made a lot of trouble for us,’ my source said, ‘because he told Winnie
that we were drunk. But that wasn’t the case. Ace just lost control of
the car because he was a bad driver.’
Magashule’s Hillbrow days came to an end not long after Seipei’s
murder.
At some point in 1989 , the group of internal exiles was staying in a
flat in the Vistaero apartment building in Berea. ‘We were living next to
another MK guy,’ said one source. ‘He had been sent to establish a
route out of the country via Swaziland, but he was arrested in
Nelspruit.’
The arrest sparked panic among Magashule’s group. ‘There were no
cellphones, so we didn’t really know what was going on,’ the source
continued, ‘but we suspected that our neighbour had spilled the beans
on us when he was interrogated. We saw a white guy in the street who
was checking out our apartment, so we decided to move to another flat
in the same building.’
One night shortly thereafter, police raided the old apartment. ‘The
cops stormed the apartment and practically tore it to pieces. They
arrested one guy who did not move out with us, and they also took
Ace’s son, who was also still in the apartment.’ The son was Tshepiso,
Magashule’s firstborn child with Seipati and a young boy at the time.
Magashule referred to the incident in his interview for the ANC Oral
History Project, although he placed it somewhat earlier in the timeline
of events. ‘My firstborn child was arrested at John Vorster [the police
headquarters in downtown Johannesburg], I can’t remember, in 1987 ,
when they were looking for me, and he was only four years [old]. They
thought I would hand over myself and I did not do so.’
According to one of my Hillbrow sources, Tshepiso was released and