The Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA), formerly known as Poqo,
was the military wing of the
Pan Africanist Congress, an
African nationalist movement in
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
. In the
Xhosa language, the word 'Poqo' means 'pure'.
After attacks on and the murder of several white families the APLA was subsequently classified as a
terrorist organisation by the South African
National government and the United States, and banned.
APLA was disbanded and integrated into the
South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in June 1994.
Etymology
In 1968 the "Azanian People's Liberation Army" (or APLA) replaced the defunct name "Poqo", which means pure in Xhosa, a local South African language, as the armed wing of the PAC. Its new name was derived from Azania, the ancient Greek name for Southern Africa.
The name Azania has been applied to various parts of southeastern tropical
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...
.
In the
Roman period and perhaps earlier, the toponym referred to a portion of the Southeast African coast extending from
Kenya
Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...
, to perhaps as far south as
Tanzania
Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...
.
History
Formation and early resistance
Poqo was founded in 1961 following the
massacre of PAC-led protestors at the hands of police outside the
Sharpeville police station the previous year.
Potlako Leballo, the chairman of the PAC at the time of the formation of its military wing in the 1960s, modelled APLA on the
Chinese People's Liberation Army, with
Templeton Ntantala as his deputy.
Members of Poqo targeted the town of
Paarl
Paarl (; ; derived from ''parel'', meaning "pearl" in Dutch) is a city with 294,457 inhabitants in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It is the largest city in the Boland, Western Cape, Cape Winelands. Due to the growth of the Mbekweni ...
in the
Western Cape on 22 November 1962, when a crowd of over 200 people armed with axes,
pangas and other home-made weapons marched from the Mbekweni
township into Paarl and attacked the police station, homes and shops.
Two white residents, Frans Richard and Rencia Vermeulen were killed.
This attack was followed by the murder of a family camping at
Bashee River in the
Transkei on 4 February 1963. Norman and Elizabeth Grobbelaar, their teenage daughters Edna and Dawn, together with Mr Derek Thompson, were hacked to death in their caravans.
Leballo had planned a massive revolt for 8 April 1963, but Basotholand police managed to track down and raid the PAC's headquarters, seizing a complete list of Poqo members. In the following government crackdown, nearly 2000 Poqo members were sent to prison, almost wiping out the entire organization. Consequently, Poqo ceased to be an important participant in the anti-Apartheid struggle during the remainder of the 1960s.
In 1968, the Poqo was renamed APLA and unsuccessfully attempted to form diplomatic and political ties to foreign states and movements. It received some support from China, which attempted to shift the group toward
Maoism. PAC leaders, who had been vehemently
anti-communist, nevertheless accepted the aid by attempting to rationalize it as being because the Chinese were "non-white" and that their value system had not been "tainted by European thought" as they deemed the
South African Communist Party to have been. The result was the formation of a small Maoist faction within the APLA that contrasted the strong anti-communist currents within the PAC as a whole. However, the organization's ties with China were short-lived and the pro-Chinese members were soon after purged from the group.
Leadership struggles in exile
After the
Soweto uprising in 1976, a number of students went into exile in APLA camps elsewhere on the African continent. In 1976, APLA received 500 recruits, including 178
Basotho, for a new
Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA), to be formed as an offshoot of the exiled-
Basutoland Congress Party under the leadership of
Matooane Mapefane, who was a senior instructor of APLA in Libya. Ntantala's original group of 70 APLA soldiers felt threatened by the influx of new recruits, leading Ntantala to attempt a
coup against then commander,
Potlako Leballo in
Dar es Salaam
Dar es Salaam (, ; from ) is the largest city and financial hub of Tanzania. It is also the capital of the Dar es Salaam Region. With a population of over 7 million people, Dar es Salaam is the largest city in East Africa by population and the ...
. This was prevented by LLA soldiers, a move which exacerbated tensions within two PAC factions,
the "Diplomat-Reformist" (DR) and "Maoist-Revolutionary" (MR) factions.
Vusumzi Make's appointment as Leballo's successor sparked a mutiny at
Chunya, an APLA camp in Tanzania, on 11 March 1980, during which several APLA forces were killed and the rest further factionalised and confined to different camps; many escaped to Kenya.
