In 1965, the white settler regime in Rhodesia led by Ian Douglas Smith declared Unilateral Independence (UDI). J.B. Vorster, then Prime Minister of South Africa, was selling "détente" to independent Southern African countries, among them Malawi and Zambia, in a clear attempt to undercut the efforts of the Liberation Movement from support. Thus was born the unholy alliance between the Smith/Caetano and Vorster regimes.
The armies of the unholy alliance posed a challenge; they stood in the way of MK and Zipra reaching home. Moreover, they sought to frustrate and defeat the goal of total liberation of the Southern part of the continent. This was not to be. Thus was born the Luthuli Detachment, named in honour of ANC President, Albert Luthuli, who passed away in the same year, 1967.
The central objective of the contingent of MK that crossed the Zambezi from Zambia to Zimbabwe during the campaign, was to work their way towards South Africa, in order to commence operations on home turf. The battles that ensued from the encounters and clashes with the Rhodesian armies and apartheid reinforcements have gone down as among the first and fiercest between the regime/s and armed liberation combatants. The objective of the campaigns were not completely fulfilled, yet, they had tested the psychological armour of the regimes in the area. The legacy of Wankie and Spolilo imparted to future generations of fighters, heroes of the mettle and calibre of Ntate Mashego, Flags Boshielo, Chris Hani, Ralph Nqungwana and many more. In the aftermath of the battles, some MK cadres managed to retreat and others were arrested only to join colleagues on Robben Island.
History would be incomplete without the mention of the sacrifices and courage of the likes of James Masimini who insisted that his comrades retreat while he covered the enemy approach. This is incidentally reminiscent of the example of one Alexander Matrosov, a Soviet Red Army hero of WWII who covered enemy machine-gun fire with his chest during one battle against a rampant Nazi unit. James Masimini, fought like a lion until his body was riddled by enemy bullets. Such heroism and self-sacrifice is rare at any time.
Umngwenya immortalised MK in the campaigns and lived true to the words of O R Tambo when he declared that MK would provide the cutting edge to the political struggles of the people.
The victory of the liberation forces led by Frelimo and the MPLA of Mozambique and Angola respectively in 1975/6 had far-reaching implications for the struggles of the people of Southern Africa and South Africa, in particular. These developments altered forever, the geo-politics of the region in favour of the revolutionary forces.
In response, the apartheid regime rushed to reinforce its occupation forces already deployed in Namibia and Angola. The regime invaded Angola, confident of launching in Luanda. History has recorded the demise of that attack and the rout of the advancing columns just 12 kilometres at the entrance to Luanda, along the road known as Quifangondo or Nshila-wa lufu (Road of Death) in the Angolan dialects.
Coupled to the fateful but heroic deeds of the student militants of 1976, the apartheid regime found itself caught in battles not only in Namibia and Angola. It had to reckon with the rising militancy of students and workers' strikes as well as the activism of formations like SASO and others that have refused to die albeit the constraints imposed on their mobilisation mission.
This period also witnessed a trickle of the first cadres released from prison after many years of incarceration following Sharpeville and the illegalisation of the activities of the liberation movement. Soweto exploded in 1976 and the uprising spread contagiously countrywide. In fact, the system of Bantu Education had provided the spark that ignited the volcano of resentment. The apartheid regime took fright. It sought to extinguish the fires and quell the rising tide in the manner reminiscent of the 60s.
However, the immediate response was the exodus of thousands of young people, who left the country in search of the liberation movement, some through Lesotho, Botswana, Swaziland and others through Mozambique. This unique generation of mostly youth and students were destined to add a glorious chapter in the war of liberation. They complemented MK ranks at a very crucial stage in the history of the People's Army. Like their predecessors they emulated the Spirit of Volunteerism and a veritable disdain for death, taking the struggle to new and higher levels of mobilisation and military effort. The contingents of young men and women who arrived in Temeke, Tanzania, at a safe house known as Mkhumbane, in the environs of Dar-es-Salaam in 1976, were not only determined but also impatient to get back home. They fell under the command and mentorship of Ntate Mashego. He undertook the housekeeping management including their physical preparations, a curtain-raiser for the eventual military training. He led them on day-break road work or jogging and the residents of Temeke, who had come to enjoy the morning routine, cheered by the roadside. The contingents were all known to the locals as ordinary students.
