Umkhonto we Sizwe

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

You have got 200 people sent for paramilitary training and you have, if you look at the Umkhonto we Sizwe certified personal register of members who are eligible to be integrated into the National Defence Force: 18, 19 maybe even 20 000 members of MK, you put these two things in balance and you ...

... amnesty for the murders. The bones of one of the bodies taken out of the soil are those of Phila Ndwandwe. At the age of 24 she was a commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe in KwaZulu-Natal. When she was abducted from Swaziland nine years ago, police denied all involvement. ...

But Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres like Patrick Ndlubini had returned to the country as civilians. Now he was tasked to command a self protection unit that had no weapons.

... it means is that it’s not a bunch of ex soldiers getting together having a braaivleis and swopping bush stories. What it is, is SWAPO, ANC, APLA, Umkhonto we Sizwe, Koevoet, Recces, all the units, every single unit, everybody whoever was trained in any way militarily getting together and just ...

Lunchtime January 25, 1980. Three Umkhonto we Sizwe storm into the Silverton branch of Volkskas bank, but it wasn’t a robbery. It is one of MK’s strangest operations. They kept 25 people hostage for six hours.

Zando’s older brother, Mbulelo, had skipped the country in 1976 along with a close family friend known both as Ephraim and Francis. Mbulelo joined Umkhonto we Sizwe. When Ephraim turned up in Kagiso in the early eighties it was understood that he was MK and operating underground. Zando entrusted ...

... in the bush during the war on our borders. But post traumatic stress disorder is also a condition suffered by many thousands of former soldiers of Umkhonto we Sizwe and APLA, present and former policemen and ordinary people who have suffered conflict and violence. In Hanover in the Karoo this ...

‘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 ...

This incident happened during 1986, the precise date I cannot remember. At that stage Mamasela used the MK that is Umkhonto we Sizwe name of Mike to move around Mamelodi. He came to me one day and told me he was approached by some of the more militant youths who asked if he could not possibly ...

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 ...

Within three years of joining the ANC underground Phila was commanding all Umkhonto we Sizwe operations in Natal from her base in Swaziland. She was 24, with a makarov pistol on one hip and a baby boy on the other, but the same leadership qualities which turned tiny Phila Ndwande into respected MK ...

... was hidden, that we should be ashamed of, that needs to come out during these hearings. The overwhelming majority of the South Africans who joined Umkhonto we Sizwe, whether they went out of the country or stayed in the country were not traitors. They were not traitors, they didn’t sell out, ...

... you might want to refer to which was I think was described at the time as the Silverton bank siege. This is the only instance in which cadres of Umkhonto we Sizwe took hostages. There were three cadres who were going on some operation. They realised that they had been spotted by the police, ...

... 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 ...