Leadership Quote by Joe Slovo

“Third force” is the kind of phrase that sounds almost bureaucratic until you remember what it’s for: laundering state violence into plausible deniability. Joe Slovo, a central strategist of South Africa’s liberation movement, is naming a tactic that authoritarian and embattled governments reach for when direct repression becomes too visible, too costly, or too politically radioactive. Instead of the regime openly crushing opponents, it midwives an ostensibly independent actor - a militia, a rival faction, a criminal network, a “spontaneous” mob - and lets that proxy do the dirty work. The state keeps its hands clean enough for foreign diplomats, courts, and nervous moderates, while fear spreads just the same.

The intent is diagnostic and accusatory. Slovo isn’t merely describing conflict; he’s warning that violence presented as “black-on-black,” “community tensions,” or “tribal” rivalry may be engineered theater. The subtext is strategic: if the public believes the country is sliding into chaos driven by irreconcilable enemies, then the regime can pose as the only stabilizing adult in the room, justify emergency powers, and fracture the opposition’s legitimacy. A “third force” doesn’t just attack bodies; it attacks narratives.

Context matters. In late-apartheid South Africa, allegations that security forces covertly armed and encouraged factional violence were inseparable from the battle over transition itself. Slovo’s line reads like a field manual for understanding how regimes survive when their official story is collapsing: they invent an alternative source of disorder, then sell their own repression as rescue.