The residents of Mkhumbane were not only impatient; they were also angry and dying to lay their hands on weapons of war, more especially what they fondly dubbed Alfred Khuzwayo (AK 47), and get back to South Africa for the big battles. Then they could not understand why political education was so important, when everybody knew the oppression that needed to be fought back home. Despite his experiences with the First South African Native Military Corps during WW II, and combat in Wankie and Spolilo, Ntate Mashego found himself with a unique challenge.
As far as they were concerned, the June 16 militants saw no reason why the road back to South Africa should be difficult. After all, they had crossed the perilous and treacherous borders unarmed. What danger could be there with arms in hand!
Temeke proved to be the dress rehearsal of an enduring legacy in political and revolutionary initiation. Political Training and other subjects were introduced within the prevailing conditions. Comrade Mark Shope taught them Trade Unionism and the History of the Labour Movement in SA and Politics in general. Comrade Elias Mahlase (Banda), inducted them into Military Tactics while several leaders, among them Duma Nokwe, Joe Slovo and Mzwai Piliso took turns to hold discussions with them.
Notwithstanding everything, the clamour for guns could not be extinguished. Mashego soon realised that after their routines in the morning, the recruits were very diligent with their morning meals. It was a stratagem that permitted them enough time to sneak outside and admire the passing armed units of the Tanzanian Peoples Defence Force (TPDF) on their morning exercises.
The Movement had not reckoned with the flood of recruits that would follow in the wake of June 16. Though better prepared than in 1961, the swell that followed was unprecedented. However, the solution was near; it came from the MPLA and the People's Republic of Angola who offered rear-bases for MK training.
The plane that touched Gabela, a small town near Porto Amboim and Gambalu, in Huambo Province on the 7th of September 1976 carried the President of the newly-born Republic of Angola, Agostinho Neto. On board with him were a group of twenty-one June 16 militants, the first to set foot on Angolan soil to establish MK. Gabela had earlier served as the seat of the short-lived Unita government leading up to Independence. It was here where the ill-fated " Zulu Column" of the apartheid war machinery met its demise against the onslaught of BM 21 multiple rocket-launcher, nicknamed "Katusha", before retreating to the South with Unita. Angola, in 1976 was still a battle zone and a country at war.
Gabela, though not yet the camp for MK, still enabled the advance contingent of the people's army to extend fraternal relationships with the fighters from the African Islands of Sao Tomé and Principe. In particular, it laid the founding stone of relationships with FAPLA. Hence this group of MK trainees came to be known as the FAPLA/Mkhonto. The contingents that succeeded those already in Gabela into Angola were housed at an engineering installation in the capital Luanda. The installation, hereafter referred to only as Engineering, was formerly utilised as workshops during Portuguese colonial lordship. It was a huge complex where FAPLA, Cuban internationalists and the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) fighters were quartered.
Engineering taught MK the local diet of funji, a traditional porridge made from the tubers of the cassava and introduced them to pao (bread) procured from the local loja-do-povo (people's stores). It inducted the June 16 militants in the subjects of Orientation in the terrain, Topography, the Theory of Fire-Arms and Engineering.
In particular, it provided them a hint of military logic, to know that a military engineering formula does not have to be mathematically correct to blow a target. What mattered was the job to be done based on the concrete experiences of "sappers-military" engineers who have tested the mixtures in real battles in other popular wars.
Soon, Politics became the article in their revolutionary vocabulary and Francis Meli, the Commissar, was there to see to it that everybody was steeped in the knowledge. Comrade Commander Machel, who was later replaced by Julius Mokoena was there too to ensure that military practice transformed the general enthusiasm into a purposeful direction. The biggest thrill to the troops at the base was always provided by the opportunity to practice March and Drill.
The drill sessions were conducted in OAU-supplied uniforms that came in colours of brown, yellow and green. These they had dubbed " Savimbis" because UNITA had used them too during the war for independence.
Just as was the case at Gabela, the troops at Engineering also eagerly awaited the journey to the South of Angola, where a proper military facility for MK was being prepared. But the long wait at Engineering was not without its positive effects. The cultural life of the contingents was coloured with song, poetry and dances of the people of South Africa. In the words of Peter Seeiso (Scandal): "we sang before eating, during work and at formation". Though it was not until the settling in Nova Katengue that this aspect of their life bloomed, the Zulu expression "Fak' iNgoma" would become a catchphrase in no time.
