TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 2

Subsection 35

359 On 22 July 1986, an ANC member, Mr Joseph Mothopeng, was abducted from his home in Lesotho by unknown South African Security Branch members from Ladybrand and killed. Few details are available and no amnesty applications were received for this operation. It is possible Mothopeng may also have been known as Simon Moghetla. This is suggested by DCC member Henri van der Westhuizen in his application for amnesty for an operation in mid-1986 in Lesotho in which an ANC member named by the applicant as Simon Moghetla was abducted and three other unnamed ANC members killed. Van der Westhuizen was at that time engaged in developing targets amongst ANC members in Lesotho. He was attached to the Ladybrand security police. He states that he undertook the target identification for this mission. The attack itself was undertaken by a combined Vlakplaas and Ladybrand security police team. Van der Westhuizen claims he was told the day after the mission that Moghetla had been abducted but that three other ANC members had been killed in a shoot-out.

360 The Commission was unable to identify the three or to corroborate Van der Westhuizen’s information. Press reports from mid-1986 refer only to an incident in July 1986 in which two Basotho described as ANC sympathisers were killed. One is identified as a medical technologist, Mpho Makete.

361 On 15 December 1986, a senior ANC intelligence official, Mr Ismael Ebrahim [CT00940/OUT], was abducted from his home near Mbabane, Swaziland. This operation occurred three days after the abduction from Swaziland of four foreign nationals by Special Forces (see above).

362 A member of MK’s Natal High Command in the 1960s, Ebrahim had served a lengthy prison sentence for sabotage. On his release, he went into exile and resumed underground activity. No amnesty applications were received for this operation, but information supplied to the Commission by two witnesses suggested that the abduction was carried out by NIS operatives. According to Ebrahim, his abductors were two black men.

363 Ebrahim was taken to South Africa and handed over to the Security Branch. He was held for several months, during which time he was interrogated by a team of questioners. In a statement to a hearing in the Netherlands, Ebrahim identified one of his questioners as Major Martin Naudé, head of C2, the intelligence division. He was also subjected to months of solitary confinement.

364 Thirteen months after his detention, Ebrahim was brought to trial on a charge of high treason. The presiding judge refused his application for the dismissal of the charges on the grounds of his illegal abduction. Ebrahim was convicted and sentenced to twenty years. Ebrahim appealed against the right of the South African courts to try him. His appeal was upheld by the Appellate Division in mid-1990, and he was released.

365 In December 1987, three members of the ANC based in Lesotho were abducted and taken to South Africa. They were Ms Joyce Keokanyetswe (Betty) Boom [KZN/JRW/051/BL], Ms Nomasonto Mashiya (along with her child), and Mr Tax Sejamane. Three amnesty applications were submitted to the Commission in regard to these abductions. They are from Colonel Colin Anthony Pakenham Robertshaw [AM7163/97] who was attached at the time to the Security Branch at Ladybrand, and two of his colleagues, Sergeant Antonie Jagga [AM7106/97] and Lesizi Michael Jantjies [AM7107/97]. The identical statements allege that contact was made with Boom in Maseru in 1987, and that she agreed to become a source. A little later, when they learnt that Boom was under suspicion, the group agreed that she should be brought to South Africa in an operation which would be made to seem an abduction.

366 Boom was thus taken to a farm in the Ladybrand district where she allegedly suggested that contact be made with Mashiya, a fellow cell member, with a proposal that she join Boom. Mashiya allegedly agreed, but insisted that she be accompanied by her one-year-old child. Once she had joined Boom, Mashiya agreed to become an informer and asked the police to deliver her child (with an explanatory letter) to her parents in the Vereeniging area. This was done. Soon afterwards, Tax Sejamane allegedly agreed to become an informer. Having established a network of agents, the three were returned to Maseru where they disappeared soon after.

367 This version of events is not accepted either by relatives who gave statements to the Commission or by the ANC. Their view is that the three were forcibly abducted by members of the Ladybrand security police and taken to South Africa, where they were killed and their bodies buried. What is certain is that none of the three has been seen or heard of since they disappeared from Lesotho in 1988.

368 In July and October 1988, two MK operatives in Swaziland, Mr Emmanuel Mzimela (aka Deon Cele) and Ms Phila Portia Ndwandwe (aka MK Zandile and Zandi) were abducted, taken to South Africa and killed when they refused to co-operate with the Security Branch. Their bodies were exhumed by the Commission in 1997. The abduction of Ndwandwe was authorised by then Brigadier (later Major-General) Johannes Albertus Steyn of the Durban Security Branch at the request of Colonels Andy Taylor and Hentie Botha, both of whom participated in the operation along with Lieutenant Colonels Jacobus Vorster and Sam du Preez, Warrant Officer Laurie Wasserman and some others. All those named have applied for amnesty for this operation.

369 Cele was persuaded by a colleague, Mr Goodwill Sikhakane, to enter a minibus after leaving night classes in Manzini. Unbeknown to him, Sikhakane was at that time negotiating with the Durban Security Branch to return to South Africa as an agent. The Cele abduction was used by the security police to test Sikhakane. Durban Security Branch members Warrant Officer Laurie Wasserman [AM4508/96] and Colonel Hentie Botha were hiding in the minibus. They subsequently overpowered Cele and drove him to a house belonging to the Pietermaritzburg Security Branch, where they allegedly left him. According to Botha’s amnesty application, he was eliminated the following day after refusing to become an informant. Both Wasserman and Botha applied for amnesty for this abduction. Sikhakane became an askari but was himself eliminated by his Vlakplaas superiors in 1991.

FULLER DETAILS ON THESE THREE KILLINGS ARE CONTAINED ELSEWHERE IN THIS REPORT. BECAUSE THE AMNESTY APPLICATIONS FOR MOST OF THE ABOVE ABDUCTIONS WERE PENDING AT THE TIME OF REPORTING, THE COMMISSION WAS UNABLE TO MAKE FINDINGS ON THEM BEYOND THE FACT THAT EACH INVOLVED A VIOLATION OF THE TERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE COUNTRIES INVOLVED.