POLITICS Reconstructing the raid © Historical Papers, University of the Witewatersrand the of University Papers, Historical ©

An aerial shot of Liliesleaf farm the 60s It certainly was not a police solo strike. Rather there were more complex ways in which the combined security services used a range of techniques and tactics to destroy armed opposition to .

By Garth Benneyworth

60 THE THINKER POLITICS

iliesleaf provides a focus for the members became complacent, lulled place of residence was Liliesleaf. observance of the transition into a false sense of security presented The archives reveal that, as part Lfrom non-violent resistance into by the façade of the safe house. of an inter-agency operation, the the armed struggle, during the period Despite ’s capture on farm was already under surveillance immediately after the 1961 Sharpeville 5 August 1962, Liliesleaf continued to during 1962, by at least three security massacre. The era of petitions, strike be used by the allied organisations; force agencies, including, but not action and boycotts had ended. the South African Communist Party exclusively, the Security Branch of the New methods were vital and these (SACP), the ANC, MK, members of . Knowledge of new forms of struggle centered on the South African Congress of Trade this covert operation was kept from underground activity leading to the Unions (SACTU) and members of the the public domain with fanciful stories emergence of the armed struggle in Indian political organisations, right up propagated by the regime to conceal it. 1961. Liliesleaf is significant in that this until the raid, eleven months later. Three lines of evidence reveal this and is a tangible place where the transition Incredibly so, the underground it should be borne in mind that other into armed struggle occurred and it activities and the use of Liliesleaf by sources may yet be uncovered. represents a seminal shift in South the liberation movements intensified Three parallel lines of investigation Africa's liberation struggle. Currently after August 1962 and continued until by three separate security agencies Liliesleaf is branded as ‘A Place of the 1963 raid. It is possible that more occurred between 1962 and up until Liberation’. Yet Liberation, indeed leaders and operatives visited or stayed the day of the raid. These were the freedom, came at a huge cost. at Liliesleaf after August 1962 than at Security Branch, using its methods of Liliesleaf is also where, on 11 July any other time in the farm’s history informer recruitment and information 1963, an uncannily timed police raid before this date. Meetings of MK’s collected; Republican Intelligence delivered a significant blow to the High Command, the Secretariat and (RI), using informants and information internal resistance to the apartheid the SACP Central Committee, probably trading with foreign intelligence regime. All those at Liliesleaf that day organisations and the South African were arrested; the exceptions being six The underground Communications Security Agency children, three black and three white. (SACSA) which was linked to the South Together with other members of the activities and the use African Defence Force (SADF). liberation movement who were serving of Liliesleaf by the Regarding informants, three are jail sentences or who were arrested known to have assisted the police with elsewhere, they would stand trial in liberation movements information: Bruno Mtolo, Patrick what became a watershed moment in intensified after Mthembu and Bartholomew Hlapane. South African history: the . However, within weeks of Nelson The raid and subsequent trial set August 1962 and Mandela’s capture, the Security Branch back the internal struggle for nearly continued until the also had a ten year old informant with a decade. Until recently, the raid is access to the farm: George Mellis, widely understood to have resulted 1963 raid. whose parents owned the Rivonia from informants breaking down and Caravan Park directly across the road providing information about the farm the ANC’s Executive and various from Liliesleaf. Mellis would visit the and its activities. The unfortunate MK committees such as Intelligence, farm and play with his friends Nicholas arrest of key leaders, along with a Logistics, Transport, Housing and and Paul Goldreich, and he wandered haul of archival material and other possibly other committees continued. near the outbuildings while covert incriminating evidence, is widely The concept of security broke meetings were underway. believed to be the result of a ‘lucky down. Too many people used On 5 August 1963, Mellis made a break’ on the part of the police – the Liliesleaf. Its visitors included people sworn statement to Sergeant Fourie, proverbial Mr Plod bumbling in on that known to Security Branch and foreign the commander of Rivonia police Thursday afternoon, on 11 July 1963. intelligence agencies, such as , station. He stated that about a year The generally accepted central , Jack Hodgson, , before he had reported to his parents thread is that an informant offered to , Harold Wolpe and that he saw white and black men give up the farm yet had only a vague many others. together in the thatch cottage talking idea where it was. Accompanied by Mandela later stated that he and shaking hands, which seemed a detective and after driving around concealed a revolver and notebook strange to him. He further stated that the area for some time he eventually within the upholstery of the front seat on occasions while visiting that he saw identified the property. It is said that of Cecil Williams’s car before his arrest lots of cars parked in the yard and, the informant received R6 000. and that this was never found by the on one occasion, he wrote down the However the archives demonstrate police. It is possible that the police registration numbers of all the cars otherwise. The reconstructed evidence found this notebook and backtracked parked in the yard and handed the paints a rather different picture. his activities in after his numbers to the Police at Rivonia. Liliesleaf fell captive to the return from Ethiopia, where on his Sergeant Fourie wouldn’t have sat on syndrome of the safe house. Some arrival from Bechuanaland, his first this information. His channel would