The role and place of women began to assert itself at that point in time. Generally, they received no special treatment and earned none and justified the saying: "We fight side-by-side with our men." The men reciprocated by fondly referring to them as 'Mzana'. The much-awaited journey to the anticipated military camp in the South of Angola was long in coming. It would not come until some sections of the contingents at Engineering found themselves at Funda, opening another camp. Funda was located not far from the cross-roads town of Caxito. The terrain, previously a game reserve, abounded in wild game: warthog, buffalo, python and antelope and scores of other species, the noisiest of which were the baboons on the neighbouring mountain range. Funda was the home of Angolan peasant villagers and SWAPO, then undergoing their military paces under the instruction of Cape Verdian Officers. The MK contingent to Funda were addressed by both Presidents Tambo and Nujoma on arrival and exhorted to learn their lessons and vindicate the sacrifice, trust, and friendship bestowed upon them by the People's Republic of Angola.
Funda provided to MK the first taste of the hardship and demands of training. They made friends with thirst, fatigue, less sleep and with the swarm of mosquitoes. In time, the fighters learned from the local peasants that the smoke from palm-leaves were a very effective repellent of mosquitoes.
One lesson that Funda imparted to the fighters, recalls Mghobozi, is the status of "orders" in military life: "perform first and clarify later!" This did not make sense to the fighters who were still apt to engage orders and not less ridicule the Instructor. One day the Cape Verdian forgot his temper. "He told us," recollects Zizi, "you think you are clever. SWAPO comrades are behaved; they take orders and perform. What about you - you question everything? If you want your independence, go get it from the OAU. We (Cape Verdians) got ours through this compaliot (rifle)!"
The Funda group also learned their lessons and in time they acclimatised and found joy in the midst of the challenges. The greatest gift by Funda to this contingent was the indissoluble bonds they forged with combatants of SWAPO. Hence the informal solidarity of SWAPO/Mkhonto, forged in the steaming heat and sweat, malaria and the unforgiving terrain.
Together they scored a victory once when they captured a scout sent by Holden Roberto's FNLA to spy on the camp for possible attack. Subsequently, they tracked the bandits to a nearby village and in the ensuing engagement, they succeeded in freeing several women. It transpired that the women had been abducted from their villages in the South and made to cross three provinces, on foot, in the company of their abductors.
These MK fighters relate how Funda introduced them to a python meal. They flatly refused to partake of it. At that stage, a snake was a snake to them and not a treat for one's stomach. Condensed milk taken with biscuits was often the only meal. The hardship of struggle was rearing its head. Malaria claimed its first victim at Funda for this group of fighters. SWAPO/Mkhonto would only be reunited with their colleagues in Benguela several months later.
The bulk of fighters that had remained behind at Engineering eventually made it to Benguela in the South. The journey, undertaken in a column of thirteen buses and a medley of trucks was long and nerve-racking. The guns of war had not completely died down in the countryside where Unita and FNLA still harboured ambitions to wrest power from the MPLA. The fleet of buses, with its thirsty and starving passengers reached Benguela as the hour struck five in the afternoon. Everybody then thought that they had finally arrived.
Benguela is one of 17 provinces, including the capital of the People's Republic of Angola. It is situated on the South-West of the country and like the port cities of Luanda and Namibe it offers an outlet to the Atlantic ocean through the port city of Lobito. The latter is one of the only three major ports in the country. It is in Benguela where the much-spoken about Benguela rail-line that connects the economies of Angola, Zaire and Zambia starts. This rail-line became the favourite sitting target of the destabilisation campaigns of Unita in subsequent years.
The landscape in Benguela was bare and naked of foliage; the earth was baked khaki, and at places yellow as sulphur, a hue that occupied the eyes with a burning ferocity. Water was scarce while the soil was oily. Its grains and granules stuck on the human body. The monotony of the desolate landscape was only broken by the blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean spreading away in the distance to the west. The place could have been the Karoo or the Kalahari that many had only read about in the subject of Geography and spied in the Atlas maps.
Quite a few refused to believe their ears on being informed that this was to be their camp; when they had wished that Benguela should be only a transit point. It turned out to be just that. Novo Catengue, the real camp was still in the future and said to be under construction. Benguela was to be their camp in the meantime.
