Ignatius ‘Iggy’ or ‘Gab’ Mthebule was a student activist and leader associated with the Azanian Student Organisation (AZASO) in 1975. Iggy’s brother, Samuel Mthebule, testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and mentioned that Iggy was expelled from University of the North (now Limpopo) in 1976. He was a promising student and even had a black belt in karate. Samuel also said that Iggy had gone into exile in about 1981.

Iggy received military training in Maputo, Mozambique and was sent back home as an underground African National Congress (ANC) operative working mostly in Johannesburg. He was working closely with Joy Harden an apartheid agent who he met while working in Maputo; Iggy had no knowledge of this. Harden handed Iggy over to the security police at a restaurant in Hillbrow, Johannesburg in January 1987. His whereabouts are still unknown to this day. Mthebule’s story is remembered in an interview by Mac Maharaj on 15 January 2003 for the Nelson Mandela Centre for Memory.

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. 

Tryphina Mboxela Jokweni was a member of the African National Congress (ANC) and was part of the 1956 Union Buildings March which saw 20 000 women march to Pretoria on 9 August. The march inspired her to become an uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) cadre in 1962, working under the leadership of ANC veteran Billy Nair. She was arrested in 1966 for her political activities in her hometown, Umkhumbane, Durban and detained for six months.

Jokweni then moved to Umlazi, Durban where she  her home was used as a safe house for MK cadres. In April 1987 she was detained and tortured for this by the apartheid police based in Amanzimtoti, south of Durban. Jokweni passed away from illness in 2002 and left behind three children. She was 77 years-old at the time of her death.

On 29 August 2012, the ANC commemorated Jokweni and recognized her contributions to the liberation struggle by laying a new tombstone for her at the Wentworth Cemetery, Durban, where she is buried.