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have been to forward it to the Security tested there and that was electronically Branch. The CIA also detectable, should someone have been In his 1963 statement Mellis indicated who the KGB monitoring. Ludi claims that one of identified from police photographs his agents was an electrical engineer , , Denis operatives in South and connected to the SACP transport Goldberg and . His Africa might be and manager who knew a person who ran reference to Goldberg is pertinent in a dry cleaning operation whose vans that Goldberg first visited Liliesleaf in pointed out some of were used to transport underground May 1963. Consequently Mellis was the local communists operatives around the country. The spying on Liliesleaf from his first report agent met the go between at a bus about a year before the raid, soon after to Republican terminus where he was tied up and Mandela’s capture, through to when Intelligence. blindfolded inside the van. Driven to Goldberg visited Liliesleaf between Liliesleaf he was shown the radio. This May and July 1963. The implication information assisted RI who now knew the SIS on a weekly basis and these of this is that Mellis spied on Liliesleaf that in that area there was a place agencies reciprocated. According to right up until the raid, in conjunction where things were happening. Ludi, this foreign intelligence feed also with his parents, given that he was a Although the role of the Security included information about Operation minor. Branch and RI is known, what is not Mayibuye and , both In December 1962 Fourie received known is the role of the SADF and implicitly connected to Liliesleaf. a summons for a parking offence from its electronic warfare capabilities Liaison between the apartheid the Alberton Magistrates Court to be in locating Liliesleaf. Research and regime, Southern Rhodesia and the served on . Fourie development into electronic warfare Portuguese colonies was improved held it back because he was afraid that started in the early 1950s in response and intelligence sharing became it might meddle with an investigation to SACP underground radio broadcasts. the established modus operandi. already underway. Fourie instructed Initially electronic warfare was Co-operation with the Portuguese his policemen that any action against developed by the Radio Section of the extended into their Angola and anyone at Liliesleaf must first be Engineers Department of the General Mozambique colonies and surveillance cleared with him, for example serving Post Office (GPO), who in the 1950s reports were provided to RI about a summons. No policeman was to go assisted Security Branch in successfully the movements of known South onto the farm for any reason without detecting SACP radio transmissions. African communists travelling through prior authorisation, given that an In 1958 the Engineers Department Portuguese controlled territories. This investigation was underway. The farm acquired more sophisticated included persons such as Ruth First, was sanitised from any official physical equipment to augment their direction Hillary Flegg, Ben Turok, VW Mkwai, interruption. finding methods; importing the Moses Mabida, Julius Baker and P On 14 January 1963, Colonel Adcock System from the USA, the Beylerveldt. Hendrik van den Bergh was appointed most advanced of its kind at the time. According to Ludi persons of head of the South African Police Located at Derdepoort, this static interest that formed RI’s intelligence Security Branch. Van den Bergh system included an all-round direction target were , Raymond created Republican Intelligence finding capability. Cooperation on Mhlaba, Michael Harmel, Lionel (RI) as the government required an direction finding operations between Bernstein, Hilda Watts, Harold Wolpe intelligence organisation that could the GPO and SAP was not unusual for and Ahmed Kathrada. Ludi said that function along the lines of America’s this era. Britain’s Security Service MI5 Mhlaba, Bernstein and Harmel would Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and used British post office technology in be of particular focus for RI. Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service its counter intelligence operations, Ludi claimed that RI was (SIS). RI together with the Security both in the United Kingdom against instrumental in pinpointing Rivonia Branch were instructed to smash all Soviet agents and operations, and through the radio transmitter linked organised resistance. also during military operations against to Walter Sisulu’s Freedom Day Radio According to a former RI agent independence movements in its Freedom broadcast on 26 June 1963. Gerhard Ludi, the RI’s primary focus colonies, such as in Cyprus. By the While the broadcast did not occur at was the South African Communist early 1960s the South African direction Liliesleaf, the radio equipment was Party. Ludi has said that the CIA assisted finding technology was on par with the RI and provided intelligence about British and Americans. financial assistance that Russia provided Mellis was In 1960/1961 the SADF established to the liberation movements. The CIA an overarching telecommunication also indicated who the KGB operatives spying on Liliesleaf function, the South African in South Africa might be and pointed from his first report Communications Security Agency out some of the local communists to (SACSA). SACSA fell under the Republican Intelligence. RI in turn about a year before Directorate of Telecommunications and fed intelligence to both the CIA and the raid. its Director was directly accountable