The place, formerly a farm of sorts, boasted one double-story building, a care-taker's quarters and an unroofed structure that had not known complete construction. Mzana (women) were allotted the former caretaker's den while men set up home in what was previously the poultry pen. Several days they reconciled themselves to the fetid stench of accumulated chicken droppings and piss and the ferocity of chicken-fleas that made a festival of the arrivals, in their sleep and daily effort of turning the place into home. The year was 1977, the year in which the assassins of Smith murdered Jason Ziyababa Moyo, second vice-President of ZAPU, in Zambia. Several migwenya, including Mzwai Piliso, were seen very depressed because of their long association with these fighters since the days of Kongwa in Tanzania.
Benguela turned out to be a true induction ground of the expectation of military life and its vicissitudes. It prepared the fighters to face hardship. A notorious lesson in tenacity was provided by the flies. The flies competed with the fighters for every morsel and drop of milk on the way to the mouth. Word has it that it was not until Baba Mavimbela, a Kongwa and Robben Island graduate, initiated a campaign of cleanliness that they earned reprieve from the flies. Until his intervention, the fighters were in the habit of discarding their empty-tin cans around.
Training was demanding; it exposed the chatter-boxes for what they were and distinguished those with strong constitutions from the malingerers, those who faked all kinds of excuses to escape the grueling routine and repertoire of military life. Those frail by nature would be forgiven and find accommodation in the maxim: " we go by the pace of the slowest" when learning, however, " not by the pace of the laziest". Some comrades rarely ran out of ruses to avoid training, but their number was miniscule. Their "chronic" ailments and distressing screams of pain were legendary and never failed to arouse sympathy amongst the more sensitive in the detachment.
In Benguela, they underwent a complete, but non-graduating course, seeing Nova Katengue was still in the distance. The entire instructorate were MK veterans steeped in the military theory and combat preparedness stretching as far back as the Kongwa and Wankie/ Spolilo days. For political instruction they boasted stalwarts in the form of Francis Meli, Mark Shope and Jack Simons. These are among the men who are credited with breaking through the fighters' negative attitude of emphasizing the gun over politics. They taught the fighters that without politics, they are not soldiers, but mere mercenaries! The first generation of MK instructors were as theoretically grounded, as they were action oriented. It is Mark Shope who is remembered for teaching that: politics equals the bread, the bed and breath people breathe. "He taught us," Veli recalls, " that every child is entitled to a pint of milk, a slice of bread, an egg a day as a right, and not as a privilege." Simons further reminded the fighters that they should not forget to reproduce themselves in the act of executing the revolution. It was still Mark Shope who in his frank lectures left fighters seething. He openly taught that the struggle to liberate South Africa could take years to accomplish, " It could be 10, 20 or 50 years from today," he said in answer to a fighter's question. This was hard to swallow for the fighters who expected to pick up guns and head home.
The combatants then could not understand why the ANC and MK could not do what the Katangese from the DRC province of Katanga, under General Bomba were doing - advancing by about fifty kilometers per day on Mobutu's Zaire and army, threatening to overwhelm Shava Province. Mobutu was saved by the intervention of French airborne troops. These daring exploits fired the fighters' imagination. They failed to realise that South Africa was not Zaire and the Apartheid war machinery was not in the league of Mobuto's army.
Malaria continued to be a major hazard even here. It was not uncommon to hear a report at Reveille announcing that close on 100 fighters lay sick in their beds. At the time, part of the problem was that some comrades shunned taking the prescribed prophylactic tablets. Chloroquine, with its bad taste and somewhat irritating side effects instigated a fair amount of truancy. It was not until cerebral malaria struck and they witnessed a fighter's senses take leave of him that its seriousness was brought home to everybody. The much-awaited day arrived; the rumour about the impending move to Nova Katengue, indeed, came true. Convoy trucks showed up to ferry them to the destination. They had been joined, for some time then, by FAPLA/Mkhonto from Gabela, and SWAPO/Mkhonto from Funda. The streams had, at last, merged.
Nova Katengue is situated in the mountainous and hilly region of Benguela, a mere stone's throw from the Benguela rail-line. It was dressed in elephantine savanna, a habitat of snakes and wild game attesting to the area's previous role as a game reserve. The climate was mild and friendly save the winters, due to the proximity to the Cold Benguela current which could be as biting.
Katengue, by comparison to Benguela, was an oasis endowed with a stream, a host of buildings and clutter of machinery ranging from the Caterpillar earthmoving systems, drilling monsters and compressors. It turned out that the place had been a quarry and construction site in the past. The Portuguese sabotaged much of the machinery on their retreat from the advancing tide of MPLA forces, at the close of the war. MK fighters, in turn inherited much of the equipment, but the majority were not in working order. They came in handy, notwithstanding the labours of repair, in the task of constructing the camp.
