The Largest Group of MK Recruits Arrested in the Early 1960s
On the morning of 10 June 1963, at approximately 06:00, when apartheid Police Sergeant Ferreira arrived at the Rustenburg Police Station, he found a Zodiac Zephyr and three Combis outside the building. Inside the station he found Levy Mbatha, Essop Suleiman and an African woman. From the four vehicles, the Zephyr and the three Combis that were apprehended during the night, in excess of fifty people had been arrested.
Among those arrested was Essop Suleiman and all the drivers used by him to transport African National Congress (ANC) recruits to the Bechuanaland border on this particular and previous occasions, as well as Zazi Ngcongo and Jacob Zuma, who were part of a group of eight sent by Solomon Mbanjwa from Natal. Likewise were Herbert Sitilo and Solomon Montwedi, who were sent by Caleb Matshabe from Bloemfontein. There were other recruits from other parts of the country, including a group that was sent from the Western Cape by Looksmart Ngudle. They were all taken to Pretoria where they were held under the ninety-day detention law.
With these arrestees and the groups that were repatriated from North and South Rhodesia earlier in the year, the apartheid South African security forces had in their custody a large number of prisoners who were presumed to possess a wealth of information about the composition of the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) underground in most of its regions in the country. Unless these mostly
