PART 2 OF 3: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SOUTH AFRICA'S

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PRETORIA 000953 C O R R E C T E D C O P Y //ADDING SENSITIVE CAPTION// SIPDIS SENSITIVE E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: KDEM PGOV PREL SF SUBJECT: PART 2 OF 3: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SOUTH AFRICA'S NEW PRESIDENT PRETORIA 00000953 001.4 OF 002 -------------- Summary -------------- ¶1. (SBU) This is the second of three messages that aim to reveal a comprehensive background picture of Jacob Zuma, the President of the ruling African National Congress party (ANC),who was inaugurated as the fourth post-apartheid president of South Africa. The first message was released before Zuma was inaugurated, and the last two will be released following his ascendancy. End Summary. -------------- Building the ANC Underground -------------- ¶2. (SBU) In the early 1960s, the non-violent resistance strategy of the ANC was reconsidered. It was becoming increasingly evident that the apartheid regime was disinclined to negotiate a new social and political structure and was prepared to respond with overwhelming violence to any perceived challenge. The ANC and other anti-apartheid groups revoked the long-standing policy on non-violent resistance and the armed wing of the ANC -- Umkonto wa Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation," aka MK) -- was established to fight apartheid. Zuma joined MK in 1962 and in 1963 was arrested and jailed while on his way into self-imposed exile for military training. ¶3. (SBU) We presume that in the months preceding Zuma's release from Robben Island after ten years imprisonment, he discussed with other ANC inmates a role for himself on the outside within the ANC. Though we do not know the substance of such discussions, upon his release, he almost immediately became involved in mobilizing the internal resistance to apartheid. Between 1973 and 1975, Zuma was instrumental in re-establishing the ANC's moribund underground operations in Natal. This activity included working with the ANC in exile and with MK military to engage in disruptions inside South Africa. Integral to this leadership was making contact with various internal supporters and groups, establishing cells and rules of engagement, tracking the police state's capabilities and responses, as well as training. As a testing ground for building leadership and negotiating skills, Zuma could not have found a better job. -------------- Exile and Insider Status -------------- ¶4. (SBU) In 1975, Zuma fled into exile, living for the next 12 years mostly in Swaziland and Mozambique. As an up and coming leader of the ANC in exile, he traveled throughout the subcontinent, coordinating activities with the movement and its allies. In the context of the Cold War, the ANC gravitated to the Non-aligned Movement and other anti-colonial players that supported African independence and wars of liberation: i.e., the USSR, Cuba, East Germany, Bulgaria, China, Libya, the Palestine Liberation Organization, etc. In Swaziland and Mozambique, he frequently returned to South Africa and continued with his operational demands. He also mentored thousands of young people, many of whom fled increasingly harsh conditions following the 1976 Soweto Uprising against Bantu Education. However, the primary focus of his work in this period was leading ANC underground structures inside South Africa ¶5. (SBU) Zuma occupied a number of crucial leadership roles in the ANC. By 1977, he was made a member of the ANC's Qin the ANC. By 1977, he was made a member of the ANC's National Executive Council (NEC) and became the Deputy Chief Representative of the ANC in Mozambique, and later, the Chief ANC Representative to this country -- one of the few ANC leaders to remain active in Mozambique after the GOM and the SAG signed the Nkomati Accords. International pressure to make the apartheid regime a pariah nation was gaining momentum, raising the profile of the ANC in multilateral fora. -------------- Senior ANC Leader in the Cold War -------------- ¶6. (SBU) The Cold War alliance between the ANC, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the Soviet bloc was close and deep. PRETORIA 00000953 002.4 OF 002 These relationships informed the ANC's world view of who their friends were -- and were not. The USSR and its allies provided the ANC and other African liberation movements with training, weapons, and diplomatic and political support. The East German (GDP) Intelligence Department (Stasi) routinely trained ANC and MC intelligence, security, and military personnel. The USSR offered military and security training in Angola as well as inside Russia -- three months for fighters, ten months for commanders. This training was posed in the context of training of Marxist theory and the goals of the communist/socialist revolution. As a member of the SACP's Central Committee, in 1978, Zuma received three months of military training in the USSR. In his SACP bio, using the code name Pedro, Zuma says he studied Marxism/Leninism and standard training included Marxist thought structures. ¶7. (SBU) Zuma worked for the ANC in several African countries and rose rapidly through the movement's ranks. From the mid-1980s, he served on the ANC's Political/Military Council out of Lusaka. In February 1984, one of the most disturbing crises inside the ANC movement occurred -- the Pro Democracy Mutiny by 90 percent of the ANC's young South African troops against the brutality and authoritarian rules and methods of the ANC's feared Department of Intelligence and Security (aka, the NAT),of which Zuma was a member. In 1985, Zuma was a delegate to the ANC's Conference in Kabwa, Zambia -- the last ANC party conference held in exile before the party was un-banned in 1990. The NAT leaders during the Quatro Mutiny were relieved of office, and the Kabwa conference replaced them with Zuma and his colleagues Joe Nhlanhla and Sizakele Sigxashe. It was around this time that he made his first entry to the biography he wrote for the SACP, which he completed in 1989 at the ANC's Quatro Camp in Angola. ¶8. (SBU) Zuma was forced to end all underground and military operations from Mozambique in 1987, as the SAG President P.W. Botha pressured the GOM to expel all ANC elements. He moved to the ANC headquarters in exile in Lusaka, Zambia. It was during this period that he worked with his isiXhosa comrade and rival Thabo Mbeki and others on the international agenda of the ANC. In Lusaka, Zuma became Head of the ANC's Underground Structures and in 1987 was elevated to be Chief of the Intelligence Department (aka, iMbokodo, "The Grindstone),where he oversaw ANC covert and counter-intelligence activities. Here too, Zuma never public discusses what happened on his watch as Intelligence Chief, in Quatro or any other ANC operational area. ¶9. (SBU) In 1990, SAG President F. W. De Klerk released Mandela from Robben Island, un-banned the ANC and other political parties, and initiated negotiations with the goal of ending apartheid and replacing it with a democratic system. Zuma was one of the first ANC leaders to return from exile, and he played a significant role in events leading up to the creation of new South Africa. End Part Two LA LIME