The Abduction of September Following the Destruction of His Machinery

The Abduction of September Following the Destruction of His Machinery

On 14 August 1986, just after midnight, apartheid South African policemen travelled to the outskirts of Manzini, Swaziland, to Mankanyane Police Station, where they parked their vehicles about ninety metres, on high ground, overlooking the western side of the station. Colonel Eugene de Kock was leading three “askaris”, Warrant Officer Johannes Koole, Aubrey Mngadi and Almond Nofomela, down to the station, being followed by Lieutenant Paul van Dyk and other two white officers, Izak Bosch and Freek Pienaar, commander of the Security Branch in Piet Retief.

When realising that one of the windows was not sealed properly, De Kock took a combat knife to open the catch, and entered through the window. He then bumped into a young officer in the corridor who was aiming a G3 assault rifle at him. Realising that the safety catch of the rifle was not released, De Kock pulled his pistol with a silencer, pointed it at the officer, and persuaded him to lower his rifle. The young officer then called out to the other older policeman who came from the charge office, and was then shocked by De Kock carrying the young policeman’s G3 rifle. De Kock then shouted, “September!”

A voice responded in one of the cells, which De Kock opened with a key he received from one of the Swazi policemen. In the cell, “Comrade September” (real name Glorius ‘Glory’ Lefoshile Sedibe) was with two other inmates, who were immediately released. Frederick Pienaar, who was with Christo Deetlefs at the Swazi hotel when the Vlakplaas Team arrived in Swaziland, entered the cell to confirm the identity of September. September was tied and pulled out of the cell. The two Swazi policemen were then locked inside the cell, while September was loaded into one of the vehicles outside the station following a bit of a scuffle with four apartheid police officers.

As they drove away from the police station, De Kock interrogated September about African National Congress (ANC) activities in Mozambique, while occasionally punching him on the stomach and chest. September kept on insisting that he was alone in Mozambique. The convoy drove to a farm approximately five kilometres from Piet Retief, where his real interrogation began. As the interrogation and beatings continued to become more intense, he started admitting to the details that were questioned by De Kock. A specialist interrogator, Sergeant Eugene Fourie, a member of the C-2 section of the Security Branch, responsible for the interrogation and identification of terrorists by means of photo albums and research, was also present during the process.

The Swazi police had arrested September in Manzini two days earlier for being in the country illegally and for being in possession of prohibited weapons. A secret deal was then made with the apartheid policemen that September would be moved from Manzini police station to Mankayane, which was closer to the South African border. For this operation, the Swazi police were paid R150 000. Their orders were to make it look like a jailbreak engineered by Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK).

The orders were to bring September back to South Africa alive, as head of Military Intelligence for the MK Transvaal Machinery, since he was regarded as a valuable asset alive than dead. Furthermore, the Vlakplaas Unit was under strict orders not to shoot Swazis, so as not to jeopardise the 1982 anti-ANC security Pact that the apartheid government had with the Swazi authorities.

The abduction of September followed an operation on 5 June 1986, wherein Colonel Eugene de Kock led a team of five men to an underground safe-house in Fountains, Mbabane, which was used by the “September Machinery”, after having been tipped by an agent codenamed ‘SWT180’. At the house, agent ‘SWT180’, whose real name was Nompumelelo Zakade, was used as a courier by the “September Machinery”, knocked to give access to the apartheid security forces.

When the door was opened, the apartheid security forces stormed the house and killed three of its occupants, including Sipho Dlamini, Busi “Mzala” Majola and “Pantsu”. This operation was authorised at a high level by General Johan van der Merwe, Head of the apartheid Security Branch, in a meeting held with General Ignatius Coetzee, Brigadier Schoon, and Colonels Eugene de Kock and Lodewyk de Jager. The meeting was about the destruction of the “September Machinery”, which was responsible for rural operations including the landmine attacks in the Eastern Transvaal.

