Nokuthula Simelane was a university student who joined MKMVA at a young age; she was a "post carrier"

Took a taxi from Soweto, tells ANC comrades; she is meeting someone at Carlton Centre

The person who organised the "meeting" is there in the ANC acting all innocent

[Thread]

Thursday at the Carlton Centre in busy downtown Johannesburg on 8 September 1983

The floors bustled with shoppers, workers on lunch hour, cleaners, and security guards. A young woman in jeans walked purposefully through the centre. She had just got out of a taxi from Soweto.

The 23-year-old had just completed her studies at Swaziland's university and would graduate the next month.

At a table in the Fun Foods Restaurant sat a man in a yellow shirt and brown trousers. He looked no different, really, from any of the other men swirling around him.

What no-one suspected as they glanced at the young woman is that she was a courier for the ANC's armed wing, MK. She was bringing instructions from “Mpho”, the MK name of the commander of the ANC's “Transvaal Urban Machinery” in Swaziland. Norman “Scotch” Mkhonza

Man in the yellow shirt, was her contact, his clothes the signal to the young woman, he had arrived at the entrance to Fun Foods.

Her eyes settled on Scotch, she moved towards him. What she didn't know was that he was a security policeman spy who had infiltrated the ANC

After the meeting, "Scotch":said he had a small package in the car that needed to go back to Swaziland. She accompanied him into the parking basement. She would never be seen in public again.

In the semi-darkness apartheid killers closed in

Three men, Warrant Officer Willem Coetzee, Sergeant Anton Pretorius and Sgt Frederick Mong confronted the pair, together with Sgt Radebe, Sgt Mathiba and Constable Mokapi Selamolela and told them they were being detained

This must have been Nokuthula's worst nightmare.

She was quickly bundled into the back seat of a Ford XR-6 with Sgt Radebe, who kept a tight grip on her. Scotch went in the other car.

The cars squealed round the corners on the smooth cement floors and exited into the bright chilly sunlight.

Scotch would be taken to have his arm and leg put into plaster as his alibi for not meeting Nokuthula.

His “comrade”, policeman Frank “Big Boy” Langa, would tell the Swaziland ANC people Scotch had “been involved in a car accident”

Just two weeks before the abduction, UDF had launched in Cape Town. Earlier in 1983, 13 bombs had detonated, including the SAAF HQ bomb in Pretoria that killed 19 people and injured 220

In retaliation, the air force had bombed ANC houses in Matola, in Mozambique, killing 6

The cops took her to a rooftop storeroom at Norwood police station, where they interrogated her with slaps and kicks

A policeman said in an affidavit: “It was brutal”. Nokuthula would spend at least a week here, moved only because a child heard her tortured screams

A cream white E20 Panelvan took her to an outbuilding on a farm called “Uitsig” at Northam, just north of the Pilanesberg Game Reserve in what is now North West

Here, Nokuthula would endure the next two to three months, constantly bound hand and foot with handcuffs, beaten.

Interrogators would put a bag over her head, or throw her into a zinc farm pond after a torture session. Her only clothing was a single brown overall

She had no toiletries. Through all this, Nokuthula refused to be “turned” into an askari, or to divulge any information.

They used electric shocks, tried everything. She would not crack.

In the mornings, when she refused to identify anyone, refusing to sellout, the nightmare would begin again

They beat her up until was one point "unrecognisable"; she struggled to walk to the bathroom

Two of the policemen were ordered to rendezvous with Warrant Officer Coetzee on the Potchefstroom Joburg road, near Fochville

One of them saw Nokuthula, still handcuffed, in the boot of Coetzee's Ford XR-6 police car.

She was still alive.

When he asked Sgt Pretorius a few weeks later what had happened to her, he said: “Moenie so baie vrae vrae nie” (don't ask so many questions)

Nokuthula Simelane would never been seen again. Her family still wants answers and her remains

A case was opened; some testified at the TRC but nothing happened afterwards

The NPA promised to investigate what happened to her body; still nothing

Family asked Siphiwe Nyanda what happened to their daughter; he has never said anything

Nokuthula's mother is still alive

The people who were suspected of giving information are said to be the now so called "ANC Veterans" who most were accused of being apartheid spies

May your soul RIP Nokuthula; you never sold out your people nor the movement

Credit to David Forbes who wrote what happened to Comrade Nokuthula Simelane when apartheid journalists kept quiet

I followed the story of Nokuthula Simelane since the 90s, its very sad

Her remains are in the North West and still not returned to her family in Mpumalanga