Police detain Valli Moosa and Murphy Morobe in Port Elizabeth

Police arrested United Democratic Front national secretary-general Mohammed Valli Moosa and its acting publicity secretary Murphy Morobe in a pre-dawn raid on the home of Judge Dayalin Chetty in Port Elizabeth. The two men had been on the run from the police for more than a year. The following year on 15 September 1988, Valli and Morobe escaped from detention in Johannesburg after feigning illness and spent thirty-seven days in the American Consulate, before securing passports and flying out of the country. Their actions were motivated by the need to highlight the plight of detainees and the harshness of the state of emergency in force since 1985. Apartheid spy Vanessa Brereton in 2003 alleged that she had provided the information that led to the arrests, though security policeman Gideon Nieuwoudt denied this. According to him, she might also have had the information, but he acted on information supplied by his own agents.