ABSTRACT
This article focuses on key policy, strategic and ideological developments in the ANC external mission and its army, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), during their first decade of exile. It seeks to illustrate that the ANC’s transformation into a liberation movement in exile during this period and its continued survival were not a matter of unproblematic progression. Rather, this process entailed a series of re-negotiations and re-adjustments, which were triggered by changes in the material conditions of struggle as they unfolded after Sharpeville. The difficulty experienced by the ANC leadership in exile in grappling with these changes produced potentially disintegrative internal strains in the second half of the decade, which can be viewed as the main catalysts behind the call for a Consultative Conference in Morogoro in 1969. At a leadership level, these tensions concerned issues of representation, organisational structure and, ultimately, political strategy. At the heart of the debate between the ANC and its allies was the full incorporation of all South African exiles previously associated with the Congress Movement into the external mission, signalling a gradual transition from the multi-racialism of the 1950s to the creation of a unitary, non-racial liberation front. Closely related to the issue of non-racialism was the progressive adjustment of the ANC to the armed struggle, which was made especially difficult by the continued separation of military from political structures. Hence the concern of this article with the state of affairs within MK, in particular with pressures from below, matters of military strategy, and the relationship between the military and the political movement.
