Paying Homage to the “Dolphin”: Montso “Obadi” Mokgabudi

Paying Homage to the “Dolphin”: Montso “Obadi” Mokgabudi

On 10 February 1981, Montso “Obadi” Mokgabudi (aka “Dolphin Ngake”) succumbed to his wounds, when his guts were ripped open during an attack on the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Special Operations Unit Headquarters, in Matola, by racist SADF (South African Defence Force) Special Forces, on 30 January 1981. He was brutally shot at and passed on later, on 10 February 1981, in a hospital in Mozambique.

Born on 11 April 1951, Montso was one of the most outstanding soldiers of the People’s Army, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). Fondly known to his MK Comrades as “Obadi”, Montso came from Orlando, and studied law at Turfloop (University of the North, now University of Limpopo), before his expulsion for political activities. Whilst he was out of school, he worked as a teacher and television (TV) technician. As a former South African Students Organisation (SASO) activist, while he was a student at Turfloop, he matured into the African National Congress (ANC) and ultimately into the People’s Army, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), after leaving the country six months before the 1976 June 16 Uprisings.

According to Alexander Sibeko, Montso “learnt easily and quickly, but pondered deeply about political problems. He questioned incessantly. He liked to think things over, to gestate; and then come back for further discussions. He had qualities of leadership and commanded tremendous respect amongst his peers. He epitomised the Soweto generation and radiated their energy, confidence, wit, style, bravery.”

After a fruitful and eye-opening visit to Vietnam by the leadership of the ANC, MK Chief of Staff and Chief Strategist, Joe Slovo, was mightily impressed by what he saw and heard in Vietnam. He became converted to a view that political struggle should be the basis of armed struggle and not vice versa. It dawned on him that the effort to date had not only been unsuccessful, but that it had encouraged a “militarist illusion” that the struggle in South Africa would be the work of “specialist armed fighters” rather than the people as a whole.

In order to implement what had been learned in Vietnam, ANC leaders decided that in preparation for creating a People’s Army that would wage a People’s War and for ultimate Insurrection, there was a role to be played by “armed propaganda”. This was to be done in the form of remarkable sabotage attacks that were calculated to ensure that the racist regime felt the blows of Umkhonto we Sizwe and to attract volunteers to swell the ranks of the People’s Army. Armed propaganda was intended to be an effective tool in informing the population and the racist regime that Umkhonto we Sizwe was alive and ready to wage a revolutionary war against the apartheid dispensation.

In 1979, at the behest of ANC President OR Tambo, Slovo set up a Special Operations Unit, originally with just 14 hand-picked members. Among those that were hand-picked into this Unit was Montso “Obadi” Mokgabudi, who became the first Commander of the group, reporting directly to Joe Slovo. On 14 August 1979, Montso arrived at “Funda Camp”, which was an MK camp in Angola that was created as a finishing training facility for cadres soon to be deployed into South Africa. He approached the Camp’s Chief Convenor of Instructors, Aboobaker Ismail (aka “Rashid”), and asked him to work with Barney Molokoane in training a special unit that could carry out select missions inside South Africa.

This was how the Special Operations Unit was established and included figures that were to become legends in MK, such as Barney Molokoane, Victor Khayiyane, Vincent Sekete and Sipho Thobela, among others. This was a Unit of specialist cadres that was earmarked to undertake highly sophisticated operations, which were supposed to have a huge psychological and physical impact in terms of the nature of the targets to be hit.

On 1 June 1980, for example, the MK Special Operations Unit launched a spectacular attack on a Sasol facility in South Africa that caused millions (currently billions) of rands in damage. This operation underlined South Africa’s dependence on imported oil, which was then a matter of great sensitivity due to the then revolution that had just taken place in Iran, the country’s leading supplier. Sasol had been formed to produce oil from coal because South Africa did not have large crude oil reserves. As a major technological achievement, Sasol became the only entity globally to achieve such a feat.

The operational team was led by Montso, who had received specialised training in artillery in the former Soviet Union before refining his military engineering skills, especially the art and science of developing sophisticated explosives, with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) combatants in Luanda. When the identities of the Sasol saboteurs were made known to apartheid South African intelligence services, Montso became one of the most wanted targets. When he was detained by the security police in Swaziland some months later, the Swazi government was offered a $1 million ransom to hand him over to the apartheid security services. Realising they had detained someone too hot to handle, the Swazi authorities resolved to hand him over to the ANC in Maputo.

