On 12 December 1986, at around 02:00 in the morning, Msizeni Shadrack Matthews Maphumulo, an African National Congress (ANC) Acting Representative in Swaziland, died in police custody after he had been confronted at home in Swaziland by a group of armed men.
Maphumulo was one of hundreds of people who died in police custody or who died in the liberation struggle against apartheid. Shadrack had been stationed in Swaziland for over five years having fled a banning order restricting him to the Inanda area of Natal following his arrest in 1977.
He was awoken at his apartment on the third floor Matsapa’s Magevini Flats by a loud bang, which was followed by the entrance of four men – two black and two white – brandishing guns. They shot through Maphumulo's bedroom door, one of the bullets hitting him in the stomach. He was at that moment attempting to hide his three sons from the attack.
The attackers stormed and entered the bedroom, carried him out of the flat, while he was bleeding profusely, shoved him into the boot, and drove away with him at high speed in a Toyota Corolla with a South African number plate. He was later transferred into the back of a van, with no medical intervention, and on that long, arduous and agonizing journey to Durban, Shadrack bled to death.
Msizeni Shadrack Maphumulo was among the first Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadres who were arrested and sentenced to spells on Robben Island, where they sharpened their political understanding and becam
