The Beginnings of Mkatashinga (MK Mutiny in Angola)

On 12 January 1984, a strong delegation of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the African National Congress (ANC) arrived at Caculama, the main training centre of its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), near the town of Malanje, Angola.

This delegation consisted of Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani, Joe Nhlanhla and Lambert Moloi. Normally, such a visit by the ANC leadership would have been prepared for weeks before they arrive. Some travelled more than eighty kilometres from the centre to Kangandala.

The emergency visit by the leadership followed the refusal by certain MK combatants to go into counter-insurgency operations against the forces of the Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) in the Angolan civil war and defied the security personnel of the ANC.

Previously, in 1979, MK had participated in a second campaign together with the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), as the attempt to reach South Africa was once again unsuccessful. This led to most of the MK Cadres finding themselves back in the Angolan camps.

This failure, together with the degrading conditions in which the cadres were living, fuelled a spiral of discontent in the camps. The food was sparse and the sanitary conditions were bad. A feeling of stagnation spread among the Cadres, who were disillusioned at the bleak prospect of infiltrating back into South Africa.

In the beginning of the 1980’s the roads between Luanda and the camps around Malanje, Caculama and Camalundi became unsafe as the apartheid-backed UNITA bandits increased their attacks. MK forces were deployed around the town of Cacuso to guard the railway line and to ensure the safety of the road, and this deployment aggravated the dissatisfaction of the Cadres. At the end of 1983 some members of the ANC Security Department allegedly beat a sick Cadre to death.

The combatants decided to start a mutiny (later known as “Mkatashinga”), by shooting randomly into the air as they ordered that only the Commander-in-Chief, Oliver Tambo, the Chief of Staff, Joe Slovo, and the Army Commissar, Chris Hani, would be welcome to attend to their issues.

It was pointed out to all the commanding personnel in the area that the shooting was not meant to endanger anybody’s life, but was meant to be an appeal to the ANC leadership to attend to the desperate problems facing the organisation.

This random shooting in the air began in Kangandala on December 16, 1983, following the customary celebration of MK’s formation. These acts of random shooting spread to Musafa, where two MK Platoons were stationed in defence of a base.

On 26 December, matters became worse following a UNITA ambush, when they were crossing the Kwanza River together with members of the Angolan Army (FAPLA) and the Angolan militia (ODP), in a campaign that was referred to as the “Luta Contra Banditos” (the struggle against the Bandits). The MK Unit suffered five fatalities. When responding to this ambush from Musafa, several MK and FAPLA soldiers became casualties, as they fought UNITA through the night until daylight.

Following the random firing in Kangandala, Chris Hani asked them to stop their firing into the air and appealed to them to await feedback as he briefed the NEC about their grievances, which was meeting in Caculama. The random shooting stopped in Kangandala for one day, following Hani’s departure, but they then resumed the following day. The leadership managed to defuse this Kangandala incident, which was the first in a series of mutinies – followed by other incidents in Viana and Pango.

Nonetheless, Mkatashinga was viewed by ANC leadership as unbecoming, since Angola had provided a firm trench for liberation forces, such as the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), ZIPRA (ZAPU) and MK, forces that were determined to defeat imperialism, colonialism and apartheid. UNITA was, on the other hand, used by imperialism to reverse the gains of the African revolution in the Angolan civil war.

According to Zola Skweyiya, “the new crop had no politics… the only thing they wanted was a gun, and as far as the ANC [was concerned], the act of carrying a gun was political, and as such, they had to be politicised first”.

Callinicos agrees that “Mature soldiers had imbibed the lessons of political patience through experience and an understanding of strategy and tactics in their long-term mission. The young intakes were impatient, the disillusioned victims of Bantu Education; they were unschooled in politics or revolutionary theory or ANC history and had not necessarily internalised organisational discipline. They were too young to have been trained and disciplined in the politics of the labour movement, in civil organisations or in the underground.”

Furthermore, Callinicos adds that “The ‘76 generation had also learnt that their elders were not necessarily wiser, and the status of teachers, once esteemed by black society, meant nothing to them. This was a township world that older commanders had not experienced, and they were perplexed at the unruliness and impertinence of the youngsters.”

Nevertheless, the young MK Cadres wanted nothing else, but to go and fight at home (what was referred to in the MK camps as “um-china”).

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!