Minister reveals how IRA agreed to train ANC’s military wing

Posted By: December 08, 2013

COLIN O'CAROLL. Belfast Telegraph. Saturday, December 7, 2013

Some details of IRA aid to MK, ANC's military wing, were revealed by Kadar Asmal, a
South African minister, in a biography published in 2011.

While living in exile inDublin, Mr Asmal was a member of the ANC, but opposed IRA
violence and had no links to Sinn Fein.

So, when the ANC asked him to secure military training from the IRA, he turned for
help to Mick O' Riordan, leader of the Communist Party of Ireland.

He wrote that after Mr O'Riordan contacted Gerry Adams, IRA explosives experts gave
MK militants a fortnight's training at camps in Angola.

IRA members later carried out reconnaissance on South Africa's Sasolburg oil
refinery in preparation for an MK attack.

Loyalist links to the apartheid government culminated in the 1988 importation to
Northern Ireland of 200 AK-47 assault rifles, 90 Browning pistols, 500 fragmentation
grenades, 30,000 rounds of ammunition and 12 RPG-7 rocket launchers in a shipment
from Lebanon arranged by South African officials.

The weapons, imported with the aid of Brian Nelson, a British agent within the UDA,
were divided between the UDA, UVF and Ulster Resistance, a protest movement with
which the DUP severed all links when news of the arms deal emerged.

In return for the arms connection, the South Africans received plans of
ground-to-air missiles being manufactured at Shorts.