Counter-Revolutionary Warfare: the Soweto Intelligence Unit and Southern Itineraries

Abstract

The Soweto Intelligence Unit (SIU) was a specialised security police unit responsible for recruiting deep-cover agents. Accounts to the Amnesty Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) suggest that through the 1980s the SIU operated far beyond its Soweto base, extending its network into Botswana, Swaziland and other liberation movement bases. Membership included several police veterans of the South West Africa1|‘border wars’, at least two Mozambicans who had previously been deployed to South West Africa, an askari2 abducted from Botswana, and a network of informers and deep-cover agents stretching from Soweto into several of the frontline states. The TRC was given accounts of numerous ‘false-flag’ operations, including bombings and other acts of sabotage ostensibly aimed at providing credibility for informers and undercover agents, as well as several cross-border operations against African National Congress (ANC) targets in the mid 1980s. Several of these were...