Ladybrand Four story told at the TRC

In December 1986, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) cadres Joyce ‘Betty Boom’ Koekanyetswe, Nomasonto Mashiya and Tax Sejaname were abducted by members of the Orange Free State Security Branch in Lesotho. Betty Boom was a Commander and highly trained MK cadre as well as a committee member of the South African Communist Party (SACP). Nomasonto Mashiya was abducted with her one-year old baby but the police returned the baby to Mashiya’s parents in the Orange Free State (now the Free State Province). Not much is known about Tax Sejaname’s affiliations or abduction. Early in January 1987, Mbulelo ‘Khaya Kasibe (KK)’ Ngono was involved in a shoot-out with the security forces in Lesotho but he managed to escape only to be abducted in 1988 by the same security branch who abducted Betty Boom, Nomasonto Mashiya and Tax Sejaname. KK was abducted in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho. The four MK cadres were held at a farm in Ladybrand, Free State which is 18kms away from Maseru and came to be known as the Ladybrand Four. 

Three members of the Orange Free State Security Branch namely Anthony Jagga, Robert Shaw and Mike Jantjie and Daniel Thulo, an apartheid-era police informer and a member of the Ladybrand Security Branch police unit, applied for amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for the abduction of the Ladybrand Four.

Their TRC hearing took place on 12 October 2000. They all admitted to abducting the four MK cadres from Lesotho in 1986 but claimed that they released them after they became askaris or police informers. However, the families of the victims did not believe their testimonies as none of the four MK cadres were seen after their abduction.