31 October 1978
A full scale police search, headed by a specially trained anti-terrorist unit was launched following a shoot-out between police and suspected nationalist guerrillas some forty miles west of Louis Trichardt, Northern Transvaal (now Limpopo). The shoot-out happened at the height of the struggle against apartheid, with political organisations like the African National Congress (ANC) still banned by the National Party regime.
References

O’Malley, P. ‘1978’, from Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, [online], available at www.nelsonmandela.org.za (Accessed: 30 September 2013)|

Kalley, J.A.; Schoeman, E. & Andor, L.E. (1999). Southern African Political History: a chronology of key political events from independence to mid-1997, (Westport: Greenwood) p. 441