Leballo himself relocated to
Zimbabwe
file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map
Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...
in late 1980 along with senior intelligence and air force personnel from the MR faction. Pressure from Tanzania, however, resulted in his deportation in May–June 1981,
as well as the deportation or imprisonment of the others. Make was replaced by
John Nyathi Pokela (who was released from
Robben Island
Robben Island () is an island in Table Bay, 6.9 kilometres (4.3 mi) west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, north of Cape Town, South Africa. It takes its name from the Dutch language, Dutch word for seals (''robben''), hence the Dutch/Afrika ...
in 1980), but his ineffectual term of office was marred by further mutinies, executions and assassinations. Following Pokela's death, Leballo made a comeback through support from Libya, North Korea and Ghana. After his sudden death in January 1986, the DR faction, outmaneuvered by the ANC, fell into disarray leaving behind the legacy of a semi-national socialist political front.
Attacks on white civilians
After 1986, APLA rejected the MR faction's concept of the guerrilla as a social reformer and instead adopted an ultimately disastrous rallying cry of "
One Settler, One Bullet". In the 1990–94 period, the organisation became known for its attacks on civilians despite the progress in negotiations at the
Convention for a Democratic South Africa.
Operation Great Storm
In 1991 APLA launched ''Operation Great Storm,''
a violent paramilitary campaign aimed at displacing white farmers to reclaim land for black Africans and obtaining arms and funding.
Initially APLA attacked and robbed farmsteads in the Free State and Eastern Cape provinces resulting in a number of farm deaths.
Attacks would later expand to urban civilian targets such as churches, hotels and drinking establishments. The APLA's chief commander,
Sabelo Phama, declared that he "would aim his guns at children - to hurt whites where it hurts most."
Phama proclaimed 1993 as "The Year of the Great Storm"
and sanctioned the following attacks on civilians:
*
King William's Town Golf Club on 28 November 1992, killing four people.
*Highgate Hotel in
East London on 1 May 1993, killing five people.
*
Saint James Church massacre in
Kenilworth on 25 July 1993, killing 11 people during a church service.
*
Heidelberg Tavern Massacre in
Observatory
An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysics, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed.
Th ...
on 31 December 1993, killing four.
*
Mdantsane
Mdantsane is a South African urban township situated 15 km away from East London and 37 km away from Qonce in the Eastern Cape. It is the second largest township in Eastern Cape and 17th largest in the Top 20 largest townships in So ...
on 11 March 1994, killing three
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
ians at a
Baha'i Faith meeting for being 'white'. APLA took responsibility for the attacks, stating that: "The men were shot to show there is no role in the new South Africa for any one of the race that invented apartheid or suppressed the black masses."
In total thirty-two applications were received for attacks on civilians. In these incidents, 24 people were killed and 122 seriously injured.
The
Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that the PAC-sanctioned action directed towards white South Africans were .
End of the armed struggle
In April 1992, PAC President
Clarence Makwetu declared during the PAC's Annual Congress that his party would now not oppose participation in the
multi-racial negotiations to end the apartheid.
In spite of their failure to achieve their goals at the negotiations, the PAC decided to participate in the
1994 elections, and PAC leader
Clarence Makwetu ordered APLA to end its armed struggle.
Post-1994
In 1994, APLA was disbanded and absorbed into the new
South African National Defence Force, although members of the MR-faction refused to accept this agreement. Attempts by MR officers to regroup in
Vietnam
Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...
,
North Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...
, and
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
were unsuccessful, although links were maintained with the
Tamil Tigers and Maoist groups in Nepal and India. Occasional propaganda leaflets distributed within South Africa focus on disparity of wealth and the issue of land.
Awards
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
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See also
*
Military history of South Africa
*
Nelson Mandela
*
African National Congress
The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party in South Africa. It originated as a liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid and has governed the country since 1994, when the 1994 South African general election, fir ...
*
Umkhonto we Sizwe
*
Internal resistance to apartheid
Further reading
* Leeman, Lieutenant-General Bernard “The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania” in ''Africa Today'', A Multi-Disciplinary Snapshot of the Continent in 1995 Edited by Peter F. Alexander, Ruth Hutchison and Deryck Schreuder The Humanities Research Centre The
Australian National University Canberra 1996, pages 172–195
References
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