The Rivonia Arrests – Apartheid Security Branch Pounces on the MK High Command

The Rivonia Arrests – Apartheid Security Branch Pounces on the MK High Command

On the morning of 11 July 1963, Lieutenant van Wyk of the apartheid Security Branch had a briefing with a team of policemen telling them about a plan to use a dry-cleaning van to deceive the suspects, following his discovery in Rivonia after driving with his African informant, who indicated that he recognised a church.

Meanwhile, Ruth First, a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and wife of Joe Slovo, met Bob Hepple at his house and asked him to give some messages to Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki. They then discussed the ongoing debate over guerrilla warfare, with Hepple saying the existing plan was crazy and would provoke brutal repression that would retard for many years the main task of building up an effective political and trade union organisation among the people. South Africa was a highly armed state and backed by the United States in the Cold War. The plan, according to Hepple, had no chance of succeeding and would only bring suffering.

Indeed, as Hepple predicted, the situation was getting from bad to worse. Denis Goldberg collected Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu and Raymond Mhlaba from Travallyn in the early afternoon and drove them in a Volkswagen Kombi to Rivonia. Arriving at Liliesleaf Farm, at approximately 14:40, they noticed a car with a white man inside, which Walter Sisulu approached. The white man was actually Arthur Goldreich’s brother-in-law, Reeve Arenstein, a dentist, who was supposed to attend to Sisulu in the house.

As soon as they saw Sisulu and Arenstein disappear into the kitchen, Mbeki and Mhlaba stepped out of the Kombi into a room in a thatched outbuilding to the side of the house, where they found Goldberg, who was in conversation with Ahmed Kathrada. After finishing with the dentist, Sisulu left the main house and entered the outbuilding, which was a kind of servants’ quarters-cum-cottage, with Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein also following him a few minutes later.

At approximately 15:00, a bakery van and a dry-cleaner’s van, with the name “Trade Steam Pressers” on its side, entered Liliesleaf Farm, both full of policemen. When Govan Mbeki mentioned the van to everyone, Bernstein retorted that he saw the van outside the police station on his way to the farm. Forty policemen emerged with dogs from the two police vans and began surrounding the main house and outbuildings.

Sisulu headed for the window to exit the structure, when Detective Warrant Officer J.H.J. Kennedy entered the outbuilding. However, he returned into the building when one of the police dogs that was placed behind the servants’ quarters snarled aggressively at him. Everybody present at the outbuilding was immediately handcuffed, while in the living room of the main building Denis Goldberg was arrested in the toilet, where he was hiding, with a notebook relating to hand grenades and explosives in a pocket of his coat.

Later on, when Arthur Goldreich entered the driveway and began noticing policemen in the yard, he immediately started reversing unsuccessfully, as the policemen jumped onto his car and one pointed a revolver at him through the window. He was immediately arrested, as they searched the car and found a copy of Operation Mayibuye in a hubcap, similar to the one that was read in the outbuilding by Mbeki and Mhlaba.

When searching the house, the police found the diary of Nelson Mandela’s 1962 African trip. Moreover, they found Mandela’s false passport and a number of documents in his handwriting, including one on how to build MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe) as a young army, and “How to be a good Communist”. The information obtained from the Liliesleaf Farm led to further raids at another small farm in Travallyn, where Sisulu, Mbeki and Mhlaba were residing, as well as the “Little Rivonia” in the Johannesburg suburb of Mountain View.

When Wilton Mkwayi arrived at Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia with a taxi at dusk, after disembarking, he noticed a large number of dogs in the yard. Instead of going in, he moved away from the property and took a footpath towards Alexandra. Thomas Mashifane was loaded into the van with the casual labourers and dogs, while two trenchcoated Security Branch officers stood guard at the Liliesleaf farm entrance.

Fortunate also, were Joe Slovo, who was in London at the time, Uncle JB Marks, who had left with Slovo to present the proposed guerrilla warfare document to Deputy ANC President, Oliver Tambo, in Dar es Salaam, and Bram Fischer, who was not at the farm at the time of the raid, even though he was often there two or three times a day.

This incident became an enormous episode in the history of the South African national liberation struggle. The police had learned of the location from two sources: George Mellis, who lived nearby in the Rivonia Caravan Park, who had noticed a number of cars going in and out of the farm area and told his family; and a police informant in MK, Bartholomew Hlapane, the one who indicated that he recognised a church in the vicinity of the farm.

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
A. Lerumo, “Forms and Methods of Struggle the South African Democratic Revolution”, The African Communist, No. 9, April/May 1962.
Nelson Mandela, “Long Walk to Freedom”, Abacus, 1994.
Gerard Ludi, “The Communisation of the ANC”, Galago, 2011.
Stephen Ellis, “External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960–1990”, Jonathan Ball, 2013.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.
Paul S. Landau, “Spear: Mandela and the Revolutionaries”, Jacana, 2022.

Castro Khwela
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