IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/cjssxx/v47y2021i3p349-367.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Very South African Plot? The 1987 London Kidnap Plan

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Plaut
  • Roland Oliphant

Abstract

This essay considers a South African plot to kidnap and torture senior members of the African National Congress working in London in 1987 to extract information from them, and explores the response of the British state to this conspiracy. Using previously unexamined documents from the files of Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office revealed following a Freedom of Information request, supplemented by interviews in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Norway, we make the following arguments. First, that the extent of South African covert activity abroad during the apartheid period has been underestimated and remains insufficiently explored. Secondly, that the agents of the South African security services continued to pursue their activities after the end of apartheid. Thirdly, that considerable information about these activities has yet to be revealed as it is held in government files that remain closed.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Plaut & Roland Oliphant, 2021. "A Very South African Plot? The 1987 London Kidnap Plan," Journal of Southern African Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(3), pages 349-367, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:cjssxx:v:47:y:2021:i:3:p:349-367
    DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2021.1911214
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03057070.2021.1911214
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03057070.2021.1911214?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:cjssxx:v:47:y:2021:i:3:p:349-367. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/cjss .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.