 In the same year he was arrested for participating in the nationwide South African Potato Boycott, following The Farm Labour Scandal, a journalistic investigation by Ruth First and Joe Gqabi, which uncovered that Africans arrested for infringement of the pass laws were coerced into enforced labour on potato farms.In 1958 Thomas Nkobi became the National Organizer of the ANC and was charged with the task of implementing the M-Plan, an action plan, named after Nelson Mandela, to decentralise the ANCs organizational branches and communication channels to avoid public meetings and announcements and increase effectiveness of their political and social campaign.During the 1960 State of Emergency, he was amongst the thousands of political activists who were detained.