In April 1963, Mnangagwa and 12 other ZAPU members were sent via Dar es Salaam to Egypt for training at the Egyptian Military Academy in Cairo's Heliopolis suburb. In August 1963, ten of the 13 Southern Rhodesians in Egypt, including Mnangagwa, joined the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), which had been formed earlier that month as a breakaway group from ZAPU. The ten stopped training for ZAPU and were subsequently detained by Egyptian authorities. During their detention, they contacted ZANU leader Robert Mugabe, who was in Tanganyika, and communicated to him that they intended to join ZANU and had been detained. Mugabe redirected Trynos Makombe, who was returning from China, to Egypt to resolve the issue. Makombe secured their release and gave them plane tickets to Dar es Salaam. After arriving in Tanganyika in late August 1963, six of the eleven returned to Southern Rhodesia, while the remaining five, including Mnangagwa, were sent to briefly stay at a training camp in Bagamoyo run by FRELIMO, the group seeking to liberate Mozambique from Portuguese rule.