Sharing Responsibilities for Africa’s Total Liberation

Sharing Responsibilities for Africa’s Total Liberation

On 12 May 1966, when the Executive Secretariat of the Organisation of African Unity’s (OAU) Standing Committee on Defence circulated a report during their meeting in Dar es Salaam, it revealed Tanzania’s hardened stance towards guerrillas, especially those belonging to Southern African national liberation movements, in its territory. According to the report, the committee was unable to advance the necessary resources for the maintenance of Kongwa camp because most OAU member states had not yet paid their contributions for the fiscal year ending 31 May 1966.

Kongwa camp was first granted by the Tanzanian government to OAU recognised national liberation movements since 1964, and it became a key site in southern Africa’s exile history. First the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) and the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO), and later the African National Congress (ANC), the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), inhabited neighbouring sites near the town of Kongwa in central Tanzania, where they trained their respective members in guerrilla tactics and prepared to infiltrate their countries of origin.

Out of an £75 000 allocation forecast for the camp, only £46 250 was paid to Tanzania, and consequently the Tanzania government informed the Committee that unless an appropriate amount is paid for the Camp and the necessary funds be allocated, the government would be placed in a difficult position of having to abolish the training camp.

Two days later, Zambia’s High Commissioner to Tanzania forwarded to Lusaka his evaluation of the meeting that he had attended. The High Commissioner wrote that the weight of meeting was centred on Zambia. Members of the Committee expressed with regret Zambia’s attitude towards freedom fighters. It was said by the members that freedom fighters trained in guerrilla warfare could not go to their respective countries because Zambia was not prepared to allow them to transit the country, and this, it was said, was a draw back in the African National struggle.

On 25 April 1966, Lusaka’s restrictive refugee policy had come under scrutiny at pan-African level, thus leading the Zambian High Commissioner in Tanzania to write to the permanent secretary in his own country’s Foreign Affairs Ministry to reconsider the country’s stance. Zambia’s policy of allowing refugees fleeing their native land to settle in or transit through the country on a conditional basis was not extended to exiles who underwent military training abroad and wanted to return home to fight. One consequence of this was the accumulation of guerrilla fighters in Tanzania, which led to the authorities imposing a moratorium on further refugee entries.

The Commissioner attempted to convey the grave security dangers facing the country, but with limited success. He concluded that “the Committee throughout its sitting centred its discussions on Zambia. Members held the view that the delay in intensifying the struggle in countries around Zambia was due to Zambia’s refusal or not allowing freedom fighters to transit its country. The Committee is aware of the difficulties facing Zambia but some countries in the Committee want to impress others that while they are doing their best, Zambia is the stumbling block.”

Members of the so-called “Action Group” of the OAU Liberation Committee wanted to travel to Lusaka to discuss the question of freedom fighters with the government. The background to this was that most of the liberation movements based in Tanzania had most of their recruits returning from military training abroad. They wanted to transit Zambia en route to their home countries, but the Liberation Committee was reluctant to provide them material support because of Lusaka’s stance towards returning refugees.

On 15 January 1967, President Kenneth Kaunda wrote to the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lieutenant General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, outlining the results of a policy rethink in Zambia. This reconsideration was based on an acknowledgement that the country was being drawn ever deeper into the war for southern Africa, despite its efforts to stay out.

On the same day, Kaunda wrote the following to Julius Nyerere of Tanzania: “I am now following up our earlier discussions with a firm proposal that, while Zambia should continue her vigilance and the help she has rendered to freedom fighters in Southern Africa in general, her main preoccupation should be over Rhodesia, South West Africa and South Africa. The responsibility for Angola should be for the Congo (Kinshasa) and Mozambique should remain your major preoccupation while extending your assistance to Zambia in general.”

This exchange of letters between Kaunda, Nyerere and Mobutu, led to a meeting on 28 February 1967 between the heads of Tanzanian and Zambian security services in Mbeya, where the two countries agreed to establish a system whereby guerrillas seeking travel had to complete ‘Recruitment Forms’ stating their organisational affiliation. The forms were to be transmitted to the Coordinating Committee of the OAU Liberation Committee in Dar es Salaam, with the intention of ascertaining the bona fides of the applicants as freedom fighters, as well as members of the organisations they claimed to belong to. The OAU was expected to confirm their bona fides thus allowing the guerrillas to be provided with travel documents that would ensure their procession to the target countries.

Presidents Kaunda and Nyerere were then anticipated to ratify the agreement, which implied that guerrillas seeking to travel from Tanzania through Zambia, or in the opposite direction, had to be officially permitted to do so. What was of significance with regard to this agreement was the fact that those national liberation movements that had previously operated clandestinely in Zambia in attempting to establish routes to their target countries, could at that time commence mass deployment of armed combatants.

Acknowledging this development, the leader of the ANC, J.B. Marks, remarked in the official journal of the Movement, Sechaba, that “the main revolutionary force however is not so much independent states as the masses of labouring people in Southern Africa who know what white supremacy and racialism means. These millions who toil in the mines and plantations of Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Malawi, Botswana, Lesotho, have moved from one country to the other and share much solidarity. They are the vanguard of the struggle for the elimination of racialism and the economic interests which profit by the present set-up. Those who are in the free countries of Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, Lesotho, wish to see their brothers and sisters free in the remaining areas of colonialism and white rule in the South.”

Sources:
J.B. Marks, “Bastion of White Supremacy: The Unholy Alliance and Resistance”, Sechaba, Vol. 1, No. 3, March 1967.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.
Hugh Macmillan, “The Lusaka Years: The ANC in Exile in Zambia, 1963 to 1994”, Jacana, 2013.

Castro Khwela
Good evening fellow Compatriots!