HOW DID THE POLICE DISCOVER LILLIESLEAF? Fifty years after the Rivonia raid there is still speculation about horn the police discovered the secret headquarters. The police gave various versions. At first, they spread a rumour that two activists, who were among the first to be detained under the 90-day law, had given the information and then been allowed to leave the country. Later, they said that Lt. Van Wyk was contacted by an informant who offered to tell him where he could find Walter Sisulu in return for a reward, reputedly R6000. Van Wyk allegedly spent a week cruising around the area with the informant, who eventually recognized the neighbourhood and a sign reading ‘IVON’. This was RIVONIA with the RI and IA faded out. Van Wyk originally planned to raid the premises on the morning of 11 July, when he would have found only Kathrada there. However, Col. Venter told him to obtain a search warrant and the raid was postponed until 3 pm when he caught the whole secretariat plus Goldberg, and later the Goldreichs and Festenstein. Bruno Mtolo (Mr X), the state’s star witness at the Rivonia Trial, a member of the Natal regional command of MK, was one of those who had stayed at Lilliesleaf. He gave evidence that the police drove him around until he found the place for them. But this evidence has been treated with scepticism as a police diversion from the true informant, whose identity remains unknown. Suspicion fell on the dentist who visited the farm to take an impression of Sisulu’s mouth and left at about 3pm. The police claimed that they had the farm under surveillance for some hours before the raid at 3.15 pm, but they did not arrest the dentist. I speculated that the unknown Indian man who came to my chambers on the morning of 11 July with a message might have been a police spy. Nic Wolpe and researchers at the Lilliesleaf Trust have conducted extensive inquiries and suggest that the informant may have been a radio engineer who was brought to Lilliesleaf to assess a Soviet radio transmitter that was in need of repair, or that the American CIA or British MI6 may have had information which they passed on to the South African police. Alternatively, the raid might have been triggered by information given to the police by the child of a neighbour who visited the Goldreich children, or by another neighbour whose suspicions were aroused when he came to the farm about a water problem. We are unlikely ever to know the truth, but it is obvious that many security lapses contributed to the police raid that deprived the movement of its key leaders. Source: Bob Hepple, (2013), Young Man with a RED TIE A Memoir of Mandela and the Failed Revolution 1960-1963, (Jacana Media), pp. 61-62.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 11:27:26 +0000