Umkhonto We Sizwe - Military Campaign

Military Campaign

Units of ANC exiles had MK camps in the "frontline" states neighbouring South Africa, most prominently Angola where MK was allied to the MPLA government, and fought alongside Angolan and Cuban troops at the engagement in Cuito Cuanavale. MK fighters were also allied with ZAPU (rival to Robert Mugabe's ZANU) in then-Rhodesia, with FRELIMO in Mozambique, and with SWAPO in Namibia.

In June 1961, Mandela sent a letter to South African newspapers warning the government that a campaign of sabotage would be launched unless the government agreed to call for a national constitutional convention. Beginning on 16 December 1961, the campaign by Umkhonto we Sizwe with Mandela as its leader, launched bomb attacks on government targets and planned for possible guerrilla warfare. The first target of the campaign was an electricity sub-station. Umkhonto we Sizwe undertook other acts of sabotage in the next eighteen months. The government alleged more acts of sabotage had been carried out and at the Rivonia trial the accused would be charged with 193 acts of sabotage in total. The sabotage included attacks on government posts, machines, power facilities and crop burning.

Following the suppression of MK inside South Africa in the late 1960s the organisation's cadres undertook military actions against the Rhodesian army (in, it was hoped, a prelude to crossing into South Africa itself). In 1965 MK formally allied itself with ZIPRA and in July 1967 a joint MK/ZIPRA commando crossed into Rhodesia. The mission was a failure at both tactical and strategic levels, though the joint MK/ZIPRA detachment engaged the Rhodesian army in heavy firefights over the next year and academic sources have suggested that the cadres of the revolutionary armies acquitted themselves well enough for the Rhodesians to ask for South African assistance with the landmine problems they had on the farmers in the area.

The early 1970s were a low point for the ANC in many ways, and that included in the military fields. Attempts to rebuild MK inside South Africa resulted in many losses though some, including Chris Hani, were able to remain undetected for a long period. The Soweto Uprising of 1976 led to a large exodus of young black men and women. Anxious to strike back at the apartheid regime, they crossed the border to Rhodesia to seek military training. While Umkhonto we Sizwe were able to rebuild an army - one capable of attacking prestigious targets such as the refineries at Sasolburg - the force also suffered from appalling breakdowns of discipline and there were many accusations that many new recruits were being tortured or killed by a physical training regime that was out of control, such as forcing recruits to run 25 kilometers without resting or lifting weights as heavy as 150 kilograms.

By the mid 1980s MK was concentrating on propaganda of the deed- namely high profile attacks on prestige targets to demonstrate to the world the depth of resistance to apartheid as well as display to the majority population that resistance was possible (see below for a discussion of the controversies that followed) - and on building liberated zones inside the townships.