IAN MUNRO PHILLIPS
Well, first of all we, as was noted earlier in earlier evidence, SDU's have been in existence within communities in kwaZulu Natal for some considerable time from the 1980's onwards.
	With the unbanning of the ANC and SACP and MK, it was the task of an interim group to re-establish open public branches of the ANC in these various communities.  It wasn't simply a case of ANC branches just popping up everywhere, they had to be organised in a particular way.
	At that particular time and there was considerable violence in the immediate aftermath in kwaZulu Natal of Nelson Mandela's release, in a number of townships for example, there was some confrontations between people, at that time it was considerably shaky, the atmosphere in the country and of course negotiations hadn't quite started in any real earnest at that stage.
	But as a result of these developments, and continuing pressures on the ANC leadership, not only here but nationally as well, the preparatory work that went towards the ANC's Consultative Conference that was held at NASREC in December of 1990, indicated that the issues of self defence and ANC's response to self defence, would have to become clarified.
	That Conference, to cut a long story short, took a resolution that it was the ANC's responsibility and through the ANC, MK had a responsibility to participate and to help and assist communities when they were under attack, to develop their self defence capabilities.
	The ANC took the responsible position that self defence was of such a sensitive and serious nature, that it had to be coordinated, it had to be organised and it had to be disciplined, precisely to ensure that it didn't, that communities didn't run amok, or that self defence didn't perpetuate if you like, a spiral of violence or anything like that.
	With those decisions in the December 1990 conference, Headquarters, National Executive Committee made some preparations in terms of guidelines in how to establish these things, how to establish the contacts and the support of the ANC and MK for SDU activities, self defence activity.
	And these were all confirmed in the National Consultative Conference, the 48th I think it was, in July of 1991.  So for all intents and purposes, at an organised level, the ANC in Southern Natal as we already heard, became involved with self defence activities, SDU's in many of the communities from 1991 onwards.