MK Approaching Gatsha Buthelezi for Guerrilla Bases in Zululand
On Sunday, 14 July 1968, while Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi was attending mass at the Anglican Church in Nkonjeni, Mahlabathini District of Zululand, he received a message from one of his children, and went out to meet a certain woman by the name of Dorothy Nyembe. Nyembe introduced him to Linus Themba Dlamini who had a letter from Moses Mabhida in Lusaka.
Buthelezi said he knew Mabhida as an African National Congress (ANC) leader, and after a short discussion, Dlamini asked Buthelezi if there was a suitable coast in Zululand for submarine landings, and whether the Buthelezi tribe would be willing to take up arms if weapons were supplied. Buthelezi said no, his people were not willing to do that.
At the time of the Wankie Campaign, ANC Acting President Oliver Tambo had entrusted Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Political Commissar Moses Mabhida with the responsibility of executing the plan to infiltrate an advance team of operatives into South Africa through another route so that by the time the MK cadres made their way into South Africa through Rhodesia, and by sea, reception networks would be well established.
Mabhida, in turn, instructed Eric Mtshali, an MK intelligence operative, to recruit seamen to help smuggle the advance team of MK members and propaganda material into the country by sea. According to Mtshali, many of these seamen who frequently sailed through Dar es Salaam were from Durban, and he
