"We would go to crowded bus stations and markets and leave them. “We started just before the Soweto uprising in 1976 and carried on for three years. They would contain simple messages, urging people to support the liberation movement. “There was enough explosive inside to lift about 500 pamphlets into the air. “The leaflet bombs were effective in spreading the anti-apartheid message,” Stephen says. Years later, while based in Camden, North London, he would set up a rudimentary computer that enabled coded messages to be sent from the ANC to their agents and even to Mandela in prison. Tim, the technical expert of the pair, had devised a way of scattering banned leaflets by using explosive linked to a timer and detonator inside a carrier bag. Stephen and Tim, 64, whose story is told tonight in Breakout on the National Geographic Channel, were supporters of Nelson Mandela’s ANC who had been put under surveillance by South Africa’s secret police for their clandestine activity. At night there were dogs in the yard.”īut, he says, they were determined to break free. “The worst time was being put in solitary confinement.”ĭescribing the prison, he says: “There were numerous gates, many metal grill doors. “We were contemplating escape even before our conviction. “It was gut-wrenching the length of time we were given,” he says. He tells how Tim had been given a 12-year sentence and he had got eight years inside. “This was going to let us out of the cells into the corridor.” “It was hugely emotional,” Stephen recalls. So when his key worked, it was momentous. Speaking from his home in North London, dad-of-two Stephen, now 62, says they had been determined to escape from the moment they arrived at notorious Pretoria Prison.
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