The last of the men who stood with Mandela
Andrew Mlangeni called himself a ‘backroom boy’ of the struggle, but when it counted the veteran showed true courage, standing up to Jacob Zuma and decrying the corruption that engulfed the ANC, writes Chris Barron
Andrew Mlangeni, who has died in Johannesburg at the age of 95, was the last of the eight Rivonia triallists sentenced to life imprisonment on June 12 1964, and so modest and selfeffacing he was dubbed “the quiet revolutionary”. He was a die-hard supporter of the armed struggle against apartheid from the word go, but when the ANC national executive committee allowed Nelson Mandela to form uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) in June 1961, he didn’t think he had any chance of being recruited.
Mandela made him do push-ups to see how fit he was, then informed him he’d just become the first recruit to MK outside of the high command.
Shortly afterwards he was in the first group selected to undergo military training in China.
Mlangeni arranged a small plane to fetch him and the others, including Raymond Mhlaba and Joe Gqabi (subsequently assassinated by South African security forces in Harare) at airstrips in Serowe and Lobatse, Botswana, and fly them to what was then Tanganyika. They were met there by Frene Ginwala, whose job it was to receive recruits from SA and arrange their onward dispatch for military training. She coached them on what to say to the suspicious colonial officials (Tanzania only became independent in December 1961) and blew up spectacularly when Mlangeni fluffed his lines, endangering the mission.
“How can you make such a terrible mistake?” she demanded. He remembered that “her beauty never faded in the midst of anger”. She later described him as “intelligent despite his rudimentary mistakes”.
They finally reached China via Accra, Zurich, Prague, Moscow and Irkutsk, in Siberia.
In 1962 Mao Zedong paid them a surprise visit in Beijing to see how their training (in bomb-making, secret communications and the Maoist philosophy of insurgency) was going. Mlangeni, who idolised him as “one of the greatest freedom fighters in the world”, remained awed by the experience for the rest of his life.
“He stood there and gazed at us. He seemed amused. I felt energised and radicalised and was ready for any kind of war,” he recalled.
On their way home they were debriefed by Oliver Tambo in newly independent Tanzania. They were the first MK group to receive military training and he wanted to know all the details.
Arriving back in Botswana, Mlangeni was fetched by Joe Modise, who drove him through the night to be on time for a meeting with the high command at Liliesleaf farm in Rivonia, outside Johannesburg, to report on the training in China and discuss the immediate implementation of Operation Mayibuye, the ANC’s blueprint for armed resistance.
The high command had already received an assessment of the trainees from China describing Mlangeni as lacking initiative but loyal and committed.
Disguised as the Rev Percy Mokoena in priestly garb, his task was to travel the country identifying recruits for the armed struggle