“The success of the operations (of the Special Operations Unit)”, according to Aboobaker “Rashid” Ismail, “could be ascribed to the leadership of Tambo and Slovo, the detailed and thorough planning of the Command and the ingenuity, commitment and indomitable will of the cadres based on the trust they had in the leadership and command of Special Operations. The success of the operation was overwhelming in its armed propaganda value, achieving the objective of winning the support of the people, of showing that the enemy was not invincible.”

For Rashid, “these cadres were just fantastic. It’s amazing how they adapted to different conditions. They would check out the area they were going to operate in and get to their base area. They would then draw the material from the DLBs (Dead Letter Boxes). They would usually do another reconnaissance and then carry out the operation. Sometimes they’d leave the country immediately after. At other times, they’d lie low for a while and leave when things were quieter.”

The efficacy of the MK Special Operations Unit was acknowledged by former British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, David Miliband, when he commented on BBC Radio that “the most famous ANC military attack was the Sasol oil refinery in 1980. That was perceived to be a remarkable blow at the heart of the South African regime … The importance for me is that the South African example proved something remarkable: the apartheid regime looked like a regime that would last forever, and it was blown down. It is hard to argue that, on its own, a political struggle would have delivered. The striking at the heart of a regime’s claim on a monopoly of power, which the ANC’s armed wing represented, was very significant” (quoted in Yunus Carrim).

Meanwhile, on 21 February 1982, Aboobaker “Rashid” Ismail’s brother Mohamed “Chacha” Ismail and Mohammed Shaik met Rashid in Swaziland to join MK. They were formally sworn in as MK members and given further political education and basic training on urban guerrilla warfare, including the use of limpet mines and pistols. Both were to form a cell under Rashid’s command, and it was suggested that the cell will be named “Dolphin”, in honour of Montso “Obadi” Mokgabudi, the Special Operations Unit’s former Commander, who had operated under the pseudonym “Dolphin Ngake”.

Montso, or Obadi, had become a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), and according to Alexander Sibeko, “He was flushed with pride and joy when he was finally accepted into the party ranks. He was a serious and devoted member of his party unit, learning and developing all the time. His contributions to the ANC and the liberation struggle was consequently strengthened and reinforced. It is clear that his development had not been easy. … He once said that if he died he would like to be known that he was a communist.”

Following the news of his death, his Comrades were devastated. For Siphiwe Nyanda (aka “Gebhuza”, Obadi was “so clever, so dynamic, so driven. He was a fantastic guy. He had very good relations with people that he worked with.” Ronnie Kasrils also echoed Gebhuza by recollecting that Obadi was “a young man with sparkle and wit and epitomised for me the style and dash of the Soweto generation. He spoke fluent Portuguese and had many Angolan friends who called him ‘Primo’ (cousin). He was very personable, very engaging. You could spend a day with him and not get bored. He liked to joke about life and was full of anecdotes about growing up in South Africa and his interaction with whites.”

For Rashid, who served under Obadi as the Special Operations Unit’s Commissar, the Special Ops Commander was “very charming and imaginative. JS (Joe Slovo) trusted him a lot. Whatever instructions Obadi was given, he got done and immediately. … It was such a sad loss! If we continued being partners, we would have achieved so much more. One of the Special Ops’ weaknesses was that I was alone in terms of implementation. We couldn’t find another commander who was as innovative, go-getting, enterprising.”

Sources:
Alexander Sibeko, “Four Who Were Communists”, The African Communist, No. 87, Fourth Quarter 1981.
Vladimir Shubin, “ANC: A View from Moscow”, Jacana, 2008.
Stephen Ellis, “External Mission: The ANC in Exile”, Jonathan Ball, 2012.
Hugh Macmillan, “The Lusaka Years: The ANC in Exile in Zambia”, Jacana, 2013.
Aboobaker Ismail (Rashid) “The ANC’s Special Operations Unit”, The Thinker, Vol. 58, 2013.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.
Yunus Carrim, “Attacking the Heart of Apartheid: The ANC’s MK Special Operations Unit”, Penguin, 2025.

Castro Khwela
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