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Railway lines, power stations and shopping centers have been the most frequent targets for the ANC, though damage in almost all cases so far has been slight and human injuries have been minor. Two weeks ago, ANC militants fired four 122-mm artillery rockets into the Voortrekkerhoogte military base outside Pretoria: three failed to explode and only one person was hurt. But the attacks have proved 1) that the ANC insurgents, however badly trained they may be on the whole, are well armed and can handle heavy weapons and explosives, and 2) that they do not shy away from inflicting civilian casualties, including among blacks. Assessing the increase in the frequency of assaults, South African counterinsurgency experts say that the ANC is stepping up the violence in order to win greater international recognition for the movement, which still does not have anything resembling the support accorded to South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) guerrillas in the disputed territory of Namibia.
The government's response to the ANC campaign has been to tighten up already formidable security measures against the repressed black majority. Last week, more than a hundred police swooped down on a black squatters' encampment near Cape Town and trucked 1,300 homeless black men, women and children off to jail, before sending them to rural reservations. On the military front, Defense Minister Magnus Malan has warned South Africans that "the revolutionary effort against us has reached an extremely dangerous phase." The Pretoria government two weeks ago raised the defense budget by 30% to an all-time high of $2.6 billion. Said Finance Minister Owen Horwood: "In light of recent developments in and around South Africa, defense must remain one of our very highest priorities."
What complicates the government's antiguerrilla efforts is the fact that most of ANC's fighting strength, an estimated 6,000 men equipped mostly with Soviet or Communist bloc weapons, is outside South Africa in the "frontline" states of Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia. The South African military of 86,000 on active duty and 400,000 potential reserves is already kept busy fighting a brushfire border war against SWAPO guerrillas infiltrating into Namibia. More and more frequently of late, the South Africans are employing "hot pursuit" tactics: military incursions into neighboring black-ruled countries that bring the conflict closer to conventional war. Earlier this year South African commandos crossed the frontier into Mozambique and destroyed what they claimed to be an ANC headquarters near the capital of Maputo. In a more recent clash along the Angolan-Namibian border, several Angolan army regulars and at least two South African soldiers were killed. Such actions have provoked a pointed Angolan response: South African military observers report the deployment in southern Angola, allegedly with Cuban and East German aid, of sophisticated radar and surface-to-air missiles to guard against South African air attacks. Says Major General Charles Lloyd, commander of the South African forces in Namibia: "We are preparing ourselves mentally and physically for a more serious war."
—By George Russell.
Reported by Peter Hawthorne/Johannesburg