In July 1962, Col Fekadu Wakene taught South African political activist Nelson Mandela the tricks of guerrilla warfare – including how to plant explosives before slipping quietly away into the night.
Mr Mandela was in Ethiopia, learning how to be the commander-in-chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe – the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC).
The group had announced its arrival at the end of 1961 by blowing-up electricity pylons in various places in South Africa.
Then on 11 January 1962, Mr Mandela had secretly, and illegally, slipped out of South Africa.
His mission was to meet as many African political leaders as possible and garner assistance for the ANC, including money and training for its military wing.
And to be moulded into a soldier himself.
During this trip, he visited Ethiopia twice and left a deep impression on those who met him during his stay in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
‘Made others laugh’
“Nelson Mandela was a very strong and resilient student, and he took instruction well and was really very likeable,” Col Fekadu said.
“You couldn’t help but love him.”
Col Fekadu was a corporal when he trained Mr Mandela. He was a member of a specialist police force – the riot battalion – based in the suburbs of Kolfe, in barracks which are still used today.
He remembers a “happy, cheerful person” who “concentrated on the task in hand”.
“He was polite, always happy and you never saw him lose his temper,” he said.
“He laughed easily and made others laugh as well.”
Col Fekadu says he was responsible for training Mr Mandela in sabotage and demolitions and how to stage hit-and-run attacks.
The day’s theory lessons were put into practice during night-time exercises.
Nelson Mandela First Interview 21 May, 1961
Nelson Mandela, already a leading figure in resistance to apartheid, was asked by ITN’s Brian Widlake, for his views about the campaign to secure the franchise for South Africa’s black population. It is part of a longer ITN Roving Report news programme about Apartheid.
Mr Mandela was a good student, hardworking and physically strong – but sometimes too robust and too enthusiastic for his own good, the colonel recalls.
“Physically he was very strong and well-built. But sometimes during the training he would get ahead of himself.
“And while his intentions were good, that could also be dangerous, and sometimes we had to restrain him a bit for safety reasons.”
Col Fekadu had been told to train Mr Mandela by his commanding officer, General Tadesse Birru, the assistant police commissioner who had played a key role in crushing an attempt at the end of 1960 to overthrow Emperor Haile Selassie. He was later executed by the Derg regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Back in 1962, Col Fekadu did not realise the significance of the South African politician he had been instructed to turn into a soldier.
“All we knew was that he was our guest from abroad and that he would spend some time with us,” he said.
“Everything was kept very secret. We were kept in the dark.”
Mr Mandela was in Ethiopia at the invitation of the emperor, an ardent supporter of Africa’s decolonisation and African unity.
At the time, Ethiopia had one of the strongest armed forces on the continent.
Its troops were part of the UN peacekeeping operation during the Congo crisis in 1960 and a decade earlier Ethiopian soldiers had fought in the Korean war.
And the emperor had invited many other African liberation struggle fighters to be trained on Ethiopian soil.
As well as learning how to commit acts of sabotage, Mr Mandela’s military training also included briefings on military science, how to run an army and how to use a gun.
He was also taken on long treks carrying his knapsack, rifle and ammunition.
Nelson Mandela’s Life Story
The 13-minute video documentary of Mandela’s life has been provided by the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
This was one of Mr Mandela’s favourite activities during his military training, and he writes about it with affection in his Long Walk to Freedom autobiography: “During these marches I got a sense of the landscape, which was very beautiful… people used wooden ploughs and lived on a very simple diet supplemented by home-brewed beer. Their existence was similar to the life in rural South Africa.”… Read More and Watch Videos on BBC
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