Taking MK Recruits for Advanced Guerrilla Training in Algeria – March 1963
On 26 March 1963, a group of thirty-three Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) recruits that left Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika, by bus to Nairobi, Kenya, in February, arrived by aeroplane in Algiers, Algeria, from Cairo, Egypt. The group, which included Peter Mfene, was welcomed to Algiers by African National Congress (ANC) leaders, Johnny Makhathini, Robert Resha and Jonas Matlou, who took them to a hotel in the city. The following day, they were taken from the hotel to a transit camp, wherein they were prepared for their final journey westwards, in army trucks, to another camp located in Maghnia, near Algeria’s border with Morocco.
In Maghnia they found another group of about ten ANC members who had earlier received training in Ethiopia, which was led by Macdonald Masala. They were all in Algeria for further guerrilla warfare training. Macdonald Masala was part of the group that included a number of recruits from the Western Cape, Port Elizabeth and Durban who were kept in transit in a place called Marabi Hotel, in Orlando, Soweto in June 1962. In July they were taken across the Bechuanaland border and were settled at what was known as the White House in Francistown, which was later replaced by a new refugee centre accommodating a maximum of 100 people. They were then taken up to Kazangula and across the Zambezi River by the ‘freedom ferry’ into Zambia before being taken to Dar es Salaam, in Tanganyika.
