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Liliesleaf Farm was for many years a meeting place and hide-out for top African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party (SACP) personnel.

Liliesleaf Farm is widely regarded as the birthplace of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and was the site of the Liliesleaf Farm police raid on 11 July 1963 that resulted in the Rivonia Treason Trials and eventual incarceration of many senior ANC leaders, including Nelson Mandela (who was not arrested in the raid), Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, Raymond Mhlaba and Walter Sisulu.

Liliesleaf Farm was for many years a meeting place and hide-out for top African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party (SACP) personnel.

Liliesleaf Farm is widely regarded as the birthplace of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and was the site of the Liliesleaf Farm police raid on 11 July 1963 that resulted in the Rivonia Treason Trials and eventual incarceration of many senior ANC leaders, including Nelson Mandela (who was not arrested in the raid), Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, Raymond Mhlaba and Walter Sisulu.

The South African Communist Party bought the farm in August 1961 to use as headquarters for their efforts against the apartheid regime. At the same time, the ANC was moving its emphasis away from passive resistance and beginning to focus more on an armed struggle.

The Goldreich family moved in to masquerade as the white owners of the property and Nelson Mandela himself lived here while posing as a cook-cum-gardener under the name of David Motsamayi.