Umkhonto we Sizwe

Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), was the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1961 until 1993. Founded by Nelson Mandela and others, Umkhonto we Sizwe (commonly abbreviated MK) carried out waves of sabotage and guerrilla attacks against South Africa’s apartheid government, which sanctioned racial segregation and discrimination against nonwhites in the country. MK suspended its activities in 1990 amid negotiations between the government and the ANC as apartheid measures were gradually being repealed, and it was officially disbanded on December 16, 1993. (For coverage of the similarly named South African political party, which was formed in 2023 and is not affiliated with the ANC, see uMkhonto weSizwe.)

While grassroots and internal support for violent resistance to the South African apartheid regime had been fomenting for some time, the direct impetuses for the founding of MK were the 1960 Sharpeville massacre and the banning of the ANC. Discouraged by the government’s disproportionately violent repression of the anti-apartheid movement, a group of highly placed ANC members successfully campaigned for the establishment of a branch of that organization dedicated to violent resistance against the South African government. In the words of MK’s founding document, “The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices: submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa.” MK was organized in 1961 to show the willingness of anti-apartheid South Africans to fight, and it included members of the South African Communist Party (SACP) as well. In addition to Mandela, other well-known MK leaders or members over the years included Govan Mbeki, Joe Slovo, Kgalema Motlanthe, Jacob Zuma, and Chris Hani.

The exact status of MK’s relationship to the ANC was deliberately vague. The “chain of command” did not include ANC political leadership, in order to avoid implicating the leadership in criminal cases.

The first MK operations were set for December 16, 1961. On that date, the MK manifesto was released publicly and a number of incendiary devices were detonated across the country. MK deliberately chose that date as it was the anniversary of the Voortrekker defeat of the Zulu in the Battle of Blood River (1838), and the day was revered by South Africa’s white Afrikaner population. For the next two years, MK sabotage campaigns were successfully carried out in various South African towns and cities. The MK limited its targets to government buildings and power stations, and its attacks were carefully planned to avoid any deaths or injuries. In total, from 1961 to 1963, more than 190 acts of sabotage coordinated by MK were carried out, exacting great economic damage but never harming any citizens.

The South African government responded to MK’s activities with extreme repression and violence, executing several MK leaders and issuing long prison sentences for others, including Mandela. In the mid-1960s MK was left leaderless and spent the following decade regrouping. Drawing on alliances with the SACP and sympathetic groups in neighboring countries, MK set up a series of guerrilla training camps (which have themselves become the subject of investigations for human rights abuses of detainees, who included MK members who had mutinied or were suspected of disloyalty).

In 1976 MK relaunched its sabotage campaigns within South Africa. The group targeted railways as well as police stations and other key buildings associated with the administration of apartheid. Use of mines and grenades became common as did skirmishes with the police, resulting in casualties among MK fighters, police, and civilians. In the 1980s MK activities intensified and continued to become less discriminatory. Hundreds of attacks were completed each year; attacks on farms and outside urban areas climbed, the homes of apartheid officials became increasingly prominent targets, and assassinations rose.

The activities of MK were officially suspended on August 6, 1990, when the ANC and the South African government signed the Pretoria Minute agreement, part of the negotiations which would end legislated apartheid in the early 1990s and usher in the country’s first election by universal suffrage in 1994. MK was officially disbanded on December 16, 1993. The next year, some of the former MK troops were integrated into the newly created South African National Defence Force (SANDF), which comprised soldiers from the country’s previous army as well as guerrilla fighters from MK and other groups.