Katengue is synonymous with MK as it is with the Cuban Internationalists. They were the military advisors; they provided succour (logistics) in the lean season and manned the defense at a critical juncture in the life of the detachment. Initially, the companeros, as the Cubans were fondly called, were skeptical about the working habits of South African youths. " At first, to them [Cubans]" recalls Daku, "we were youth, worse still just students. We surprised them! They were unaware that among us were several 'bush' mechanics, carpenters, bricklayers and electricians. Veli was one among us. They wanted to do the work alone; then they discovered that we knew - we were not only good, some of us, were better. From then, we had earned their trust."
The electricity generator became operational, the water pump too, and an electrified stage became the shrine of culture and camp festival. In no time the camp was up and fully functional. It was in recognition of this feat of creativity, innovation and industriousness of its members that Katengue earned the honour of " University of MK" bestowed by President O. R. on the graduation occasion of the June 16 Detachment.
The ANC and MK have weathered many ploys and conspiracies over the years. One of these was the perfidious plan by one Nito Alves, former Minister of the Interior of the PRA during the first administration under President Agustinho Neto. He almost got away with a bus-load of MK fighters during the transit at Engineering.
He would have succeeded, given the heightened expectation of the journey to the South, had those responsible for the combatants at Engineering not refused to allow their protégés to board the buses that were sent to fetch them unannounced and with no clear destination. The story unraveled after the foiled coup attempt hatched by Alves and his co-conspirators. As Minister, Alves, had detailed inside information about the refugee locations, and unhindered access to them. This aborted machination would pale into insignificance in the light of what lay in store for MK.
During 1977, circa May, 12 cadres of MK stood before the racist judge in the Pretoria High Court on charges of recruiting, transporting and receiving fighters of MK from military training and bringing arms and ammunition for sabotage purposes in the country. Most prominent amongst them was the late assassinated leader of the ANC and former Robben Island inmate, Joe Gqabi. Within weeks, a renegade named Mthembu, who stood witness against the twelve, perished under a hail of bullets. He is known to have also acknowledged standing witness against Mandela during the Rivonia Trial.
Three days before the second commemoration of June 16, the apartheid authorities were shocked into contact with armed MK fighters in down-town Johannesburg. This was the famed Solomon Mahlangu incident. (Mahlangu was arrested and later condemned by the regime to hang - a sentence that provoked immense international outrage but was nevertheless carried out with impunity on 6 April 1979).
In a separate incident, a security police major and a constable were wounded in the fierce gun-battle with another fighter in Dobsonville. Before the year was over, the police had admitted the occurrence of more than thirty sabotage and meeting engagements. Reference here is being made to the battle of Mochaneng in Rustenburg with MK guerrillas.
Official pronouncements were quoted as saying that there was an estimated four-thousand blacks, mostly ANC, currently undergoing military training. The regime passed the Defence Amendment Act of 1977 which extended military training for white male South Africans from one to two years, provided for media censorship and for the commandeering of goods and equipments. Not long thereafter, the regime legalised cross-border raids; it arrogated itself the right to pursue any terrorist base threatening the security of the Republic. In so doing, the regime defined the countries South of the Sahara, as its terrain of battle.
Katengue had a fair share of its light moments and humor - even with hunger pangs. Three are particular and concern the train, the hare and macaco (monkey). The Benguela passenger train turned out to be a distraction during classes. As it passed by the camp, the train and its passengers attracted the attention of the trainees. In the end, the instructors relented and permitted the fighters to enjoy the spectacle. The hare provided sport to the physical and tactics classes. In the midst of serious training, a hare would dart out of the long elephant grass and the trainees would get into a frenzy and give chase, much to the chagrin of their superior, turning the whole situation into some carnival mood. Only later could the mood be restored to learning.
