From Freedom College to Working Campus: Mazimbu Delivers

The buildings still stand. They still work. At Mazimbu, the former Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College now operates as the Solomon Mahlangu Campus of Sokoine University in Morogoro, hosting more than 1 800 students taught by 136 staff across Biology, Sciences, Chemistry, Physics, Education, Geography and Environmental Sciences, Mathematics, Informatics and Computer Sciences. At Dakawa, the former Ruth First Education Orientation Centre is now a girls’ school serving 1 000 pupils, while Tanzania has extended the old construction base to house a Teachers Training College, supported by just under 100 houses concentrated mainly at Village V2. These are the outcomes of two of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever undertaken by the African National Congress in exile, and they are the subject of a new exhibition at Wits University.

The exhibition, Doors of Learning: Microcosms of a Future South Africa, is edited by Gabriele Mohale of Archives and Special Collections at the Wits Library. It examines the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College and the ANC Development Centre at Dakawa through architecture, design and personal histories, tracing how space became integral to imagining and building a democratic future. It opened on 29 September with a panel discussion featuring architects Spencer Hodgson, Dr Jabu Makhubu, and Linda Mvusi, who represented her late architect brother Zama Mvusi and spoke about his design and architecture at Dakawa and Somafco. The exhibition runs at the Origins Centre until 27 November 2026.

The delivery story begins with land and materials. After the 1976 Soweto uprising drove a mass exodus of young South Africans into exile, the ANC approached the government of Tanzania, which offered a piece of land called Mazimbu, some 10 km from Morogoro, complete with the dilapidated factory buildings and houses of an abandoned sisal estate. The ANC recalled Oswald Dennis from the German Democratic Republic to lead the project. A bricklayer and trade unionist who had fled South Africa in 1964, Dennis had by 1978 mobilised veterans of MK’s Luthuli Brigade, fighters from the 1967 Wankie Campaign in the former Rhodesia, many of whom carried practical skills in plumbing, carpentry, bricklaying, truck-driving and vehicle maintenance. Under his direction they renovated seven old colonial houses at Mazimbu, converting them into temporary student accommodation and classrooms. Dennis also brought in Lars Nordbo, a Danish architect and former carpenter working in Morogoro, and together the two veterans drove the planning and mobilisation of the project.

The foundations of the first dormitory block were cast during a Letsema on 8 January 1979, the 67th anniversary of the founding of the ANC. Shortly after the apartheid government hanged the young MK fighter Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu on 6 April 1979, the ANC named the embryonic school in his honour. The design brief, shaped by discussions between Dennis and ANC President Oliver Tambo during Tambo’s first visit to Mazimbu in February 1978, was ambitious but grounded in local supply chains. Treated softwood for roof trusses, cement and aluminium roof sheets from Dar-es-Salaam, and local hardwoods for doors, window frames, cupboards and furniture were all produced in the Vuyusile Mini Joinery Workshop, established in the old sisal factory and led for the longest period by Finnish volunteers. Materials that could not be consistently sourced in Tanzania were purchased abroad.

Labour and funding came through solidarity networks rather than governments. By 1989, solidarity workers at Mazimbu and Dakawa came from Australia, Cuba, the German Democratic Republic, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada and the USA. Because most Western governments regarded the ANC as a terrorist organisation, this support relied entirely on ordinary people and their organisations. The ANC Holland Solidarity Hospital, with X-ray and operating theatres, was funded solely by the people of the Netherlands mobilised by the Dutch Anti-Apartheid movement. Swedish non-governmental organisations drove rolling development through the 1980s, and in 1985 the secondary schools of the Nordic countries dedicated a joint Operation Day’s Work to the ANC schools in Tanzania, raising more than 20 million Swedish Krone for Somafco.

Dakawa emerged in 1981 as a deliberate second phase, planned to accommodate the long-term needs of a growing exile community without becoming a refugee camp. The Norwegian company NORPLAN assisted in establishing the development framework for 10 villages for some 5 000 people, surrounding farming activity, a central administrative hub, a Vocational Training Centre and a community centre with nursery school and creche. To cut costs and improve buildability across so many houses, the ANC reduced the floor area of two- and three-bedroom homes and adopted two concrete wall prefabrication systems, one from Norway and one from the GDR, giving rise to the BAUHAUS research project and ultimately to this exhibition. Both systems were in operation by 1987, with the GDR’s Wall and Panel column system supported by a youth brigade of volunteers.

In July 1992, Oliver Tambo led an ANC contingent to the official handover of the two centres, held under the central dome now known as the Nelson Mandela Freedom Square, with donor countries and organisations present, including all the Nordic countries. Tanzanian ministries then took over the facilities: the Dakawa Vocational Training Centre now runs under the Ministry of Labour. The primary school and children’s centre operate together as the Chief Albert Luthuli Primary and Pre-School with 1 500 pupils. The National Heritage Council of South Africa recognises the campus as a heritage site, with the cemetery known as Heroes Square among its key historical features. The two centres have endured, and continue to serve the people of Tanzania. Whether their model of solidarity-funded, locally built infrastructure could be repeated today remains an open question the exhibition invites.