that he had some degree of authority in the Party he invited them to attend it. They could not, they said, as they would have missed their flight and would have to pay for a new one. But he promised that the Party would take care of all their expenses, flights included, if they were to disrupt their travel plans – another sign of his significant authority and influence. To persuade them to attend, he mentioned that the conference was very important and intimated that the chairpman of the SACP, Dr Yusuf Dadoo, was in attendance. They decided to give him an answer the following day after they had discussed it among themselves. They were thrilled to hear that Dr Dadoo was there. In fact, their promise to consider staying on was mainly driven by that information.
They were to be accommodated at the house of another comrade of the Communist Party. He was himself busy at the conference, but there was enough time to discuss the issue among themselves in his house. Andrew and Mhlaba argued that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity and that they had to take it. Gqabi, Mkwayi and Mthembu argued that they could not divert from the programme in case they were wanted at home urgently to undertake the very important task of training people internally in the bush. Democratic centralism won the day. Andrew and Mhlaba had to go with the majority. They decided to turn down the offer. They learned later that Dr Dadoo was not there – it was all a ploy to persuade them to stay.
After spending two days in the cold Moscow winter they proceeded to Cairo on the morning of the third day. They spent the whole day in Cairo at the airport and flew the following day to Tanzania where Oliver Tambo was waiting for a briefing from them. At the airport in Dar es Salaam they were met by James Hadebe, popularly known as Jimmy or Jobe. He was the ANC’s head of the East Africa mission, based in Tanzania, having replaced Makiwane, who had been posted to Ghana as the head of the West Africa mission. Hadebe took them to Luthuli House, the ANC headquarters in Dar es Salaam, where Tambo had an office.
Andrew knew Hadebe very well, having worked with him when Hadebe was the Transvaal provincial secretary of the ANC during the 1950s, and as one of the accused in the treason trial. He respected and admired him a great deal. Like Andrew, Hadebe hailed from the Orange Free State. As a direct descendant of the nineteenth-century Hlubi king, Langalibalele, Hadebe was, by heredity, a born leader in the African sense. He had been detained for five months following the state of emergency in 1960, after which he left South Africa and went into exile where he had become one of the significant men in the ANC’s foreign mission.
At the headquarters of the ANC they found some of the trainees who had just arrived from Ethiopia. Tambo had organised a warm reception. The five comrades were received like real heroes of the struggle. There was food fit for heroes, and comfortable beds were made up for them. By Andrew’s account, they slept so peacefully that they forgot they were in a foreign country. It was only the following morning that they regretted the comfort they had been offered by the leadership, when they were shocked to find out that Tambo was lying on the floor. He had made way for them to be accommodated in the beds and he was willing to compromise his status and position to honour them. Tambo was the most senior leader of their movement, but there he was on the floor while they enjoyed the comfort of beds. For Andrew, Tambo was not just his political leader but his former teacher as well. Andrew would later describe this as ‘a true attestation to all of us that Tambo was truly a revolutionary’. In fact, for the rest of his life, Andrew would declare that he had never seen a true revolutionary such as Tambo whom he would describe as ‘down-to-earth and true to the course of the struggle’. Seeing Tambo lying on the floor while he and his comrades were made comfortable in beds did not please Andrew and nor did it please his comrades. It was summer in Tanzania, and excessively hot. Sleeping naked was something the people had become used to and so had Tambo. Andrew saw him lying there on the floor naked, with a huge scar on his chest that he had never seen before and that he thought he should not have seen at all. ‘None should have seen it.’ But out of curiosity he enquired about it and Tambo explained that he got the scar during the boys’ stick fights, in his youth in the Eastern Cape.
Andrew and his comrades took a unanimous decision that they were not going to allow their leader to sleep on the floor. They decided that Mhlaba and Gqabi would share a bed and give the other to Tambo. Tambo did not seem to be perturbed, but he welcomed their gesture.
They were the first group in MK to be properly given military training and Tambo wanted them to brief him on all aspects of the training, the logistics and also the terrain to which they had been exposed. After all, Tambo was the ANC head of external mission and back home he was the deputy president of the ANC and his seniority in the party entitled him to a full briefing. For the next few days, they briefed Tambo fully about their Chinese experience. They also gave him Mao’s advice that the conditions in Algeria were similar to those of South Africans and that it would be prudent and economic to send some of the MK trainees there. They also advised Tambo to send to Algeria a group of comrades who had just completed what they called ‘sub-standard’ training in Ethiopia. The group had been trained only in gun operation and crawling by the Ethiopians. ‘Unlike the Chinese instructors, the Ethiopian trainers had no real understanding of the “enemy” with which the trainees would be confronted,’ stated Andrew. The five thought it wise that Tambo should send them for further training in Algeria before sending them back home to fight.
During the briefings, Andrew and his comrades learned that Tambo was bothered because despite his seniority in the organisation he had not been consulted before they left for China to undergo training. ‘Such was the poor communication within the senior ranks that sometimes prevailed in the organisation at the time,’ remarked Andrew later. Makiwane, who, as head of the ANC mission in Tanzania, had been involved with the travelling arrangements, was perceived as someone who kept things to himself. He had apparently not informed Tambo. Andrew and his comrades were not impressed with Makiwane’s behaviour. ‘Tambo had been undermined and this did not go down well with us who had learned about discipline from the Chinese,’ he lamented.
The Chinese ambassador to Tanzania, He Ying, also wanted them to have supper with him and his entire senior staff in order to get a briefing about their trip – this trip to China by an African liberation movement was one of the first, so everyone had an interest in their experiences. The Chinese also wanted to meet Tambo in his capacity as the head of the ANC’s external mission, probably to get his feeling about Chinese assistance.
Three days before their journey home, Andrew suffered a very painful nerve from his left cheek down to the neck. His face was swollen and he was taken to a hospital in Dar es Salaam for medical attention, but the doctors there were unable to offer specialised neurological treatment. Tambo was very concerned about Andrew’s state and suggested that he should be sent for a thorough check-up. He was particularly worried because Andrew was now one of the movement’s best assets and the ANC could not afford to lose a comrade so well trained in guerrilla warfare. Besides, Tambo emphasised to Andrew, even if he had not been intensively trained he would not have wanted to lose him because ‘the ANC can’t afford to lose a single comrade when their life could be saved’. Tambo suggested that Prague would take better care of him because it was east of the Iron Curtain and espionage between the South African apartheid regime and the Czechs was almost nonexistent, unlike in the West – for example in a place like London, which apartheid security forces could easily penetrate. But he decided to keep him in Tanzania for a while before sending him to Prague – which also paid off later.
While in Tanzania, Andrew and his comrades heard that important events had taken place during their absence and had, to a large extent, changed the South African political landscape for good. They had been deprived of this kind of information while undergoing training and were almost blank about developments back home. They learned that MK’s first official acts of sabotage had taken place on 16 December 1961 with its official launch. These acts of sabotage were widespread and well-coordinated across the entire country. In one, Benjamin Ramotse and Petrus Molefe, both comrades Andrew was close to, had tried to blow up an office at Dube railway station, in Andrew’s own township, but the bomb went off while they were giving explosives to each other, killing Petrus Molefe instantly. Benjamin Ramotse was injured but escaped and went into exile for training. His whereabouts were not revealed to them, although Andrew was eager to find out where he was and how he was doing. He had worked with this man for many years in the ANC’s Dube branch and had been interested to learn that he