Challenges Towards the Kabwe Conference
On 14 May 1985, at around 10:00 in the morning, behind a block of flats near Northside Primary School in Gaborone’s Extension 9, an African National Congress (ANC) operative, Rodgers Nkadimeng (aka “Rogers ‘TYY’ Mevi”), who was the camp commissar at Quibaxe and was involved in infiltrating Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadres from Botswana into South Africa, entered his Datsun Skyline sedan. As he turned on the key in the ignition, the car exploded, destroying the vehicle and killing him instantly. The bomb also caused extensive damage to the block of flats and houses in the immediate vicinity.
Meanwhile, the consultative conference that the ANC had announced in June 1984 was in the horizon. In his capacity as ANC Chief Representative in Maputo, Jacob Zuma forwarded a letter to the conference’s National Preparatory Committee (Prepcom or NPC). The letter had another covering letter, which said that the letter was from a military unit, “Unit U”, that was at the time based in the Mozambican region and that some of the members were involved in the Ingwavuma episode.
The letter from “Unit U” said, “Historically the ANC has rightfully won the vanguard position in the South African liberation struggle”. But “the point in question now is to ask ourselves as to whether the ANC and her gallant army MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe), has at the present and the recent past of (about 8–9 years back) or even more, done justice to t
