Apartheid Enemy Agents Piper and Oshkosh Arrested

Apartheid Enemy Agents Piper and Oshkosh Arrested

On 17 March 1981, a team from the African National Congress’ (ANC) Department of National Intelligence and Security (NAT) Security Sector visited Mac Maharaj in Lusaka, Zambia. One of them informed Maharaj that they found tapes in Piper’s possession, and they asked if Maharaj could verify if they were authentic. Maharaj listened to the tapes and said it was his voice when he was delivering talks and lectures for five graduates from the Lenin School. Piper was part of the course, and it was inferred that he was secretly recording the lectures to hand them over to the apartheid South African Security Police.

Piper, who was also known as “Elliot Mazibuko”, real name Pule Moses Malebane, was a member of the 1976 intake, the renowned June 16 Detachment, an Instructor and Political Commissar of Company 4 of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) at the “University of the South”, Novo Catengue, in Angola’s Benguela province. In 1978, he was one of a group of six sent for two years to the prestigious Lenin School in Moscow, and this was a group being prepared by Mac Maharaj for deployment inside the country and in the forward areas.

On 14 March 1981, the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ANC also received a report on security, which included a reference to the return of Oshkosh and Bhekimpi, including other agents and suspects. It was actually the Zambian Police which indicated that they wanted to interview Oshkosh (MK name of Mompati Godfrey Bosigo Khumalo), the liaison officer at Lusaka international airport and the person responsible for clearing ANC members and visitors to Zambia. It was the Zambian police, not the ANC’s own security department, that started the sequence of events that led to this discovery. Oshkosh had used his privileged position to assist the alleged drug-smuggling activities of a well-known Zambian politician, Sikota Wina, and his name was linked to Bhekimpi ka Gwala, whose real name was unknown and was working as a transport officer for the ANC in Lusaka.

In a pre-emptive move, Oshkosh fled to Botswana, travelling with Piper, who had recently returned from training at the Lenin School in Moscow and had reason to fear that he was about to be sent back to Angola. While in Moscow, because Piper was a brilliant student and was outstanding politically, the Soviet instructors began to trust him. On MK Chief of Staff Joe Slovo’s initiative, Piper was even invited to a meeting of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Central Committee in the German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany). However, when he came back to Moscow he started behaving strangely and had to be recalled to Africa. Some Soviet instructors suspected his perfect behaviour, and he began to panic that he was about to be exposed.

Oshkosh and Piper travelled to Botswana on tickets supplied by Faru (aka “Simon Pharoah” or “John Mogale”), whose real name was Matlaku Montshioa. Faru was working for the Youth Secretariat in Lusaka, also a former political instructor in Angola. Actually, on 28 February 1981, ANC Treasurer-General, Thomas Nkobi, had requested the Botswana authorities to release to the ANC both Oshkosh and Piper, who had been arrested for leaving Zambia on 14 February illegally without passports. Piper and Oshkosh were deported from Botswana to Lusaka, and under interrogation, Piper admitted that he was working for the apartheid security police and there were others in the network.

He then revealed Kenneth Mahamba (real name Timothy Kgositsile Seremane), former Camp Commander of Quibaxe, who was blamed for killing Joel “Mahlathini” Gxekwa, whose real name was Thamsanqa Ndunge. Mahlathini was a star of Amandla Cultural Ensemble. Another person that was mentioned by Piper was Vusi Mayekiso, real name Derrick Leballo, who was responsible for poisoning cadres in Novo Catengue in what came to be known as Black September in 1977. All three were recruited by the Special Branch in Mafikeng, which was working within the Bophuthatswana bantustan. Faru also confessed that he was recruited at John Vorster Square in Johannesburg, and his training lasted only two weeks. No evidence was provided of the recruitment, training, instructions or espionage activities of Oshkosh and Bhekimpi, two other agents that were active in Lusaka.

In a speech made by Thomas Nkobi in Lusaka on 4 April 1981, “The enemy plan was to strike a mortal blow on 12th March [1981]. It had created a wide network of assassins recruited from among ourselves of course to be reinforced on that night by its own storm troopers to supervise. It then would have been able to say to the world that the killings were a result of internal squabble[s] and division within the movement … The enemy was poised to strike.”

Mahamba, Mayekiso, Piper, Oshkosh and Faru were executed in Angola by firing squad between 1981 and 1984. Another self-confessed agent, Balili Mpila (MK name of Joseph Mokoena), who was employed in the treasury in Lusaka, was executed in 1982. The fate of Bhekimpi ka Gwala is not clear although he had made confessions of theft from the organisation and involvement in the smuggling of cars. One of the interrogators of these apartheid agents, Ephraim Mfalapitsa, deserted MK and became an Askari, resulting in him being charged for the killing of the COSAS 4 on 15 February 1982.

The discovery of this sophisticated apartheid agents network came to be known as the “Shishita Crisis” within the ranks of the ANC, particularly in Lusaka, which had preceding connections in Angola. The word “Shishita”, according to Hugh Macmillan, “is a Bemba word that took on the meaning of the English word ‘loiter’ and was used in Zambia to describe campaigns against unregistered aliens, people in possession of unlicensed firearms and stolen goods, or those judged in terms of colonial-era legislation to be ‘loitering with intent’”.

Approximately 60 people were arrested by the ANC’s NAT, national intelligence and security department, in Zambia and were then transferred for interrogation and redeployed to Angola. The regional political commissar in Lusaka, Uriah Mokeba, divided those who had been removed from Lusaka into four categories: enemy agents who were planning to assassinate leaders; smugglers who were being used by the enemy; people who were removed for indiscipline and defiance; and others who were going to help with the investigations.

More people were investigated in Angola and people were taken there from all over the Southern African region. Some of the cadres who were arrested at this time were either falsely implicated or had merely shown signs of ill-discipline. Apologies were tendered for wrongful arrest, many of them were later released and they were reintegrated into the exile community, and in some cases provided with opportunities to pursue academic studies.

Sources:
South African History Archives (SAHA).
Luli Callinicos, “Oliver Tambo and the Dilemma of the Camp Mutinies in Angola in the Eighties”, South African Historical Journal, Vol. 64 No. 3, 2012.
Luli Callinicos, “Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains”, David Philip Publishers, 2004.
James Ngculu, “The Honour to Serve: Recollections of an Umkhonto Soldier”, David Philip Publishers, 2009.
Stephen Ellis, “External Mission: The ANC in Exile”, Jonathan Ball, 2012.
Vusi Mavimbela, “Time is Not the Measure: A Memoir”, Real African Publishers, 2018.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”.
Hugh Macmillan, “Shishita: A Crisis in the ANC In Exile in Zambia, 1980–1981”, In Kessel, Ineke, et al.,
One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating liberation histories today, Wits University Press, 2012.

Castro Khwela
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