ANC Tortured Accused Spies, Returnees Say

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —  Accused government spies said Sunday that the African National Congress systematically tortured them at its exile prison camps in Angola and Uganda.

Thin and clutching their few belongings, the 32 alleged government informers returned to South Africa late Saturday after the ANC turned them over to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Joachim Ribeiro de Sousa, a 29-year-old black man asked by his group to talk to reporters Sunday in a hide-out in central Johannesburg, expressed deep mistrust, disillusionment and fear of the ANC.

“I still think the ANC’s documents are a form of democracy for South Africa, but I don’t think the ANC practices anything that is written in its documents,” he said.

Ribeiro said that during the five years the ANC held him, he was beaten and kicked unconscious while handcuffed.

“At one stage, I woke up and found I was hanging upside down,” Ribeiro told the independent South African Press Assn. “My head felt like it was going to burst. I must have been hanging that way for hours.”

Two other returnees, Mpho Motjuoadi and John Besten, said they saw ANC guards pour boiling water on prisoners and hammer nails into the head of one. All said they believed a number of prisoners died from beatings.

“People were beaten again and again, then they just disappeared,” Besten said.

Ribeiro said top ANC officials, including then-President Oliver Tambo, visited the prisons in Angola and Uganda and knew about the bad conditions.

Tambo “shook our hands. We all got a tin of powdered milk, and nothing changed,” Ribeiro said.

ANC President Nelson Mandela has acknowledged that the group abused alleged spies during its exile years. But he said the practices had been stopped.

ANC officials could not immediately be reached for comment Sunday.

On Saturday, the ANC said the returnees included some of the “most notorious” government spies it uncovered during its exile.