The Abduction of Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim from Swaziland

On the evening of 15 December 1986, at around 22:00, when the Chairman of the ANC's Regional Political-Military Committee in Swaziland, Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim, was watching television with his gardener, Dumisani Zwane, at an underground house in Mbabane’s Pine Valley, he heard a knock on the door. He asked Zwane to go and find out who was it. When Zwane opened the door, he found two black men in overalls requesting spanners to fix their car that had broken down along the road. “Roynie”, Zwane called Ebrahim, “there are some people who want to borrow a wheel spanner”, he said. After listening to the two men, Ebrahim went with his keys to his own car that was parked outside the house. When he was about to open the boot, the two men pointed firearms at his head, and one of them said. “If you make a noise or shout, we’ll kill you”. They then informed him that they were South African policemen, and they forced him back into the house where they also held up Zwane. They then tied Ebrahim’s hands behind his back and dragged him to his bedroom where they instructed him to sit down. After ensuring that Zwane was still lying face down, they threatened to shoot him if he continued to look at them. His captors, who were South African National Intelligence Service (NIS) agents, held him at a house overnight in the garage bound and gagged. In the early hours of the morning of 16 December 1986, he was taken across the border fence from Swaziland into South Africa