62 THE THINKER POLITICS to Prime Minister HF Verwoerd. across the road from the caravan park. SACSA’s duties were enabling secure No policeman was Someone involved in this investigation and uncompromised communications to go onto the farm for obtained this contact sheet then made between all government departments; these markings before returning the including all the arms of the SADF, the any reason without sheet assuming that this microscopic Department of Foreign Affairs, military prior authorisation, tampering would remain invisible. attaches abroad, and between the SAP In conclusion it can be seen that and its agents. given that an there was far more to the raid than SACSA played a key role in locating investigation was what has been understood since the and spying on Liliesleaf. On 1 April moment a dry cleaning van entered the 1963, Captain Martiens Botha was underway. farm’s driveway. It certainly was not a transferred to Defence Headquarters police solo strike. to work for the Chief before the raid from at least May 1963, Rather there were more complex Telecommunications Officer. Included recalled there being ways in which the combined in this small team was Captain Mike a single caravan inside the park. Its security services used a range of Venter of the South African Air Force presence made him uneasy. techniques and tactics to destroy who was proficient in Morse code. In 2004 the author uncovered armed opposition to apartheid. One One of his duties was monitoring additional tangible evidence of a agency was Security Branch whose radio transmissions. Venter detected surveillance operation. In 1961 the investigation commenced weeks after suspicious Morse code messages Surveyor General updated the cadastral Nelson Mandela was captured, and inside the Republic and showed maps and the Rivonia area was aerially later in 1963, the RI and the SADF them to Botha. Venter’s information re-photographed to produce maps which led to an operation culminating was reported to Security Branch and in 1962. Each photographic contact in the raid. Information in Nelson Republican Intelligence. sheet covers a vast area and nothing Mandela’s notebook and other sources SACSA borrowed a direction finding distinguishes a particular property enabled the Security Branch to identify vehicle from the General Post Office (D from the next unless the sheets are Liliesleaf. Evidence of this investigation Telecommunications) and pinpointed significantly enlarged. The next by the Security Branch soon after the location to within a few blocks of photographic series dates to 1964. Mandela’s arrest are the actions of ten where the transmitter was located. This The author scanned in high resolution year old George Mellis who assisted the was enabled as, according to Captain the sheets depicting Liliesleaf from the Rivonia police station with information. Venter, the Morse code transmitter 1961 and 1964 mapping process. One Additional evidence of a Security burst its signals more than once from of these sheets revealed a trace of the Branch investigation in 1962 was the Liliesleaf. SACSA then searched for SACSA direction finding and electronic matter of holding back a summons to visibly suspicious equipment such as warfare operation. (None of the 1964 be served on Goldreich. By December antennas on properties in the area. photographs reflect any tampering). 1962 a determined investigation was Liliesleaf had two lightning conductors Three microscopic red dots and a underway, so much so that the farm next to the main house. Later on, during pencil cross (x) emerged through a was sanitised from interruption by the the raid, a Morse code transmitter pad high resolution electronic scan. Two police. was found at Liliesleaf. red dots are on a neighboring property. Mellis’s parents owned the caravan These activities by SACSA were One red dot marks the approximate park which offered an ideal position observed by local residents. Mary centre of Liliesleaf farm and the pencil from which to conduct surveillance Russell and her husband lived in cross on the sheet marks the dirt from a caravan. This in turn linked to the Rivonia Caravan Park directly driveway leading into Liliesleaf, directly other Defence Force technologies of opposite the Rietfontein Rd entrance direction finding, electronic warfare into Liliesleaf, the same caravan park The contact sheets and aerial photo reconnaissance. owned by the Mellis family. Russell Postal workers equipped with was an avid birdwatcher and used in the Surveyor binoculars working on the telephone binoculars to observe the birdlife General’s office bear lines, postal and bread vans parked from her verandah. Prior to the raid in the caravan park were all linked to she observed postal workers standing evidence to aerial target the South African Communications on ladders erected against telephone identification, and the Security Agency. The contact sheets poles along Rietfontein Road, working only organisation with in the Surveyor General’s office bear on the telephone lines. What was odd evidence to aerial target identification, is that they stood for long periods of the requisite skills to and the only organisation with the time and carried binoculars. Russell undertake this was requisite skills to undertake this was the also remembered mysterious bread South African Defence Force. delivery vans parked inside the caravan the South African In a final trick of deception, a park several times a week for the entire Defence Force. dry cleaning van was used to deliver day. Russel wasn’t the only one. Shortly the strike. ■

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