From MK cadre to SANDF general

1957-2015

LIEUTENANT-General Bongani Mbatha, who has died at the age of 57, was chief of logistics for the South African National Defence Force.

He was born in Johannesburg on September 5 1957 and attended Morris Isaacson High School in Soweto, where the 1976 student uprising began.

Mbatha was involved in the planning and execution of the revolt, after which he went to Alexandra Secondary School, where he matriculated.

On the run from the security police, he went into exile in 1978, travelling to Mozambique via Swaziland to join the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe. His political commissar in Mozambique was one of South Africa’s future presidents, Jacob Zuma.

Mbatha was then sent to Quibaxe in Angola for basic military training, after which he was selected for a special weapons course in communist East Germany, and then deployed to Caculama, a major MK base in Angola.

In the early ’80s the base was at the heart of a rebellion by MK soldiers who were tired of waiting to be sent to fight in South Africa. Mbatha, a physical training instructor at the time, was part of a force deployed to control the outbreak.

He was then deployed to work at MK’s logistics headquarters in Luanda, before becoming head of logistics in the coastal town of Benguela in southern Angola. There he commanded a unit taking supplies from Europe to Luanda for MK forces. While on their LOGISTICS CHIEF: Bongani Mbatha way back to Benguela, the unit was attacked by Unita rebels, but the strike was repelled.

Mbatha was repatriated to South Africa in 1993 and integrated into the defence force the next year.

He rose through the ranks and was the director of army logistics when South African soldiers were attacked by antigovernment rebels in Bangui in the Central African Republic in 2013.

He managed to avoid blame for the fiasco that saw the South African troops run out of essential equipment such as ammunition, weapons and armoured cars. Thirteen soldiers were killed and two died later of their injuries.

“They fought like lions,” said Mbatha, “until the rebels raised a white flag and called a ceasefire. We beat them up and killed more than 600 of them. Make no mistake, we beat them up.”

In 2014 he was made chief of logistics for the SANDF.

He is survived by his wife, Maria Rosario, whom he met in Angola, and four children. — Chris Barron