rivoniaunmasked

Van Wyk admitted that it was not all unlikely. He and a few colleagues immediately left for
Rustenburg in two cars. They surrounded and raided Bombay Building, where Chiba was supposed to
be, but their search proved fruitless. Of the fugitives there was no sign, and as for Chiba himself, by
the time the Security men arrived he had already left and was on his way back to Johannesburg. On his
arrival there he found a message waiting for him. Friends had telephoned from Rustenburg to warn
him that the Security Police were looking for him. Chiba was alarmed and decided to lie low for a
while. When he was finally located and questioned by the police, lie denied all knowledge of Greeff's
deal with Goldreich and his comrades. He stuck to his story, and the police saw no reason to doubt the
truth of what he said.
Before Lieutenant van Wyk left for Rustenburg, he instructed Warrant Officers Kennedy and
Erasmus to arrest Mrs Wolpe and Mrs Moolla and to detain them for questioning.
On his return from Rustenburg, at about one o'clock in the afternoon, van Wyk immediately went
to Marshall Square, where he interviewed the two women separately.
While Mrs Wolpe was being questioned, she asked permission to use the telephone, explaining that
she had to arrange for someone to look after her children during her absence. Permission having been
given, she telephoned a nurse of her acquaintance and made the necessary arrangements with her.
This seemingly innocuous telephone conversation was to have preposterous repercussions. The
nurse in question was endowed with an unusually vivid imagination and learning that Mrs Wolpe was
being detained by the police, she immediately concluded that the hapless woman was being subjected
to battery and assault so violent that she was in grievous danger of her life. She lost no time in
spreading the gruesome tidings, and soon hair-raising reports and rumours were rife. These
'revelations' were so blood-curdling that a senior magistrate was appointed to investigate the matter. He
found that the rumours were completely unfounded, and Mrs Wolpe herself made a statement in which
she denied having been either ill-treated or assaulted.
This tragi-comic interlude served to bring on the scene one James Kantor, afterwards one of the
accused in the Rivonia trial. Kantor was Mrs Wolpe's brother and the escaped man's partner and
brother-in-law. He had been on his farm Dar-Es-Salaam, near Hartebeestpoort Dam, when the dramatic
nurse had telephoned to inform him that his sister was being tortured to death by the police. Kantor
immediately hurried back to Johannesburg and appeared at The Grays that same evening to demand to
see what was left of his sister.
The search for the four fugitives, particularly for Goldreich and Wolpe, continued without pause.
They seemed to have vanished completely, but the police were constantly receiving reports from
various persons who claimed to know their whereabouts. The police were convinced that much of this
'information' was supplied by members of the underground themselves, in an attempt to draw red
herrings across the trail. Many of the would-be informants were, however, bona fide enough, and
genuinely believed that they had seen one or another of the escaped men. All information received was
duly followed up by the police, only to lead to disappointment in the end.
During this time, too, the police received countless messages and telephone calls from the public.
Some were distinctly abusive, the callers openly expressing their sympathy with the fugitives and their
hatred of the police, and voicing the hope that the fugitives would continue to remain at liberty. But
there were also many calls from well-wishers, who were as anxious for the recapture of the escaped
men as were the police themselves.
28