How the macaco turned into a delicacy is no less a hilarious and amusing episode. Hunger and nutrition deficiency were frequent companions of the detachment. This was particularly so when the goods train failed to arrive with provisions for the camp. " Do you eat a monkey?" Daku recalls being asked by a Cuban colleague. " Never," he swore, " I eat no monkeys!" " Do you know what you just ate now?" " Yes, meat!" "What meat?" " Any meat, but no monkey," he barked emphatically. " You've eaten a monkey today". Realising as it were that the shortage of meat somewhat affected the morale, the Cuban had shot a monkey away from camp and hid the head. Afterwards, he produced the tell-tale head to the astonishment and subsequent amusement of many around. For years Daku would vouch that there was nothing monkeyish about that meat! On the contrary, it tasted like any meat, if not more delicious. He concedes, of course, that the absence of meat for some time could be responsible for accentuating the taste.
The history and experiences of Novo Catengue deserves many books, but the story would be incomplete without the narration of three particular episodes namely: Black September, The Graduation of the June 16 Detachment and the aerial bombardment by the South African Airforce of those days.
Black September: It happened in the early hours of one evening when the Detachment were busy with various aspects of the night programme including political discussions. "It was a horrible and terrible night," recalls Refiloe, commonly known as M'Ref. "I had never witnessed anything like it in my entire life!
We were busy playing draughts when we saw Lastborn suddenly flop on the ground and writhing in pain like someone being attacked by an army of ants. At first we thought it was another diarrhea outbreak since we still had lots of flies around the kitchen although these did not compare to what we saw in Benguela. We continued to play leisurely, but Lastborn did not stop crying. Someone amongst us accused him of being spoilt."
"We were in political discussion," remembers Scandal, " when someone requested to go to the toilet. He went out. Then another one, and another and another! The Platoon Commissar thought the requests were another ruse to dodge the political discussions. Soon the place was in commotion, with many in convulsions. The epidemic laid hold of the camp. Units that were in the terrain that night were recalled and discussions cancelled.
The way to the medical point and toilet was a flurry of movement. Everywhere people were ferrying someone. Others were vomiting while others unable to reach the toilets relieved themselves along the way or just where they stood. Many of the comrades were too weak to stand up."
"I will never forget the picture of Comrade Christina More that night," recollects Abbey. "She carried empty milk tins from one person to another. She literally undressed many comrades who could not make it to the toilets and wiped them as would a mother of children in nappies. She was like a mother, a sister and comrade never to be forgotten. "I have never seen so many people relieving themselves simultaneously in all my life," adds Abbey with a haunted look, "the whole camp resembled a huge toilet and stank like one!"
Upon reading the situation, the Cubans, reinforced by several Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs), sealed the camp from any possible attack as the doctors got to work, treating the personnel affected. People were dehydrated; bodies lay limp everywhere or in coma. The entire camp had been poisoned. It emerged much later that the poisoning had occurred in the kitchen where someone had tampered with the evening meal of beans and rice. Fortunately, no life was lost.
In the wake of Black September, the routine of rotating platoons for cooking duty was discontinued. A permanent kitchen platoon was selected, ensuring that they were screened beforehand. The full facts and the hand behind the poisoning would unravel years later and lead, among other developments, to the formal establishment of the Security Department (Mbokhodo), and the establishment of Camp 32, derogatively referred to as Number 4 or Quatro in Portuguese after the infamous Johannesburg Fort prison.
After Black September life returned to normal. Everybody was now focused on the course that was coming to an end. It was an end that would see them emerge as fully-fledged soldiers. Graduation day was, indeed, a grand occasion. It was importantly graced by President O R Tambo and a host of fraternal representatives and other well-wishers. The detachment filed past, salute high and proud in grand fashion. A number of soldiers who had acquitted themselves well during the course became recipients of the coveted honour of being commended as among the best MK soldiers.
"I'm a soldier of the South African revolution serving in MK", they took the oath holding the Spear of the Nation with the President, " ...I solemnly swear to my country and allies that I dedicate my life to place power in the hands of the people; to destroy racism, oppression, exploitation and colonial domination in all its forms; to defend the victories of the people's revolution. I am ready and prepared at all times...And if need be I am prepared to lay down my life for the cause of our revolution. I make this solemn oath knowing fully that should I violate it, I shall be guilty of betraying the cause of my people and will be liable to severe penalty including death. A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, a life for a life. Amandla!"
The Detachment had graduated and proudly earned themselves a first: to be known as the June 16 Detachment, an honour bestowed upon them by the President in recognition of the valiant courage of the youth of South Africa. Their training tasks fulfilled, the Detachment focused on the dream to return home. Their mood then, is best summed up in the words of one of their poets who wrote:
The Frontline
Where manhood and consciousness is tested
The only place to bury persecutions and burdens of ages
The only place to declare names immortal
Trust me brother you will not be alone there
Frontline
Where bullets will graze on man and grass
Where man will make his own lightning and thunder
Where the enemy will fall and never rise
Brother truly my shadow will be next to yours.
