I, WILLIAM MASHOTANA (MK name Sizwe Ndela), left South Africa on August 13 1976 for political reasons. I stayed a month in Botswana before I left for Tanzania. I arrived in Tanzania in September and that is where I met Timothy Seremane (MK name Kenneth Mahamba) …
He was my deputy commander (commissar) in the same platoon …
During my stay in Lusaka, dissatisfactions were raised by the membership in Zambia concerning the entire leadership of the organisation (ANC) including the entire struggle against apartheid.
Instead of addressing these problems, that leadership decided to react in a very horrible way. They embarked on an operation code-named “Blanket”. Randomly, we were detained and bundled into different places of the security Apparatus (Mbokodo) for torture.
I was accused as having conspired with other comrades of plotting to assassinate the then military High Command in Zambia. We were transported in smaller groups to Angola for incarceration in the notorious concentration camp in the Northern Angola, in a town called Quibaxe (Kibashi) where there was this Quatro Prison.
Upon my arrival, torture started again in an attempt of forcing me to implicate myself for being an enemy agent (spy).
I arrived in Quatro on March 8 1981, and I was taken to Chief in April ’81 of which at first I couldn’t recognise him. I was supposed to say in front of him that yes I am an agent of which he was my boss …
I was promised and threatened that I will look like him (he was badly disfigured) if I did not obey the orders. Instead I was taken for hard labour until 1983 where I appeared in kangaroo court … When I was ” sentenced” for a year.
I was released on the July 15 1984, then taken to Nienva Transit Camp near Luanda. We were only two who survived in Quatro who came from Mafikeng (myself and Gordon Moshoeu). The other five including Chief vanished into the air.