Apartheid Enemy Agents: The Shishita Report and Challenges of Fazenda
On 17 March 1981, a team from the African National Congress’s (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 breaches, which included a reference to the return of Oshkosh and Bhekimpi, including other agents and suspects, to Lusaka, Zambia. It was actually the Zambian Police which indic
