On January 30 the community of Lurhwayizo, a small village in Willowvale, was joined by members of the ANC and the government to commemorate an event which occurred 38 years ago.
This was a skirmish between Mbulelo Ngono (aka Khaya Khasibe or Ntsizwa), a member of the ANC’s armed wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe, and a combined force of the then Transkei and SA security forces.
Ngono was originally from Gqeberha.
He had left the country in the early 1980s as a member of the Congress of South African Students (Cosas).
He had undergone military training in centres in Africa and the then Soviet Union, and was an exceptionally disciplined member who excelled in the subject of military combat work (MCW).
A highlight of this event was that it happened in a very remote area in the heart of the country, considering that most of these incidents would occur in the country’s urban areas or in the areas of border entry, and that the insurgent successfully managed to fight his way out of that encirclement.
It was a celebration of bravery in the face of tremendous odds, an event that became one in a number that marked a turning point in the lives of a people struggling against a powerful enemy countrywide.
It brought more than a flicker of hope that the adversary was not invincible, and that with more effort it could one day be defeated,
There is as yet no way of knowing the number of casualties suffered by the government security forces.
All we know for certain is that their task, to capture or kill Mbulelo, was not fulfilled and he came away uninjured.
It is significant that it was two years after the watershed ANC Kabwe conference, which is considered as the organisation’s council of war that laid the ground for a new offensive against the apartheid state.
Kabwe itself was preceded by the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983, part of the ANC’s initiatives for maximum unity of all the groups inside the country which were opposed to the system of racial oppression.
The work carried out by the UDF ensured that a lot more people participated in the struggle for freedom, in their different formations - the workers, youth, students, residents, women and so on - than in the earlier period of the 1960s and 1970s.
By 1987, conscious political organisation against apartheid was more widespread, touching almost every nook and cranny of the country, and this development of organisation also assisted the ANC’s armed struggle as it created a larger pool of ready supporters who were prepared to participate in the ANC’s programmes including the armed struggle.
In the Western Cape, the examples of students Robbie Waterwitch, Coline Williams, Anton Fransch and Ashley Kriel come to mind.
According to former Unitra student Mangaliso Jafta, though they considered themselves as patriots fully supportive of the UDF and thus the ANC, for them it was primarily the murder in 1985 of Bathandwa Ndondo, a student leader who had been refused admission into the university, that fuelled their desire to join MK.
They saw through the accusations made by the government of that time that Ndondo had been involved in the Mthatha bombings, and understood that he had been killed because of his student activism.
They felt vulnerable in the face of such brazen violence meted out by the state, against unarmed student leaders, and reasoned that the only way that held any hope for them was to be armed and to retaliate, for they too could be easily killed.
They were particularly incensed by the cold-blooded manner in which the student leader had been killed.
In this scenario therefore, they felt that joining MK seemed a natural step to take.
It was clear that guns, not speeches and pamphlets, were the only language that the enemy spoke and consequently understood.
The enraged students sought to leave the country to join MK outside, but the ANC internal underground redirected them to work with MK members in their vicinity.
The Kabwe conference had decided on a new approach to the armed struggle, that of producing MK inside, and had made the call to MK members to turn militant members of the mass democratic movement into “revolutionary combat units” by training them in the military art where they were located, to create bases inside and to engage in a people’s war.
And this is how Jafta and the other students made contact with Ntsizwa and his MK unit that was based in the immediate area, and how Mbulelo Ngono came to be in Lurhwayizo in January 1987.
Lurhwayizo was the site of the Jafta homestead and where they ran a grocery store.
After breaking encirclement in Lurhwayizo in 1987, Ngono was whisked off to the north-eastern part of then Transkei by the ANC underground, where he joined the rest of his unit and continued with organisational work until January 1988 when they had to retreat to Lesotho after another skirmish with the security police.
Ngono was ultimately abducted with three other ANC members in Lesotho by agents of the SA security police in collaboration with some elements of the Lesotho police in what is known as the “Ladybrand Four”.
He is presumed to have been murdered in the custody of the apartheid police but his remains have not yet been found, in spite of the efforts of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Lurhwayizo is certainly a story of courage on the part of the participants, the principal character Mbulelo Ngono, who gave his life for the cause of freedom, and on the part of the Jafta family who dared to host members of MK, fully cognisant of the risks to themselves.
Patrick Mangashe is a researcher at the University of Fort Hare
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.