The anti-apartheid movement was one of the most powerful protest movements in western democracies during the second half of the twentieth century, roughly between 1960 and 1990. It was particularly strong in countries such as Great Britain, the Netherlands, and in Scandinavia. The movement's success was mainly in influencing domestic policies regarding foreign relations with South Africa under apartheid. Anti-apartheid activists succeeded in keeping the debate on apartheid (and what should be done about it) on the political agenda. At the same time, products from South Africa were boycotted, as were western companies that continued to do business with the white minority regime.

Many of the protests, actions, boycotts, and demonstrations were planned in close cooperation with the South African opposition, particularly the African National Congress (ANC). The “non-racial” ANC was banned in South Africa, with many of its leaders in jail, and forced into in exile. The ANC leadership – those not incarcerated on Robben Island – were living mainly in Lusaka, Zambia and, especially in the case of ANC leaders who were members of the Communist Party of South Africa (SACP), in London.

Most of the campaigns and actions undertaken by anti-apartheid organizations in western countries were highly publicized, since one of the major goals of the movement was to gain public support for anti-South-African policy decisions by western governments. You do not get public support by doing your work in secret. Less well known is that some of the international solidarity with the liberation movements was utterly clandestine.

In London Recruits some thirty British (plus one Dutch, one Greek, and one French) activists relate how they were recruited to do illegal work in South Africa. The editor of these stories, Ken Keable, was himself one of those brave young Britons who, at the request of the ANC leadership, flew to Cape Town, Johannesburg, or Durban. His story is exemplary for the other “London recruits”. Keable was a communist and a member of the Young Communist League. He was recruited by Ronnie Kasrils, an ANC exile and a member of the SACP. “Ronnie was the most impressive person I have ever met”, Keable writes in his contribution to London Recruits. KasrilsFootnote ¹ later became leader of MK, the military wing of the African National Congress, and a minister in post-apartheid ANC governments. At the time, Kasrils was a student at the London School of Economics and recruited most of the porteurs de valises there. The recruiting was done with the consent and collaboration of the Communist Party of Great Britain. In fact, most potential recruits were first approached by George Bridges, London Secretary of the YCL, to see whether they were willing “to do something illegal for the YCL”. Only rarely did a potential recruit decline. Only afterwards did it become clear that that “something” would involve entering South Africa with a suitcase full of ANC propaganda.

The strongest feature of London Recruits is undoubtedly the fact that the stories are told by the agents themselves. They are exciting narratives about almost getting caught, about bombs exploding prematurely, and about keeping out of the hands of the police and South Africa's secret service (BOSS). As secrecy was important, these stories were never told during the apartheid era. But even after the ANC took over in South Africa, many of the tales involving international solidarity with the liberation struggle remained untold. Activists themselves considered their contribution rather insignificant.

The biographical information of the thirty-something recruits gives a good insight into the motives of activists in the 1960s and 1970s. The recruits were mostly young people from lower-middle-class families who became active in the Communist Party of Great Britain and/or the Young Communist League, following in their parents’ footsteps. As one of the first recruits, Danny Schechter, writes: “I was part of a generation that wanted change and was determined to be part of the struggle to achieve it. We were living in the 1960s, revolutionary times in ‘swinging London’ no less, and of course were shaped by its fashions, hopes, and even some of its illusions. We loved the Beatles and fancied ourselves Street Fighting Men à la The Rolling Stones. We wanted to be Che Guevaras [he was killed in 1967]. We were engaged and ready to rock.” For many of these would-be revolutionaries, to be asked to participate in an underground movement to fight a real racist regime was a dream come true. But the dangers were real too. Three of the London recruits were arrested and served long prison sentences in South African jails. One of them managed to escape.Footnote ²

The downside of the structure of this book is that by letting the recruits tell their own stories, one by one, the book consists basically of thirty-odd very similar tales: boy (or girl) grows up in Britain, meets Kasrils, travels to South Africa, distributes ANC propaganda, and returns to England. There is very little information on the strategy of the ANC and the communist parties of Britain and South Africa. Were the London recruits part of a bigger plan? And, if so, what was that plan? Why was it necessary to send people from abroad to South Africa with propaganda leaflets in their luggage? Why were the leaflets not printed in South Africa? Why were only communists involved (both on the South African side and the British side)? Was the plan known to the non-SACP ANC leadership? What was the strength of the ANC in South Africa at the time? Answers to these questions, and others, would have shed light on the relationships between the ANC as a liberation movement and the forces of international solidarity. As it is, only the book's foreword, by Pallo Jordan, speaks of a “four-pronged strategy” that entailed building an “effective internal organization” from which to “intervene in large and small, regional and national straggles”, and “thus stimulate mass mobilization” and place armed units of the liberation army, MK, “in a better position to operate and survive inside South Africa”. Rather vague.

