Wilton Mkwayi

Wilton Zimasile Mkwayi OMSG (17 December 1923 – 24 July 2004) was an African National Congress veteran and one of the first six members of Umkonto weSizwe to be sent for military training.

Early life

Wilton “Bri-Bri” Zimasile Mkwayi was born in Chwarhu area near Middledrift in 1923. His parents were uneducated farmers. He was one of seven children. Mkwayi started school at age ten in a Presbyterian church building in Keiskammahoek. He had a rural childhood herding sheep and goats, and passing through circumcision school. He was also union organiser for the Southern African Textile Workers Union in Port Elizabeth in the early 1950s.

Mkwayi went into hiding during the trial and the 1960 State of Emergency while the other defendants were detained, later arrested and tried during the Rivonia Trial. He was able to escape because a policeman mistook him for an ordinary member of the public. He started his exile in Lesotho with Moses Mabhida, Ambrose Makiwane and Joe Matthews. From Lesotho he journeyed to Swaziland, Congo, Ghana and the UK to meet the British Trades Union Congress (TUC). The TUC funded his travels to Prague, Romania and Czechoslovakia to establish contacts for the SACTU.

He returned to Britain after his training where he met Oliver Tambo. He returned clandestinely to South Africa in 1962 to work underground and lead sabotage operations such as Operation Mayibuye. His most documented disguise was a clerical collar that allowed him to pass for a township preacher.

After Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Walter Sisulu and other co-defendants were arrested on 11 July 1963 and Nelson Mandela was already in prison, Mkwayi briefly took command of Umkonto weSizwe. He was arrested at his girlfriend’s house in Orlando West in 1964, after he was informed upon by a mole within the ANC.

Personal life

In 1985, in a Robben Island Prison Ceremony, he married his childhood sweetheart Ntombifuthi Irene Mhlongo and they had two children. She died of cancer in 1987. He married a second time and his wife Patricia Lang-Mkwayi survived him.