After the Security Branch swoops, we were locked up at the Randfontein police cells, just ten kilometres away from Bekkersdal. I was processed in the charge office – fingerprinted and my personal details noted. Then the officials frisked me, not that they bothered telling me what they were looking for. I was incensed, my jaws tight with suppressed rage when I was put through a mouth inspection. But I held on to my confidence – I wouldn't let that slip just then.

Although we were not prisoners officially, we were kept away from each other – isolated – and fed the usual fare given to people in police cells. I kept thinking about how the others were, how they were holding up wherever they were held.

Finally, late into the night, the interrogation stopped and I was allowed to sleep. Still in isolation, kept thus so we could not exchange information. The police of course hoped the isolation would raise the feeling of uncertainty and anxiety in us; weakening each one of us, breaking us down and rendering us more pliable.

For a week we were continually interrogated by the three white members of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) – Terreblanche, Van Wyngaard and Botha with the African detective sergeant Mhlongo and one Indian man whose name we never got to know. They wanted to know what our plans were and who the leaders were. Then they produced gory photographs they said were of atrocities committed by Poqo initiates in the Eastern Cape.

I was startled by my own shock and pity for the dead people I didn't know. They had lists of Poqo attacks in Langa and Paarl where suspected informers had been executed. More pictures were produced; these were of a raid by Poqo members in Paarl. Five members of a family were killed in that raid and two teenagers were hacked to death.

The police then asked me, ‘Is this what you boys intended to do? Is this what you really wanted to do?’

At this stage, they showed me photographs of five white adults who were killed in caravans on the roadside at Mbashe (Bashee) Bridge near Umtata, in the Transkei.