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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies

11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands


The Soweto Generation, its experience and influence on the ANC in exile

Panel 47. Reassessing the South African Liberation Movement
Paper ID184
Author(s) Simpson, Thula
Paper No paper submitted
AbstractThis paper discusses the experience of a particular generation of exiles within the South African liberation struggle. This is the story of the young militants who spearheaded the upsurge of internal revolt within the country in the 1970s, but who then, particularly after the Soweto uprising of 16 June 1976, fled abroad and in overwhelming numbers joined the African National Congress (ANC). This paper details their experience within the external ANC. It speaks of the frustrations they experienced operating within a movement whose agenda for combating apartheid clashed with their own in many vital aspects. The paper details how this internal tension metastasized into a fully-fledged crisis culminating in a general mutiny within the ANC’s military camps in 1983-84. The paper will also detail the ANC’s response to the challenge of the Soweto generation and how this moved from an attempt at intimidation and indoctrination to one of attempting to accommodate some of the grievances by dispatching a number of them home. However, these events lapsed into military adventurism as the guerrillas were infiltrated without the resources to sustain themselves on the home front. The paper will conclude by detailing how these haphazard methods led to the devastation of the ANC’s attempts to develop its armed campaign. Accordingly the late 1980s witnessed the phenomenon of the collapse of the armed struggle. The result was that in 1990 as the ANC adopted a unilateral ceasefire and shifted its focus to one on pursuing negotiations with the apartheid regime, the Soweto generation was left with an empty feeling of frustration.