Taking MK Recruits for Advanced Guerrilla Training in Algeria – March 1963

Taking MK Recruits for Advanced Guerrilla Training in Algeria – March 1963

On 26 March 1963, a group of thirty-three Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) recruits that left Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika, by bus to Nairobi, Kenya, in February, arrived by aeroplane in Algiers, Algeria, from Cairo, Egypt. The group, which included Peter Mfene, was welcomed to Algiers by African National Congress (ANC) leaders, Johnny Makhathini, Robert Resha and Jonas Matlou, who took them to a hotel in the city. The following day, they were taken from the hotel to a transit camp, wherein they were prepared for their final journey westwards, in army trucks, to another camp located in Maghnia, near Algeria’s border with Morocco.

In Maghnia they found another group of about ten ANC members who had earlier received training in Ethiopia, which was led by Macdonald Masala. They were all in Algeria for further guerrilla warfare training. Macdonald Masala was part of the group that included a number of recruits from the Western Cape, Port Elizabeth and Durban who were kept in transit in a place called Marabi Hotel, in Orlando, Soweto in June 1962. In July they were taken across the Bechuanaland border and were settled at what was known as the White House in Francistown, which was later replaced by a new refugee centre accommodating a maximum of 100 people. They were then taken up to Kazangula and across the Zambezi River by the ‘freedom ferry’ into Zambia before being taken to Dar es Salaam, in Tanganyika.

On 5 August 1962, they were visited by Oliver Tambo, Tennyson Makiwane and James Hadebe in the ANC Office Complex in Dar es Salaam. In the early hours of the following morning, some members of the group were taken from their sleeping quarters in Princess Margaret Hospital to Makiwane’s house, where they were informed that they were going the same day for military training in Ethiopia. They then left by bus to Nairobi, Kenya, where they were met by Henry Fazie, who took them to a hotel, where they met another group of ANC recruits. After four days in a hotel in Nairobi, Macdonald Masala informed the group of twenty that they were departing the following morning.

The following day, they were collected by a Kombi to the airport, and they boarded a plane to Debre Zeyit in Ethiopia, where they met “Lieutenant Kubana”, who took them in a van to a camp where they found Ethiopian soldiers waiting for them. They were trained on guerrilla warfare on how to commit acts of sabotage; on military science; on how to run an army and how to use a gun, among other military tactics. After they completed their training in Ethiopia, they were sent to Algeria to join the group of thirty-three that had already been earmarked for training in Maghnia, Algeria.

The primary reason for taking these groups to undergo advanced guerrilla warfare training in Algeria was because the Algerian situation was the closest model to the South African conditions, where guerrillas faced a large white settler community that ruled the indigenous majority. The lessons and experiences earned in their guerrilla war would be beneficial to the South African armed struggle, as the Algerian FLN (The National Liberation Front) also started with a handful of guerrilla attacks in 1954, having been encouraged by the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam.

The Algerian liberation movement, at first, believed they could militarily defeat the French, but then they realised that a purely military victory was impossible, considering the military might of the French armed forces. As an alternative, they resorted to guerrilla warfare, which was not designed to win a military victory, but rather to wage a political and economic struggle that would bring down the enemy gradually. When planning the military effort, the political side of the war was very critical, particularly to ensure the support of the masses and international public opinion.

Alfred Willie was in the MK group that went to Algeria for military training, where he spent nine months. According to Willie, “… they were still at war. You know we did not even understand the language. Nobody knew French amongst us. And it was so difficult, because we also did not understand Arabic. It was nice because this training is what we wanted knowing that it was difficult. The morale was very high, because that’s when we met people from a lot of other movements; guys from Ghana were also trained in the same camp, guys from Angola and other countries were there. We were training with them. The Algerians were so rude because we did not understand their language. And this happened up until some of our guys managed to pick up French and a bit of Arabic and so on. Then they became interpreters. But they were so good in training us and we thought when we came back that: ‘Ja, now we are going to face these guys (the Boers)’ (SADET).

Most trainees were rank-and-file soldiers, often with limited levels of education. Virtually all of them could not speak French, which meant that there were often many layers of translation, with French instruction often translated into English and then African languages, such as Zulu, Xhosa and Sesotho. To assess the educational level of the trainees, instructors consistently administered basic numeracy and literacy tests. The daily lives of the trainees and their instructors were governed by strict rules of military discipline and hierarchy. This entailed waking up and going to bed at a certain time, marching to the various areas within the military facilities in military formation, and observing rank.

The ANC and MK leadership supervised most parts of the course, and each trainee also received grades for exams and personal reports, which would be communicated to the leadership. The content of the military training programme evolved to reflect the needs of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Recruits were taught to handle various weapons, how to blow-up railway tracks, bridges, and buildings, which were all fundamental to guerrilla warfare. Much emphasis was placed on the rapid arming and disarming of weapons, which were important skills in mobile warfare. In terms of guerrilla tactics, trainees were exposed to various examples from China, Cuba, Vietnam and the local Algerian experiences.

These guerrillas became the cream of the Luthuli Detachment, which also became the core fighting force in Umkhonto we Sizwe’s Wankie and Sipolilo Campaigns.

Sources:
South African History Online (SAHO).
Nelson Mandela, “Long Walk to Freedom”, Abacus, 1994.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.
Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, “Heritage Routes for the Liberated South Africans: Using Oral History to Reconstruct Unsung Heroes and Heroines’ Routes into Exile in the 1960s”, Historia, Vol. 47, No. 2, November 2002.
Gregory F. Houston, “Military Bases and Camps of the Liberation Movement, 1961–1990”, Democracy, Governance, and Service Delivery (DGSD), Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), August 2013.
Tsepe Motumi, “Umkhonto we Sizwe -Structure, Training and Force Levels (1984 to 1994)”, African Defence Review, Issue No 18, 1994.

Castro Khwela
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