The graduate detachment was succeeded by a second one in 1978 that later came to be known as the Moncada Detachment in honour of the Cuban Internationalists. Moncada celebrates the Cuban National Day. Though belonging to the June 16 collective proper, Moncada was made of elements that were only able to arrive in Katengue at the close of the first course. They succeeded the first intake of graduates as the latter left for various missions at home and abroad.
Several members of the graduating detachment left behind were selected to undergo an advanced specialised training, ironically in Benguela once again. Disappointment at being left behind, some among them, numbering 17 did not share the sentiment nor saw the necessity of specialised training. They had been to Benguela, some as far as Gabela, and expected only to go home after the main course. They refused to undertake further training. The Group of 17, were pardoned for their defiance of military orders, but were ultimately sent to Quibaxe, a new training centre to the north.
Subsequently, some members of this group, reinforced with elements that had returned from further training in the Soviet Union and the then German Democratic Republic were tasked to set up another camp known as Fazenda. Fazenda literally means a small farm holding, which it originally was during the colonial era. It lies across Rio Dande. Fazenda in later years hosted the Survival Course that was intended to prepare those chosen for the rigorous demands of surviving underground within enemy-held territory. Cadres selected for membership of the Special Operations Units falling under the famed Barney Molokoane also undertook some of their sessions at Fazenda. (Originally, when the Special Operations unit was formed, it came under the direction of comrade Joe Slovo, but was commanded by Motso "Obadi" Mokgabudi and subsequently by Rashid Patel following the demise of Obadi during the Matola, Mozambique, raid by the SADF). The conditions at Fazenda were rugged and unkind. Perhaps it was this, among other factors, which made inhabitants of Fazenda to at times feel that they were being dumped and that they could not be trusted by the army. Their perceptions were reinforced in this regard by the fact that the initial membership included some members of the group of 17, as well as the fact that before the introduction of the Survival Course life in Fazenda was taken up mainly by political classes.
Life in Nova Katengue in the South continued apace. Upon graduation, members of the Moncada Detachment commenced various special courses including Anti-Aircraft and Politics. Out of the Politics course, was born the crop of cadres destined to set up the first Politics and Commissariat Departments. This was decisive in that, for the first time, the conditions had been laid for the replacement of Cuban advisors considering the fact that there was already in existence a large contingent of other qualified military experts who had been trained mostly in the Eastern Bloc. Indeed, when the majority of Umgwenya left for other missions in later years, MK had acquired the capacity for self-training, a capacity provided by the June 16 Detachments elements.
The assault on Katengue by the apartheid military forces contributed and precipitated the relocation of MK training activities from the South to the North of the country. The year was 1979, a year during which the ANC announced a three-year programme of armed propaganda and mass-mobilisation. The programme was ushered by the designation of 1979 as the Year of Isandlhwana-The year of the Spear in celebration of the Centenary of the Battle of Isandlhwana of 1879.
The announcement came on the heels of what is now known in the annals of liberation history as the Battle of Mochaneng, when, a small unit of MK got into a meeting engagement with the SADF in Rustenburg in the Western Transvaal. The battle lasted for four hours. Several SADF soldiers were wiped out by MK during that battle.
The MK cadres, who had lost only one member, retreated for more than 200 kilometres before reaching the border into Botswana. According to sources, in an unguarded moment, an SADF officer suggested that one MK soldier was the equivalent of ten SADF soldiers in battle. Press reports in South Africa then also divulged that since 1960, the banning of the Liberation Movement, state expenditure on defence had multiplied from the initial figure of R44 million to over R1500 million. The enemy was preparing to launch a Total Onslaught, which meant that the regime had acknowledged to itself the need to fight the war in the diplomatic, political, cultural, economic, military, psychological and intelligence spheres for the very first time.
Word of the impending attack on Katengue had been circulating for some time. It was further strengthened by the attack, the previous year, on the SWAPO refugee camp at Cassinga, Southern Angola, where the apartheid military machine massacred children and old women in their hundreds. The outrage subsequently came to be known as the Cassinga Massacre. In the circumstances, Katengue took measures against the possible eventuality despite not knowing the form it would take.
