The Arrest of the First Ethiopian-Trained Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Cadres

On 26 January 1963, Detective Inspector Roderick Ivy of the Southern Rhodesia’s British South Africa Police (BSAP) headed to Bulawayo Central Railway Station on information received from the Northern Rhodesia (BSAP) regarding a contingent of passengers in an inbound train from Northern Rhodesia.

At approximately 19:10, when the train arrived at the Bulawayo Central Railway Station, a group of nine Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadres emerged from it, which included Henry Fazzie, James Chirwa, Alfred Jantjies, Alfred Khonza, Matthews Makhalima, Ernest Malgaz, Maxwell Mayekiso, Jack Ndzuzo and Isaac Rani. The nine cadres were the first group of MK cadres to be trained in Ethiopia, where Nelson Mandela had received his military training the previous year. The group was supposed to meet Motsamai Mpho in Palapye for further instructions before entering South Africa.

At the Bulawayo Central Station, Detective Inspector Ivy introduced himself as a police officer to the group of nine and mentioned that he had reason to believe that they were prohibited immigrants in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. He then asked them to accompany him to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) offices where they were officially arrested.

On 27 January 1963, the nine were transported by Detective Duncan McDermot of the Bulawayo CID under police escort to the Messina border post, where they were handed over to Warrant Officer Holmes of the apartheid South African Police.

Around midday, on 19 January 1963, African National Congress (ANC) Deputy President, Oliver Tambo, was accompanied by Tennyson Makiwane to a house outside Dar es Salaam, where the group of twenty Ethiopian-trained cadres were accommodated. From the group of twenty, nine were picked out by Makiwane, with Fazzie being designated as their commander. The group was then informed that they were going to Palapye, where they were to meet with Motsamai Mpho, who was to give them further instructions and were to receive explosions for training inside the country.

Each cadre was expected to train fifteen other recruits once inside South Africa in sabotage and guerrilla warfare. They were then given £25 each and were taken from Dar es Salaam to Mbeya, where they took a bus to Tanduma, on the border between Tanganyika and Northern Rhodesia. At the border, eight members of the group got off the bus, while Fazzie remained with their luggage. The group then proceeded on foot across the border into Northern Rhodesia, where they waited on the side of the road. After a brief engagement with the BSAP in civilian clothes, the group decided to return to a hotel Tunduma, where they all regrouped.

The following night, 20 January 1963, eight of the nine managed to cross the border illegally into Northern Rhodesia, where they were collected by a lorry that took them to Lusaka. The following day, 21 January 1963, Jack Ndzuzo, who had remained behind in Tunduma, arrived by bus in Lusaka. On the morning of 26 January 1963, they then took a train from Lusaka to Bulawayo, where they were to get onto another train to Palapye in Bechuanaland, and that was when they were arrested by Detective Inspector Ivy.

When MK Commander-in-Chief, Nelson Mandela, was moved from Robben Island on 13 June 1963 to Pretoria Central Prison, following rumours created by the apartheid Department of Prisons that the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) prisoners at the island were planning to assault him, he was placed in solitary confinement at a Pretoria Local Prison.

Soon after he arrived, he began receiving secret notes and other communications from some of the ANC people in the prison. One of the communications was from Henry Fazzie, the commander of the group of nine MK cadres who had undergone military training in Ethiopia and were arrested in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, on their way to Palapye, in Bechuanaland.

This first group of MK intakes that were sent to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) countries that had offered to provide training, such as Ethiopia, as well as Morocco and Egypt, were not properly catered for their transfer and reception inside the country after completing their military training. The major challenge was that the External Mission was not properly trained and organised to ensure efficient travelling arrangements through the hostile colonial territories bordering South Africa.

In addition, after Rivonia, the reception structures inside South Africa, especially in the underground, which should have arranged hiding places for trained combatants and equipment, had been completely smashed. Therefore, most of those who obtained training abroad had to be accommodated in Tanzanian camps, such as Mandela Camp and Kongwa, as “Tambo was reluctant to let his comrades try to make their way back home through the bush without properly prepared underground structures to receive them” (Luli Callinicos, ‘Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains’).

Castro Khwela
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