MK Commander Looksmart Ngudle Dies in Detention
On 5 September 1963, Looksmart Ngudle became the first person to die in detention in the history of the South African liberation struggle. The Special Branch reported that Ngudle committed suicide and that he had hung himself using his pyjama pants. An inquest was called for when a cellmate, Isaac Tlale, who was handcuffed next to Looksmart during his torture, insisted on reporting details of his treatment in jail. To prevent this, four days after his death, the state banned him, since as a banned person, he could not be quoted. As a result, Ngudle became the first person to be banned after his death.
On 4 September 1963, while apartheid Magistrate J.J. Marais was doing his weekly rounds primarily checking on the conditions of ninety-day-law detainees, he encountered Looksmart Ngudle in the Pretoria Central Police Station, who complained that he had been assaulted to compel him to make a statement. As Ngudle was talking to Marais, he was at the same time coughing up blood. The following morning Ngudle was found dead in his cell, hanging by the cord of his pyjama trousers.
Solwandle Looksmart Khulile Ngudle was born on 22 May 1922 in KwaZali, in a village called Ngcwazi, near a small town called Middledrift (also known as iXesi), in the Eastern Cape. He attended Falconer, the one-roomed local high school, until Standard Six when he left to work on the mines in Johannesburg. Ngudle worked as a “malaisha”, a loader who