The question also remains as to how the activities of the London recruits coincided with other clandestine operations in South Africa, for example, those of the Okhela group, founded in Paris in the 1970s by the South African writer-in-exile, Breyten Breytenbach. Okhela planned to establish a resistance group in South Africa, recruiting mainly among the white South African intelligentsia. This plan was embraced by the non-communist ANC leadership, (i.e. by ANC president Oliver Tambo and the ANC representative in northern Africa, Johnnie Makatini). Breytenbach contacted the Dutch anti-apartheid organization (AABN) to collaborate with the operation. Several Dutch AABN members, including AABN founder and South African exile Berend Schuitema and the later AABN president Conny Braam, underwent paramilitary training in Paris at Solidarité, an organization run by the notorious Henri Curiel.

Okhela was initiated shortly after London recruits Alex Moumbaris, his wife Marie-José, and Sean Hosey were arrested in South Africa. Was this a coincidence? Or did the ANC high command deem it necessary to establish a powerful resistance movement in South Africa as a response to the arrest of the foreign “agents”? In any case, Breytenbach proved not to be secret-agent material. After making some obvious mistakes (which included starting an affair with a stewardess on the SAL plane travelling to Johannesburg), he and several of his local contacts were arrested. Berend Schuitema managed to escape to Botswana and subsequently return to the Netherlands. Breytenbach's role was questioned; after his arrest and trial he was imprisoned in South Africa and there was some indignation that, while in jail, he apologised for some of the distasteful things he had written about the South African prime minister, Vorster. After returning to the Netherlands, Schuitema was thrown out of the AABN; he never completely emerged from the shadow of the rumour that he had betrayed Okhela and Breytenbach. The Okhela initiative was later disavowed by the ANC leadership after pressure from the SACP. It was portrayed as a rogue group of irresponsible adventurers.

The early London recruits were active mainly in smuggling ANC leaflets into the country and distributing them, usually by means of a “basket bomb” – a small explosive device concealed at the bottom of a basket or bucket, covered with leaflets. By detonating the device at the side of a busy street, leaflets would be shot into the air and descend upon passers-by. After the Okhela debacle (but not necessarily related to that event) international volunteers were recruited to go underground in South Africa and the so-called frontline states (Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, Lesotho, and Swaziland). Their job was to establish safe houses and to help smuggle arms and other equipment and documents. London Recruits does not really cover these underground volunteers. Among those in this network of international volunteers were the Dutch/Belgian couple Klaas de Jonge and Helena Passtoors, operating from Mozambique, who were later arrested in South Africa.

The book picks up the story again in 1986, with the operation “Africa Hinterland”: basically the organization of a fake safari company offering tourists a seven-week journey from Nairobi to Cape Town. Apart from fifteen or so unsuspecting tourists, the safari truck, a 10-tonne 4 × 4 Bedford M-type, carried thirty-two wooden boxes, each containing AK-47 assault riffles, Makarov 9 mm pistols, ammunition, hand grenades, and tins filled with TNT.

The book ends with the story of Lucia Raadschelders, a Dutch former employee of the AABN. Raadschelders was recruited by Conny Braam, who herself was asked by Mac Maharaj, a member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC and of the SACP, to help set up an underground ANC leadership structure in South Africa: Operation Vula.Footnote ³ For the present reviewer, who is currently writing a history of the Dutch anti-apartheid movement, it is encouraging to see that the Dutch contribution to the fight against apartheid has not been forgotten. But it would have been interesting to read about the links between the London recruits and the Vula network. In the end, Vula was betrayed. But by then change was already under way in South Africa. And apartheid was defeated at the ballot box rather than by the AKs and Makarov pistols smuggled into the country by London recruits.