According to the Independent (August 9,1989) the headquarters of the South African African National Congress (ANC) will be moved shortly from Zambia where it has been since the early 1960’s to Tanzania. The Secretary General of the ANC. Mr Alfred Nzo was said to have confirmed an earlier report in the Daily Telegraph that some thousands (believed to be about 5,000) South Africans exiled in 2ambia were moving to Dakawa in central Tanzania. According to the Telegraph the reason was that President Kaunda of Zambia felt that the presence of ANC guerrillas and officials had begun to destabilise his government especially in view of the serious state of the Zambian economy. The Independent said that the move ‘represents a final admission by South Africa’s neighbours that they cannot host the movement in the face of Pretoria’s hostility’. But an ANC spokesman in London was quoted as saying that the project to move the ANC out of Zambia had been agreed years ago and that the Headquarters would not be moving.
A HIJACKING AND SUBSEQUENT SPECULATION
Africa Analysis reported in its issue of May 26th that 1,000 ANC personnel understood to have been expelled from Angola were being transferred to what it described as a huge camp at Dakawa, on the Dodoma Road, some 70 kilometres north of Morogoro. This was reported at about the same time as the arrival in Dar es Salaam of a Russian Aeroflot airliner (on May 18th) after a mid air shoot-out with alleged hijackers. When the airliner landed at Dar es Salaam airport one South African with a bullet wound in the chest and an injured Aeroflot security official were ferried by helicopter to Muhimbili Hospital. Three other men were said to have been interrogated.
The Daily News said that the aircraft was on a scheduled flight from Luanda to Moscow when a group ‘led by a Boer’ attempted to divert the plane to Johannesburg. The aircraft had landed in Dar es Salaam only to allow two people injured in the hijack attempt to disembark. The Minister of Communications and Works after visiting the airport said that he could not at that time give the plane’s next destination.
Africa Analysis reported that there had been much speculation in Dar es Salaam about what had actually happened. The plane might have been taking ANC fighters for training in the Soviet Union. It was more likely that it was ferrying 200 ANC personnnel to Dakawa. But there were some people who thought that ANC fighters may have mutinied and others who speculated that the hijackers had been ANC dissidents being brought out of Angola under guard from an ANC prison near Luanda under the terms of the Angola peace settlement.
On June 19th African Concord stated that an ANC official had confirmed that the person who had tried to hijack the plane was a South African spy who had tried to join the ANC. Bradely Richard Stacey (27) was subsequently charged in Dar es Salaam with endangering the lives of passengers and sentenced to 15 years in prison. The Judge said he would have imposed a 20 year sentence if Stacey had not pleaded guilty.
ANC COLLEGE MAKING REMARKABLE PROGRESS
Under this heading, on August 22nd, the Daily News reported that the ANC College at Mazimbu on the outskirts of Morogoro had grown during the last ten years into not only a fully fledged secondary school for South African refugees but also a complex college including primary and nursery divisions as well as a day care centre.