Umkhonto we Sizwe Cadres Removed from Kongwa
On 1 September 1969, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) approved the prolonged stay and training of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadres in the Soviet Union following their immediate removal from Kongwa, Tanzania, in July 1969. Some of the fighters had to be enrolled in Soviet universities and vocational schools, after some convincing by the then Chairperson of the South African Communist Party (SACP), J.B. Marks, that they needed to understand the conditions that the African National Congress (ANC) was facing with the challenges experienced with the Tanzanian government at the time.
On 19 July 1969, the ANC Headquarters in Morogoro received a visit from the Tanzanian government ordering it to vacate its military cadres from Kongwa within fourteen days, with the reason that the MK men had been there for a long time and as such they constituted a security risk. In addition, the letter threatened that if the ANC was unable to infiltrate its cadres into South Africa within the given timeframe, Tanzanian authorities would be left with no choice but to send them to a refugee camp. “In other words, this meant the liquidation of Umkhonto we Sizwe”. At the ANC Conference in Kabwe in 1985, Oliver Tambo was more forthright, “In 1969 as a result of complications that our movement faced in this region, we had to evacuate [most of] our army to the Soviet Union at very short notice. Our Soviet comrades t
