Thirty-five years ago Caiphus Nyoka was a prominent activist in Daveyton, on the East Rand. Four security police officers smashed down his door at 2.30am on August 24 1987, burst into the back bedroom of his parents’ house, where he and three other boys were sleeping, and shot him 12 times.
Shortly after the cold-blooded execution, a white police officer wrote “999 Lemba Street – Caiphus Nyoka executed – Hands of Death” on a police station blackboard, according to the three youngsters who were metres from Nyoka when he was gunned down.
Yesterday, three of those white former security police officers appeared in the Benoni magistrate’s court on charges relating to Nyoka’s death. The case was postponed until June 23 pending the outcome of the Director of Public Prosecutions’ (DPP) decision on an application by the Nyoka family to add international criminal charges, the outcome of an application by accused number one for legal aid and pending the provision of a request by accused one and two for further particulars of the case against them.
The previous court hearing, on April 26, saw legal representatives for Nyoka’s sister, Alegria Nyoka, filing representations to the court requesting the DPP include charges under international criminal law — the crimes against humanity of murder and apartheid. The NPA has not yet responded to the application.
There is some confusion about the names of the accused and no charge sheet has been provided, but it is known that accused number one, Johan Marais, confessed to killing Nyoka to a Rapport journalist about 30 years ago. The other police officers are at this stage only known as a Van den Berg and an Engelbrecht.
They were driven to the Daveyton police station and taken to an office in an outbuilding. About 15 minutes later they saw a white police officer writing on the blackboard. Then he forced them to repeat what he had written.
The three youths who made the blackboard allegation were at the time part-time matric pupil Exodus Gugulethu Nyakane, 21, and Excellent Mthembu, 18, both of Wattville, and Elson Mnyakeni, 20, who attended Bonginhlanhla Secondary School in kwaNdebele. They were in Daveyton to attend a funeral.
At the time they told the media four white police officers arrived accompanied by black council police officers. They kicked open the door and shone torches in the faces of everyone, asking for Caiphus Nyoka. He identified himself. The three boys were ordered out of the room and told to lie face down on the ground. They were wearing only underpants.
A fusillade of shots erupted inside the room. The police threw their clothes out, ordered them to dress, handcuffed them to each other and bundled them at gunpoint into a 10-seater Toyota “Zola Budd”.
They were driven to the Daveyton police station and taken to an office in an outbuilding. About 15 minutes later they saw a white police officer writing on the blackboard. Then he forced them to repeat what he had written.
Nyoka, 24 at the time, was an executive member of the Transvaal branch of the Congress of SA Students (Cosas), which was organising resistance against apartheid and education for pupils boycotting classes. He was also chair of the Students’ Representative Council at Mabuya High School. Nyoka was seen as a person who “stood for the truth”, said people who knew him. He had been detained several times.
Nyoka’s parents were never officially informed of his death. His father, Abednigo Moses Nyoka, 54 at the time, said at about 4.30am a white mortuary vehicle arrived at his house. Four council police pulled a stretcher from the vehicle, he said, and took it to the back room. “A short while later they returned with the naked body of my son, lying face up.”
The state pathologist found nine bullet holes in his body, while the family’s found 12. The family found the inquest “very disappointing” and later went to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. No one has ever been prosecuted for Nyoka’s death.
From mid-1985 until the early 1990s East Rand townships experienced some of the most violent conflict ever in the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging area. Train violence, taxi violence, conflict between township residents and those in hostels, between ANC self-defence units (SDUs) and IFP self-protection units (SPUs) were part of the civil war raging in SA as the apartheid government lost control.
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