June 16 Detachment’s Training in Novo Catengue
On 6 June 1977, an Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) military parade took place in a camp called Novo Catengue, in Benguela, Angola. The new recruits were divided into four companies, each with a Cuban and an MK Commander, as well as an MK Commissar. Novo Catengue was opened by the African National Congress (ANC) in March 1977, inland from Benguela, which was located next to Angola’s main railway line in an abandoned building adapted to house the hundreds of recruits who were to be shaped into political soldiers by a corps of ANC commissars and Cuban instructors.
“It was estimated by Gwendolyn Sello, a member of the Angolan Health Team, that between the two camps and Luanda, there were about five hundred cadres, twenty-five of whom were female. At this early stage, the ANC relied on Cuban support and leadership in the camp and, consequently were also the beneficiaries of Cuban medical services. The ANC provided medical staff (Dr Peter Mfelang, Dr Novama Shangase, nurses Gwendolyn Sello and “nurse Alice”) to the camps and actively sought support for drugs and first aid supplies” (Armstrong).
The first group of MK soldiers in Novo Catengue were the “Mgwenya” group, who were veterans of the Luthuli Detachment, and constituted the core of MK during its first decade in exile and held the fort during the most difficult years of the ANC’s armed struggle. Most of them survived the trials and tribulations of exile, when mo
