This week saw two contrasting outcomes in the state’s quest to secure accountability and closure for murders committed during apartheid. It was a week of hope and agony.
In East London, the families of the victims of the 1993 Highgate massacre were forced to relive their trauma as the high court concluded that no-one could be held criminally responsible for the carnage that claimed five lives and injured seven others.
“Even though the Highgate attack counts among the most devastating incidents of its nature at the time, we are no closer to complete answers more than 30 years later.
“The attack was meticulously planned and callously executed with the precision of highly trained operatives,” judge Denzil Potgieter said at the closing of the inquest into the May 1 1993 Highgate Hotel massacre.
Potgieter detailed years of bungling, neglect and investigative failures, failures so severe that the truth slipped through the cracks of time. For the families, it was yet another reminder that justice delayed can so easily become justice denied.
Yet the judge left a small window open: should new evidence emerge, the inquest may be reopened. For loved ones who have waited more than three decades, that possibility may be all that remains.
Where perpetrators are identified, the state should not hesitate to proceed with prosecutions, despite the lengthy time since these offences were committed
But on the same day, the Pretoria high court, sitting in Johannesburg, found two former apartheid-era policemen — Abraham Hercules Engelbrecht, 61, and Pieter Stander, 60 — guilty of the premeditated murder of student activist Caiphus Nyoka, who was brutally killed at his home in Daveyton in 1987. Their former commanding officer, Maj Leon Louis van den Berg, 75, was acquitted.
In July, the same court sentenced another former policeman, Johan Marais, to 15 years’ imprisonment for Nyoka’s murder. Marais had pleaded guilty and was convicted of premeditated murder.
These two matters highlight a painful reality that not every family will know closure. For some, the truth has been buried too deep or lost to time. Yet the conviction of Nyoka’s killers offers a fragile but vital glimmer of hope, a reminder that even after decades, justice is still possible.
Efforts by the state to uncover the truth and bring closure to families should be applauded.
There are many more inquests underway as the state seeks answers for crimes left unresolved during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process.
These include the reopened Cradock Four inquest, which began in June and is set to continue in March next year, and the reopened inquest into the death of anti-apartheid activist and Black Consciousness Movement founder Steve Biko.
The Biko inquest is expected to resume next year to finalise legal funding for two apartheid-era policemen. The NPA told the Gqeberha high court that two people of interest in the matter are still alive.
There was also the reopened inquest into the death of former ANC president Chief Albert Luthuli, which set aside the 1967 apartheid-era lie that he had been struck by a goods train.
The reopened inquest ruled instead that Luthuli had been beaten to death by apartheid police. Though it is believed that all those responsible are now deceased, the findings bring long-awaited closure that had been denied to his family for close to 60 years.
These reopened and new inquests show the state’s resolve in uncovering the truth. Where perpetrators are identified, the state should not hesitate to proceed with prosecutions, despite the lengthy time since these offences were committed.
It is also hoped that the judicial commission of inquiry established by President Cyril Ramaphosa in May to determine whether attempts were made to obstruct the investigation and prosecution of apartheid-era crimes proceeds with speed. Its work cannot be allowed to slow or derail the fragile progress now being made.
These apartheid cases lay bare the personal cost for the families and the political cost that came with the regime. A constant reminder that injustice, no matter how far in history, remains an injustice.
If these families are battling to get justice, what are the chances for a layman?
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