle: propaganda in all types of media. The left is pervasive: local newscast. The left is amoral: The ends justify the means. The left cheats: voter fraud. The left suppresses the conservative vote: IRS targeting of conservative groups.Most importantly, it holds the strategic high ground. What used to be called public education. It’s now indoctrination.

  46. KottersParadise
    December 6th, 2013 @ 7:51 pm

    RT @rsmccain: 1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’ http://t.co/VFIwZmWlT9 @professsorquail @BoschFaws…

  47. Bob Belvedere
    December 6th, 2013 @ 8:48 pm

    The only good Chris Hani, is a dead Chris Hani.

  48. Bob Belvedere
    December 6th, 2013 @ 8:50 pm

    Dead solid perfect.

    I would just add that the Left has also been very successful in getting us to think like them instinctively.

  49. Bob Belvedere
    December 6th, 2013 @ 8:53 pm

    Well put, Adj – except for you last paragraph: Saint Nelson had plenty of blood on his hands during his Presidency, outward appearances to the contrary.

  50. Bob Belvedere
    December 6th, 2013 @ 8:55 pm

    Thanks for that. It needed to be shown – and will need to be repeatedly shown in the coming, sickeningly weepy days ahead.