State of Emergency (1985)

• From the mid-1980s, the Cold War was thawing and with it, the fear of Communism in the western world
• Nelson Mandela was a household name around the world - Botha offered Mandela release in 1985, if he renounced violence (he refused)
• Cost of Total Strategy was stretching South Africa’s resources
• Unrest within South Africa was reaching unprecedented levels - the result was the 1985 State of Emergency
• In 1985, Botha declared a State of Emergency - giving the government sweeping power and essentially, installing military rule in South Africa
• "State of Emergency" meant that:

  • Soldiers could arrest, interrogate and search anyone
  • Meetings were disrupted
  • Buildings were closed
  • Curfews were imposed on children to ensure the only place they could go was school
  • Newspapers were censored to the extent that only government press releases could be published
• The result was 25,000 UDF members detained, with the same number going into hiding
• Botha, in January 1985, rhetorically offered Mandela release from prison so long as the ANC leader ‘unconditionally rejected violence as a political instrument’: Mandela refused determined to ‘reaffirm to the world that we were only responding to the violence done to us’, he said that he would never truly be free until there was equality
• Goniwe, along with three friends, Sparrow Mkhonto, Fort Calata and Sicelo Mhlawuli; all activists with the UDF and became known in the news media as the ‘Cradock Four’ after the town in which they lived, all of them, on numerous occasions, arrested and tortured by the police - on 27 June the four friends were abducted when returning home from a UDF meeting by persons unknown and murdered; their bodies mutilated and burned to make them appear as though they had been killed by the same people engaging in necklacing
• Police powers under emergency powers could arrest people without warrants and to detain them indefinitely without charging them or even allowing lawyers or next of kin to be notified
• Security forces used blacks (usually unemployed, illiterate and sometimes with criminal convictions) to help them as special constables, known colloquially as ‘kitskonstabels’ (instant police), to destroy the new community organisations established by UDF and ANC supporters - they were ill-trained, loosely supervised and perpetrators of many crimes, ‘including murder, robbery, assault, theft, and rape’
• Botha continued to prevaricate: he continued to claim that he was engaged in a process of reform and in January 1986, he announced in parliament that South Africa had ‘outgrown the outdated concept of apartheid’ so in the following month stated that the pass laws would be repealed and influx control ended - yet in May 1986, he launched commando raids on ANC and PAC bases in Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe and in June he extended the earlier regionally-based state of emergency to the entire country, also ordering the security forces to step up their crackdown on anti-apartheid activists
• August - Rubicon Spech
• In October 1986, the US Congress, overriding President Reagan’s veto, passed legislation implementing mandatory sanctions against South Africa, these sanctions included the banning of all new investments and bank loans, end of air links between the US and South Africa, and the banning of many South African imports - this measure, on top of the earlier actions taken by US banks, led to a 50 per cent fall in American investment in South Africa (from $5 billion in 1984 to $2.78 billion by 1988)
• The UDF, the ANC and black trade unions responded to Oliver Tambo’s call to ‘render the country ungovernable’ and, as Mandela has noted, ‘the people were obliging’


  • Huge increase in strikes (double the number in 1986 compared with 1985) and an enormous rise in workdays lost; from 680,000 days in 1985 to just over one million in 1986 and to nearly six million days in 1987)
  • In 1988 COSATU, in commemoration of the twelfth anniversary of the Soweto uprising - launched the largest strike in South Africa’s history, securing the compliance of 70 per cent of the workers in the manufacturing sector
• Despite Claims that people’s lives were never targeted, killings by the security forces increased, not just in public-order policing but also in assassinations; 1987 yet another covert organisation, the Civilian Cooperation Bureau (CCB) was established, which sought to eliminate those identified as enemies of the state - responsible for the killing of David Webster, a university lecturer and critic of the apartheid regime, outside his Johannesburg home in May 1989
• 30 December 1987, Bantu Holomisa, head of the Transkei’s armed forces, took control of the ‘independent’ homeland in a coup; perceived (rightly) as a supporter of the ANC, Holomisa was viewed thereafter by Botha’s government as providing refuge and a base for ANC fighters
• 1980s Inkatha members, supported by members of the security establishment; attacked and killed people they identified as ANC and UDF supporters
• Investment in the capital goods necessary to develop a long-term import substitution policy caused, in the short term, the cost of imports to rise, by 60 per cent between 1986 and 1987
• Unable to borrow further internationally, South Africa spent almost half its foreign exchange reserves in the 14-month period between August 1987 and Oct 1988, to service existing loans
• The value of the rand plummeted
• While the price of gold (still South Africa’s chief earner of foreign currency) by the end of the 1980s was half what it had been a decade before
• Inflation was chronic
• In parliamentary by-elections fought in 1985, National Party candidates began losing to right-wing challengers
• In May 1987, the Conservative Party led by Andries Treurnicht swamped the Progressive Federal Party (PFP) (1984 had opened party to people of all colours) - CP became the official opposition
• A survey was carried out in 1987 to gauge white feelings about a South Africa governed by black people; suggested that fear might lead a majority of voters to support Treurnicht in future elections