Earlier this year Johannes Mondy Motloung, one of Solomon Mahlangu's companions at the Goch Street shoot- ings, who was found unfit to stand trial after suffering brain damage was removed from the mental hospital he was being kept in (Sterkfontein, near Krugersdorp) without his family being notified. It took his family over three months to trace him to Valkenberg mental hospital near Cape Town. It is not known where he was kept in this intervening period. Solomon Mahlangu was executed during this period.
It was only after Mrs Martha Motloung's story was published in the Post that she was given news of his new place of confinement.
Mrs Motloung said that earlier in the year during one of her routine visits to Sterkfontein, the hospital staff had seemed puzzled when she mentioned her son's name. They said they did not know of such a person and that he was not at their hospital. This was a great surprise to her because she had been visiting the hospital for some time. Police were also unable to help her. She told POST she had become a "complete bundle of nerves" through worry.
Finally in May, the Motloung family traced Mondy to Valkenberg. He was being kept at the maximum security ward and was under observation as a new admission, hospital authorities said. They said he had been there for about a month. There was no indication of where he had been kept for the remaining two months or more since he had disappeared. Mrs. Motloung was told by the police that Mondy was at Valkenberg and that she could visit him there. She said she was worried by the distance, and would have to accumulate money first before she could visit him.
A detainee, allegedly one of the three men who attacked Moroka police station in Soweto on 3 May, escaped from detention on 24 June. Police said. He was described as South Africa's most wanted man.
He is Johannes Ramagacha, a former police sergeant, and alleged trained guerilla, who was reported to have led the night attack on the Moroka police station. One policeman was killed and five people injured in the attack, and archives and files were destroyed by hand-grenades. The men, described as ANC guerillas, shot their way in with AK47 rifles, raked the inside with bullets and detonated handgrenades.
They left behind ANC leaflets which reportedly referred to the execution of Solomon Mahlangu.
Police spokesman admitted that the attack came as "a complete surprise". Despite their announcement of an intensive manhunt for the three, no word of any arrests came for two weeks. Then police announced that a former Soweto policeman and trained guerilla had been arrested and detained as the suspected leader of the assault group. However just over a month later police chiefs announced he had escaped from Protea police cells.
The former Minster of Police J. T. Kruger stated in Parliament that 161 people other than security police detainees had died while in police custody during 1978. 22 of the deceased had committed suicide Mr Kruger said.
The Minster of Police J. T. Kruger stated in Parliament that 283 policemen were convicted of culpable homicide, murder and assault in 1978, and that 39 of them had previous convictions. In 1977, 250 policemen were convicted for these three offences.
