Sefofane Samuel "Solly Smith" Khunyeli was born on 18th of Septenber 1928 in Steynsrus,near Kroonstad in the Orange Free State,where his father had a brick making business.He attended high school in Kroonstad ,then moved to Johannesburg in the mid1940s,living in Alexander and later in Soweto.He became a trade unionist and an African National Congress (ANC) member, and was issued a five-year banning order in 1960. When the banning order expired,he left for exile.He trained as a security specialist in the Soviet Union ,and at one time was a member of the South African Communist Party Central Committee(SACPCC ).Using the name "Solly Smith",he served in various diplomatic and administrative capacities,repalcing Ruth Mompati in London as chief represntative of the ANC in late 1983,then as head of the ANC's Paris office from 1988 to 1991.
In 1987 he survived a kidnapping attempt in Britain.Khunyeli appears to have been tricked in the mid-1980s into unwittingly receiving payments from South African Military Intelegence through a shady Ghanaian businessman;he cooperated by passing information to the Ghanaian rather risk exposure.After returning to South Africa in 1991,he confessed to the ANC,also implicating Francis Meli(Allan Madolwana) in the same web of blackmail.The ANC kept his confession secret and assigned him to chair the party in the northern Free State.In April 1993 he was found dead in his home at Odendaalsrus near Welkom in what the ANC believed ,but never proven to be a case of poisoning.