Mzwai Piliso

Mzwandile "Mzwai" Piliso (died 25 June 1996) was a South African politician and former anti-apartheid activist. He was a member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1962 to 1985 while the organisation was banned in South Africa and operated in exile. He is best known for his tenure as head of the National Intelligence and Security Department (NAT) of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC's armed wing, and briefly represented the ANC in the post-apartheid National Assembly after the 1994 elections.

A pharmacist by profession, Piliso joined the ANC's external mission in 1960 and represented it abroad in Cairo and Dar es Salaam for the next decade. From 1976 to 1980, he was MK's regional commander in Angola and head of personnel and training. ANC president Oliver Tambo appointed him as director of NAT in 1981. His tenure at NAT over the next five years coincided with serious abuses by the department's internal security wing, known as Mbokodo, which tortured and even executed suspected spies and brutally suppressed a mutiny by MK recruits. Piliso's role in these abuses made him a controversial figure: although there was no question that Piliso had sanctioned and participated in some abuses, including the torture of at least one MK member, there remains debate about the extent to which he bears personal and principal responsibility for Mbokodo's conduct.

Early life and career

Piliso was born in 1922 or 1923 to a Xhosa family in the Transkei in the former Cape Province. He had relatives who were senior members of the African National Congress (ANC), among them Joyce Piliso-Seroke, and joined the organisation in the late 1940s.