On the afternoon of 25 January 1980, three Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadres: Stephen Mafoko, Humphrey Makhubo, and Wilfred Madela, were en route to sabotage petrol depots near Mamelodi when they realised police were tailing them. Cornered, they ducked into a Volkskas Bank branch in Silverton, on the eastern edge of Pretoria, and took 25 civilians hostage. What followed was a roughly six-hour standoff that gripped the country. The three men demanded a meeting with State President Vorster, the release of Nelson Mandela, R100,000 in cash, and an aircraft to fly them to Maputo. Police negotiators stalled while an Anti-Terrorist Unit quietly took up positions in an adjacent building. Some bank staff slipped out from the upper floors; the accountant, Andre Theron, stayed hidden inside.
Just after 7 p.m., gunfire broke out, it was never established who fired first. In the chaos, a hand grenade detonated. All three cadres were killed by police. Two hostages also lost their lives: Valerie Anderson died at the scene and Anna de Klerk later in hospital, with several others wounded. The siege did not end there. In its wake, police arrested nine ANC members linked to the "June 16 detachment". MK recruits drawn from the generation radicalised by the 1976 Soweto Uprising, leading to the Silverton and Soekmekaar trial in April 1980. The Silverton Siege became a defining moment of the anti-apartheid struggle, later immortalised in slogans calling for Mandela's freedom. It laid bare both the reach of MK's armed resistance and the lethal force the apartheid state was willing to use in response.
