MK Attempting an Alternative Route, Zimbabwe, in the Early 1980s
Facing pressure on its traditional routes, including Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho, the African National Congress (ANC) was beginning to explore other fronts, in particular Zimbabwe. On 11 June 1983, Frans Madimetsa Ranoto and Philemon Morake were arrested by locals, who handed them over to the apartheid police, where they were taken to Sibasa, in the Venda Bantustan, for interrogation, during which it was established that they were trained Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) members and that they entered the country from Zimbabwe. The news was a revelation for apartheid South African Military Intelligence, as it was the first confirmed case that they had of an infiltration launched through Zimbabwe.
On the evening of 9 June 1983, Madimetsa Ranoto entered South Africa from Zimbabwe as the head of a group of MK guerrillas including three others, Philemon Morake, “Thabo” and “James”. On the following morning, 10 June 1983, an apartheid South African Police counter-insurgency (COIN) unit noticed a hole that had been cut in the border fence with Zimbabwe, some sixty kilometres east of Messina.
Late that afternoon, three apartheid COIN Police members made contact with Ranoto’s group in the Limpopo River area. A shootout ensued, during which the four guerrillas fled in different directions and the police recovered a great amount of war material from the scene. The guerrillas who fled in different directions we
