Martin Ennals � and spying as an element of heritage
Sandy Grant | Wednesday March 23, 2016 15:22
He came here for two short visits in mid-1963 and in 1969/70, the first, in association with Nana Mahomo of the PAC, to negotiate with the Bakgatla and the Protectorate Administration in Mahikeng the establishment in Mochudi of a transit centre for refugees from South Africa – which was to become a dual purpose Community Development Centre. He was, as far as I am aware the only person of his calibre from the UK to come here in person in order to prepare and assist were post Sharpeville South Africa to be blown apart, as has happened in Syria today, and was widely anticipated would happen then.
The British in Mahikeng with no resources of their own to deal with such an eventuality, may have appreciated, Martin’s proposals, backed as they were by such a formidable Board in London. Intriguingly, Martin was also able to pull off his proposed deal with the young Kgosi Linchwe who was in no way cowed by the ever-present threat from South Africa and happily agreed to the establishment of a dual-purpose project. In retrospect, we should today look more carefully at this remarkable initiative in the light of the news that has now emerged that the British Government spied on Martin from the days when he was a student activist. This spying routine would have been intensified when he was General Secretary for the National Council of Civil Liberties, then heavily involved in the anti-apartheid campaign and then when he became the hugely successful lead figure for Amnesty International on whose behalf, in 1977, he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.
The presumption must be, therefore, that the British would have wanted to keep track of Martin’s activities when he was in this country. Without the resources to do so, however, it may have had to rely on either the Administration’s Special Branch here or on Pretoria’s Security Agencies or both.
It may have had better access when Martin, with Labour MP Joan Lestor, stayed with Kgosi Linchwe in Washington in maybe 1970. The idea that Martin could have been concurrently spied on here both by his own government and by that of white South Africa may seem palpably absurd. Yet it seems to be more than a certainty that this is what happened with security agents of varied allegiances tripping over themselves in order to gather what Linchwe had said to Martin and what Martin might have said to the presumably dangerous Ishmael Matlhaku and to others in Mochudi such as Norman Molomo, Maribe and Amos Pilane. What role, I wonder, might the very white Dutch Reformed Mission in Mochudi, with perhaps divided loyalties, have played in this mad but nevertheless dangerous, scenario? What is obvious, however, is that ‘intelligence’ imponderables then are worth pondering in terms of our own ‘intelligence’ imponderables now.