Spear of the Nation: Umkhonto weSizwe

3. The Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns, 1967–8

35 3 The Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns, 1967–8 Those who left the country for military training in the early 1960s, including the young Chris Hani, who was later to become mK Chief of Staff, did not have an easy time of it. After receiving military training in various countries, including Algeria and China, many ended up living in harsh conditions in the Kongwa camp in Tanzania. most believed that the revolutionary war planned by mK would take place in the immediate future, and expected victory before the end of the decade. Their hopes of rapid deployment into South Africa were, however, disappointed, and many complained bitterly of languishing in camps while the ANC leadership engaged in diplomatic and fundraising activities around the world. In 1966 a group of dissatisfied mK members, including Chris Hani, drafted a memorandum of their grievances and expressed 36 their frustration at not being deployed to fight. The problem for mK’s High Command was to infiltrate guerrillas back into South Africa. At that time South Africa was surrounded by a cordon sanitaire of neighbouring states that had not yet achieved independence from colonial rule or imperial overlordship: South West Africa (Namibia) had become a fifth province of South Africa; Angola and mozambique were still colonies of Portugal; and rhodesia (Zimbabwe) was in the hands of a white minority government that had declared its independence from the UK. In all of these countries, the first stirrings of the turn to armed struggle by indigenous liberation movements were being felt. As for the three former British protectorates of Bechuanaland (Botswana), Basutoland (Lesotho) and Swaziland, these were economically dominated by South Africa, which used its superior power to lean on them and prevent their being used as bases for mK. As a way of creating an entry route for mK guerrillas into South Africa through rhodesia, the ANC established a formal alliance with the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) of Joshua Nkomo, which was supported by the Soviet 37 Union. This step was also in line with the adoption, by mK’s liberation movement allies in other African countries, of the strategy of rural guerrilla warfare. The alliance between the ANC and ZAPU led to the activation of some of the newly trained mK members in military operations in cooperation with ZIPrA guerrillas in the north-west of rhodesia. The attempt to create a passage through rhodesia into South Africa by fighting with ZIPrA against combined rhodesian and South African forces was both heroic and disastrous. Those who survived the Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns, as they became known, were hailed as mgwenya, having crossed the Zambezi river under the command of Charles Ngwenya. (Coincidentally, umgwenya is also the word for crocodile in Siswati; some mK cadres were literally eaten by crocodiles inhabiting the rivers they had to cross.) What was it like to be a guerrilla soldier fighting in the southern African bush in the 1960s? As in all forms of warfare, it was desperately hard for those who were tasked with the fighting. But this was not the Soviet Union, where soldiers froze to death; it was Africa. The suffering experienced was the harshest imaginable, including lack of drinking 38 water and lack of food. mK soldiers describe how they had to share the muddy drinking water from rivers with elephants. They also describe walking for hundreds of kilometres in the sweltering heat, or walking through the night while wild animals hunted nearby. Perhaps the most horrifying experience was that of the unit attacked by a group of hungry crocodiles. According to the mK commander eric mtshali, a group of 12 mK and ZAPU cadres under his command were instructed to cross the Zambezi to rescue a section of the Luthuli Detachment that had been surrounded by rhodesian forces. The group crossed the mighty river at night in three small dinghies. When the commander’s boat reached the opposite bank, and he and his group were clambering out, they noticed that one of the other two boats had capsized. ‘In no time the water around it turned red with blood. Two comrades were swimming frantically towards the shore. They never made any sound and, up to this day, I do not know why they never screamed. Two others had disappeared without a trace. All we could see was a pack of crocodiles fighting over their limbs. It was a very disturbing sight, and...