The Pango Mutiny: Part 2 – Recovering the Camp
On 18 May 1984, the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Regional Command in Angola, under the leadership of Timothy “Bra T” Mokoena, had assembled a crack loyalist force to recapture Pango camp and restore order and authority. The group charged with recapturing the camp included Raymond “Mshengu” Monageng, then Regional Chief of Staff, who was dubiously later arrested in 1988 as an “enemy plant”, and Lennox “Lagu” Tshali, former MK Army Chief of Staff and later African National Congress (ANC) Chief Representative in Mozambique, who was deployed to assist in Angola.
After having encircled the camp, the direct assault commenced at 05:00 in the morning and ended by dusk, after a pitched battle in which some 14 – 16 people died. A number of mutineers were captured, but some seventeen rebels managed to break through the cordon and escaped into the open bush. Following the recapture of the camp by loyalist forces, a military tribunal was immediately established, headed by Sizakele Sigxashe and five others, with instructions “to look into the problems that led to the pinnacle of counter-revolution at our camp on the 13th of May 1984”.
The tribunal began work on 22 May, and after taking testimony from 66 people, it found that “a clique of reactionary elements within our ranks” had taken control of Pango Camp, killing five and injuring four others. Several captured mutineers, namely James Nkabinde, Ronald Msomi, Bu