Following his abduction, September was subjected to severe torture and broke after 12 hours, divulging to the police extensive details about the underground structures operating in Swaziland. This led to a new wave of raids and assassinations in Swaziland. Under interrogation by the Security Branch, September decided to co-operate with his captors and became an askari at Vlakplaas. He was probably the most useful askari in the history of the unit and gave unit members sufficient information to enable them to virtually wipe out Umkhonto we Sizwe in Swaziland.

The betrayal of September hit the Swaziland and Mozambican comrades very seriously because he knew everything, everybody, every plan. Following September’s kidnapping, several ANC safe houses in Swaziland were attacked. On 12 December 1986, Ebrahim returned from an all-night meeting to receive a call from a notably shaken Lindiwe Sisulu, telling him that his comrade, Shadrack Maphumulo, had been shot and killed in front of his children by apartheid agents.

A few days later, on the night of 15 December 1986, two armed men held up Ebrahim Ismael Ebrahim and his helper, announcing that they worked for the South African Police. Ebrahim was the chairperson of the Swaziland Regional Political-Military Committee (RPMC). The men threatened to kill them if they made a noise. He and the helper were immediately tied up with rope and they proceeded to take a number of documents and money from the house. Ebrahim was then gagged, blindfolded and made to lie down in the back seat of his own car and driven to the Oshoek border post.

Ebrahim was then forced out of the car and made to walk down an incline and cross the border fence into South Africa. From there his captors handed him over to South African intelligence agents who spoke in thick Afrikaans accents. They handcuffed him, put him in leg irons and proceeded to drive him to Pretoria. In the Ebrahim case, Sedibe testified in camera that he had left South Africa in 1977 when he became a member of the ANC in order to further his studies. He subsequently joined Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and was trained in Angola, East Germany and the Soviet Union.

In the following year, eleven ANC activists were assassinated as a result of information supplied by Sedibe. Amongst them were Cassius Make, the chief of the ordnance department in the MK High Command and a rising star within the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC, and Paul Dikeledi, a senior commander for the Transvaal. When was abducted a few in December 1986 and brought to Pretoria, one of his interrogators was September. Ebrahim was eventually sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment.

In October 1986, De Kock arranged for Sedibe’s wife, Conceição, and child to come to South Africa to join him, where, in later years, he became a celebrity by appearing in front of selected police audiences to talk about torture and murder in the ANC camps. The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) also used him to produce propaganda programmes about the cruelty and inhumanity of the ANC. He would conceal his identity on camera by wearing a balaclava. In one programme, September said, “I’m trained to kill and wreak havoc in South Africa. Cities must go up in flames and innocent people of all races must be killed. But fortunately, I came to other conclusions after spending years in ANC camps.”

Indeed, September became a valuable asset, according to Captain Henri van der Westhuizen, a member of the South African Defence Force’s Military Intelligence involved in target identification, who began working closely with the Security Branch in 1986. In his Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Amnesty application for the attempted killings of Mr Albie Sachs in Mozambique in 1987 and 1988, Captain van der Westhuizen stated, “I think one of the biggest breakthrough’s that we established in 1986, was the abduction of September out of Swaziland. The information that we obtained from him was invaluable to me who sat and worked there, and I think following on the inputs that we received from a person like September, we could consequently direct and distribute and better our collection abilities.”

Sources:
South African History Online (SAHO).
African National Congress, “Further Submissions and Responses by the African National Congress to Questions Raised by the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation”, 12 May 1997.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, Vol. 2”, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 29 October 1998.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, Vol. 6”, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 21 March 2003.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “Amnesty Application: Henri Van Der Westhuizen”, JISS Centre, Johannesburg, 9 October 2000.
Shannon Ebrahim, “Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim: A Gentle Revolutionary”, Ahmed Kathrada Foundation – Lives of Courage Project, 1 July 2017.
Nadja Manghezi, “‘They Were Part of Us and We Were Part of Them’: The ANC in Mozambique from 1976 to 1990”, Online Publication.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.
Jacob Dlamini, “Askari: A Story of Collaboration and Betrayal in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle”, Jacana, 2014.
Jacques Pauw, “Into the Heart of Darkness: Confessions of Apartheid’s Assassins”, Jonathan Ball, 1997.

Castro Khwela
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