Sizwe Kondile

Early life and political activism He was born Gcinisizwe Sylvester Khwezi Kondile on 6 October 1957.

The young Kondile matriculated in KZN, at the Amanzimtoti High School

While students at the Fort Hare University, Kondile and Pikoli were detained for planning a memorial lecture for Steve Biko, a murdered prominent anti-apartheid activist and intellectual, and soon after their release fled South Africa to Lesotho with two others - Phaki Ximiya and Thozi Majola - where they joined the African National Congress (ANC) and militarily trained with uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in the 1980s.

He was initially detained in Bloemfontein, Free State province and then on 10 July 1981 he was transported to Humansdorp police station in the Eastern Cape where he was subjected to torture while being interrogated for two weeks. On 24 July 1981, Kondile was moved to the Jeffrey's Bay police station where the torture continued - plastic bags placed on his face to suffocate him and also tortured with an electrical machine.

Death Testifying at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for his amnesty application, Colonel Hermanus du Plessis, the man who led a team of policemen that arrested Kondile on 26 June 1981, said after being tortured Kondile sounded like someone who was agreeing to work with the police and become an askari against the ANC and MK, especially help the police capture their most wanted enemy, Chris Hani, whom Kondile was considered a confidante. Later Kondile backtracked on the agreement to sell out his ANC comrades after Du Plessis had given him names of other ANC comrades who were police informers in Lesotho. A decision on 10 August 1981 was taken to kill him to protect the identity of those informers, according to Du Plessis.

He was murdered in Komatipoort by Du Pless, Dirk Coetzee and three other policemen.

His disappearance remained a mystery to his family in Port Elizabeth and comrades in Lesotho until nine years later when the New Nation newspaper broke the story on 9 February 1990 about a "youth" who was shot dead and burnt. Afterwards Coetzee confessed to his murder and exposed the Security Branch as being behind it