Umkhonto we Sizwe

I’m not going to talk about apartheid anymore. I’m not going to campaign against it; I’m going to fight against it. If I have to burn apartheid, I am going to do that. And I was on my way after that to Umkhonto we Sizwe.

... Before she converted to Islam Zara was known as Greta Appelgren, a fiery activist from Wentworth in Natal. In 1986 she was recruited into an Umkhonto we Sizwe unit by Robert McBride. She was willing because she was already very frustrated with aboveground political ...

This is a matter which preoccupied the leadership of the ANC for a very long time. From the beginning, as we tried to indicate, when Umkhonto we Sizwe was established its instructions were that there should be no loss of life. It’s why there was mention of strategic roads and communication ...

... against a government whose reply is only savage attacks on an unarmed and defenceless people’ // The PAC formed Poqo and the ANC created Umkhonto we Sizwe, the Spear of the Nation. Leadership went underground. But the National Party had these fledgling liberation armies outmanned and ...

... a prisoner is alone 23 hours a day, deprived of human contact, an attack on the mind and the soul. This is the story of Zahrah Narkedien, a former Umkhonto we Sizwe cadre who was confined in a basement for seven ...

... else. For Jeremiah Matli who was born in a black, hidden part of town, bravery meant using the mountain of his childhood as a route out to join Umkhonto we ...

... on the long journey he’s just started and the other child victims of our bitter past. Now to another unfortunate chapter of our history. After Umkhonto we Sizwe was formed in 1961 it established camps in neighbouring states: Zambia, Angola, Tanzania, Uganda. Suddenly in the aftermath of the ...

One clue to Claire’s death might lay in the fact that she’d been recruited as an underground intelligence cooperative for Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1987. // We believe she took this responsibility seriously. She continued to have contact with ANC Military Intelligence when she moved to northern ...

In 1988 Durban policemen led by Col Andy Taylor blew up three members of the Umkhonto we Sizwe unit known as ‘The Swimmers’ here at Phoenix Railway Station. The dead were all KwaMashu student activists. Their names were Vusi Mtshali, Sibusiso Ndlovu and Mazwi Vilakazi. But the MK unit had ...

... recorded 4621 killings. But we go to Durban first for yesterday’s funeral. A month ago nobody knew whether they were dead or alive, members of an Umkhonto we Sizwe cell, the Butterfly Unit: Phila Ndwandwe, Bheki Mkwanazi, Mbova Mzimela. And then five weeks ago the Truth Commission found the ...

... he became part of an elite security branch, anti-terrorist unit in 1986 that the Benzien reputation took off. The anti-terrorist unit tracked down Umkhonto we Sizwe and APLA cadres and when they were captured the man they were handed to first was Jeffrey Benzien. It was his job to make them ...

16 December 1991. Many Afrikaner families celebrated the day of the Vaal or Dingaan’s day, the commemoration of the battle of Blood river. Umkhonto we Sizwe celebrated its thirtieth birthday on the same day. But CODESA was on the horizon, the ruling National Party and the liberation movements ...

‘After the break: // Special forces and the murder of the Ribeiro couple // What does ‘eliminate’ mean? // Umkhonto we Sizwe.’

from and asked penetrating questions to the former South African Police, the South African Defence Force, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army and Umkhonto we Sizwe. The Azanian People’s Liberation Army or APLA was the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress. APLA has been operating for ...

... were no clues of what had happened to him on that hunting trip. And it was only four years later that a police informer told police that a group of Umkhonto we Sizwe soldiers from Botswana were responsible. // They told him that they had commandeered his vehicle and forced him to take it to the ...

‘Report by Rene Schiebe’ // December 16th 1993. The 32nd anniversary of Umkhonto we Sizwe, a historic day as the army’s about to be disbanded and become part of the new National Defence Force in a democratic South Africa. For these men and women it’s a day of achievement and celebration, ...

... that much of this emanated from Transkei, that the apartheid government was party to an agreement allowing the ANC to continue to recruit for Umkhonto we Sizwe for training outside South ...

... member of the Civic Association; he was a General Secretary of the Mamelodi Civic Association. Over and above that he was a senior member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the Southern Transvaal Regional Command. Police would have taken interest in him at that level and that alone made him an obvious ...

off to a strange start in Pietersburg in the northern province this week. 14 Local policemen asked for amnesty for their roles in the killing of 6 Umkhonto we Sizwe insurgents in 1986. With the exception of one, a black ex-policeman, these men felt they had not committed any crime because they ...

The skull is his daughter’s, Phila Portia Ndwandwe, 24 when she died. An Umkhonto we Sizwe commander in Natal; mother of baby Thabang, born in Swaziland in 1987. In October 1988 Ndwandwe was abducted from Manzini to Pietermaritzburg. The people who sold her out were comrades. Her abductors: four ...