After receiving intelligence reports about the preparation to attack Katengue, the routine of the camp was changed. Every day the detachment emptied camp in the morning hours before dawn and retreated to sanctuary into the mountains. They left behind only sentries manning the defence and the anti-aircraft gunners securing the air-space.
The enemy planes arrived on the 14 March 1979. The attack was, apparently, synchronised with a radio broadcast by Radio South Africa as though in an act of mockery on Africa. Just as the announcer's voice came on the air: " Good Morning Africa, this is Radio RSA" the planes were there!
"They were four," recalled Sipho, otherwise known as Chapeu, one of the survivors. "We were standing sentry under the bridge where we had been since 04h00 in the morning after leaving camp. When we saw them that morning, they were still far and appeared no different from birds. We argued, with others saying they were birds. No birds, they are planes. No, birds! We took them for birds."
The outposts on the perimeters of the camp had spied them too and radioed the guard house. The latter, cautious not to give rise to a false alarm, queried the alarm. Then the Canberras were on the camp in no time. "They came from the South," recalls Jackson Soni, known by everybody as Killer. "The Canberras led the way, they held security, while the mirages came behind with their loads. They came above the wedge in the mountains like they were falling from the sky". They swooped down upon the workshop and when they lifted, hundreds of many kilograms heavy of bombs were raining down. The workshop went up in flames together with its dump of fuel. The store of two hundred litre drums buried underneath the workshop exploded into an inferno, the likes seen only on movie screens. A cloud of soot and smoke hung upon the camp. Then the bombs rained on the parade ground, HQ and the stage. Nomkhosi Mini, known by all as Mary, and daughter of Vuyisile Mini, was caught in the house where she had apparently returned to fetch something. She ran out amidst exploding loads and shrapnel and made it just in time into a dug-out.
One cadre had remained sleeping in the dwelling when others retreated. He awoke to the havoc of bombardment and came out. He was running in the open, heedless to Mary's screams calling him to the dug-out. The planes bore down on him its machineguns ploughing a trench on his prints. He was not lucky and bought it with his life. A Cuban comrade lost his life too. Another comrade was spliced by a big splinter from a 300-pounder bomb and died on the spot.
High in the mountains two anti-aircrafts guns were coughing and stuttering fire; one defender armed with a SAM-7 (Strella) experienced problems and wasted precious minutes before rejoining the defence to repulse the birds of death. The fighters on the ZGU anti-aircraft guns fought until one of the planes was hit. It was seen reeling and spinning in the sky until it disappeared to its grave in the depth of the Atlantic Ocean in the West.
The cadre who shot the plane, Petrus Mashego or Shoes to everybody, would later be sentenced to death by the apartheid regime, after successful infiltration and operations in the country. Several years later his sentence was commuted and he was sent to the Island. After the attack, the detachment came down from the hills. Katengue had been leveled to the ground and everything they had known lay in heaps of rubble. The camp resembled a city visited by ruins, a city whose age could have been mistaken for centuries. Some missiles lay unexploded on the ground. Later, the enemy claimed to have destroyed a "Cuban Missile site" based in the South of Angola.
It was clear that the enemy planes had intended to catch the detachment that morning at parade. They seemed precise about the coordinates of the camp and the time the detachment were massed. Another Kassinga had been avoided. However, the true facts regarding the exact source of enemy knowledge would again only be known years later. After the bombardment, Katengue could be of no more use to the detachments and the army moved North.
This was the year of the Orlando Police Station attack inside the country and the arrest of James Mcedisi Mange, whose exploits and manipulation of arms forced the enemy officers to concede being outclassed. He was sentenced to death in a Pietermaritzburg Court, but vowed, " Never on our Knees". His comrades outside were inspired by his stand of " No surrender" and vowed, " Woe betides Pietermaritzburg, should the blood of James Mange flow, it will drown both man and animal. Wa u thinta Umkhonto!" Katengue was no more; it would live in the spirit and blows of MK to be visited on the regime. In the cultural sphere, Katengue had bequeathed a beacon, the Amandla Cultural Ensemble, which was destined to be the cultural ambassador of the struggling people of SA throughout the world. Amandla made its first appearance on the world stage at the World Youth Festival in Cuba in 1979.
*PART 3, which focuses on Umkhonto we Sizwe during the 1980s until its incorporation into the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) in 1994, will be published in the next edition of UMRABULO.