The SA Police Service is doing its best to delay the onset of an apartheid-era murder trial — forcing at least one family member of a victim to intervene in the court processes.
On September 29, Maide Selebi filed an application to intervene, claiming the minister of police, Bheki Cele, and the SAPS are in contempt of a court order issued on May 4. Her application will be heard in the Johannesburg high court on Tuesday.
The trial being delayed concerns the February 15 1982 blast which killed three youths and severely injured another, an incident that became known as the Cosas 4 (Congress of SA Students). The four youths had asked an ANC-trained guerrilla to help them leave the country for military training.
Unknown to them, the guerrilla had defected from the ANC and plotted with the security police at their secret Vlakplaas hit squad murder farm to kill the youths by luring them to an abandoned mine pump house near Krugersdorp and blowing them up with explosives, and later saying they had “blown themselves up” while receiving illegal military training.
The Cosas 4 were Eustice “Bimbo” Madikela, Ntshingo Mataboge and Fanyana Nhlapo, who were killed, and Zandisile Musi, who survived the blast.
The families of the victims, supported by the Foundation for Human Rights and Webber Wentzel attorneys, have been attempting since 2019 to bring to trial the former security branch policemen responsible for the kidnapping, murder and attempted murder of the youths.
The families of the victims, supported by the Foundation for Human Rights and Webber Wentzel attorneys, have been attempting since 2019 to bring to trial the former security branch policemen responsible for the kidnapping, murder and attempted murder of the youths.
They were then-capt Jan Carel Coetzee, then-warrant officer Christiaan Siebert Rorich, Abraham Grobbelaar and then-brig Willem Frederick Schoon. Rorich was the explosives expert brought in from Ermelo. They were aided by two askaris (former ANC guerrillas who had been “turned”), Tlhomedi Ephraim Mfalapitsa and Vlakplas self-confessed murderer Joe Mamesela.
Mamesela did not apply to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for amnesty for this incident, but the rest all told the TRC their order to kill the four had come from their superiors. The TRC denied them amnesty and referred their case to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) for prosecution in 1999.
Due to political interference by both senior government ministers and ANC officials, the NPA sat on the case for 21 years. Schoon, Coetzee and Grobbelaar have died, and the families and lawyers now fear the remaining two, Rorich and Mfalapitsa, may die before justice is seen to be done.
Mamesela has never been charged.
Legal wrangling and delays with the SAPS and the NPAin 2020 led to an application in September 2020 to have the bodies exhumed and forensically examined. Lawyers later suggested to the NPA that due to the considerable evidence available, it was not necessary to have an exhumation, post-mortem and inquest, and the case could proceed speedily to trial, due to the advanced age of the perpetrators.
The trial began on August 23 2021, with Mfalapitsa the sole accused. After an outcry, Rorich was added as an accused on October 26 2021. In December that year, the NPA added, for the first time in SA legal history, charges of crimes against humanity.
Rorich had applied to the SAPS to fund his defence, but the SAPS refused, giving no reasons. The delays continued through November and December. Finally, on January 17 2022, Johannesburg high court judge Ratha Mokgoatlheng ordered the head of the SAPS legal division in Gauteng to process and finalise Rorich’s application for a state-funded defence before January 26.
If he didn’t, the judge ordered he would need to appear in court to explain the delay, as well as why he should not be held in contempt.
Roroch's attorney, Adv Kobus Muller, told the court on February 15 the SAPS had declined to pay, and that he intended to review the decision.
But on May 4, judge Mokgoathleng found that Rorich had been formally employed by the SA (SAP) and that the SAPS as its successor, was legally obliged in terms of standing order 109 to provide legal funding for his defence. The court ordered the SAPS to commence paying such costs within 14 days of judgment. Under court rules the SAPS was meant to file its leave for appeal no later than May 25.
However, the SAPS:
* ignored the May 4 court order;
* did not oppose a previous court order in another trial which set a precedent for them to pay the reasonable legal fees of former police officers who committed crimes;
* filed its leave to appeal application well after the court-imposed deadline;
* did not apply for condonation of the late application; and
* failed to appear in four consequent court hearings without excuse or apology.
The court will no doubt have some very harsh words for the SAPS on Tuesday, as the court processes grind on towards the actual trial. The families have had to contract privately with lawyers to see justice done in a case which should have seen the killers jailed 40 years ago, and reparations paid by the government, as per the TRC recommendations.
The court will no doubt have some very harsh words for the SAPS on Tuesday, as the court processes grind on towards the actual trial.
The crimes were heinous. The security police, with no actual knowledge of the youths (one of whom was still at school) or their involvement, decided at a high level of state authority to murder the four on the basis of their support of the Congress of SA Students (Cosas) an anti-apartheid and educational organisation formed in 1979 after the banning of the SA Students Movement in 1977, following the 1976 Soweto riots.
Cosas, whose motto was “Each One, Teach One” adopted the theme “student-worker action”, providing essential support to striking workers and community struggles around issues such as transport increases, rent hikes and the like.
In February 1982, Kagiso was a dusty township in the heat of the struggle. The previous December had seen the homeland of Ciskei given “independence”, and the ANC's most successful year inside the country, doubling the number of attacks in any year since 1976, with 55 attacks. MK combatants had used limpet mines, RPG rocket launchers and even attacked the military town of Voortrekkerhoogte with a 122mm rocket launcher. But 21 MK soldiers had been killed during 1981, and the Maputo suburb of Matola in Mozambique had been attacked on January 30 1981, with three ANC cadres abducted by the SA Defence Force. Unionist Neil Aggett had just died in detention that same February.
Mfalapitsa had been in exile with Musi's two elder brothers, and had been trained in Zambia, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, the GDR (East Germany, via Angola) and was deployed to Botswana, but was upset by people being killed in exile for indiscipline and “genuine grievances”. He ran away from the ANC in November 1981 and was taken to Vlakplaas after a debriefing in Zeerust by the security police.
When Mfalapitsa returned to Kagiso, he met Musi again, who asked him about leaving the country.
“And then,” says Mfalapitsa, “I foresaw that something dreadful was supposed to happen.”
He had two thoughts: The first was that the police had sent Musi to test his loyalty, and if he didn't report the incident, he could be assassinated by the police. The second was that he could leave the country to escape involvement with this incident which would probably lead to the killing of the youths, but then he would have to return to the ANC, and that would be “a dreadful experience”.
He was trapped in a Catch-22 situation. He told Musi they didn't have to leave the country, he could train them locally, and he agreed to meet Musi and his comrades again.
Mfalapitsa had reported his initial meeting and that the youths had requested to go into exile. Mfalapitsa's boss at Vlakplaas, Capt Jan Carel Coetzee (not to be confused with Capt Dirk Coetzee who also commanded Vlakplaas at some point), told him to convince them to be trained within the country, so they could then be killed. The murder plot was “cleared” with Coetzee's boss, Brig Willem Schoon, who headed the security police C unit. Other alternatives, like detention, were not discussed.
During the TRC amnesty hearings, Coetzee revealed there was never any attempt to investigate the background of the intended victims, nor was any investigation conducted afterwards. He admitted: “I didn't know who they were.”
During the TRC amnesty hearings, Coetzee revealed there was never any attempt to investigate the background of the intended victims, nor was any investigation conducted afterwards. He admitted: “I didn't know who they were.”
A location had been chosen for the training and rigged with explosives by another security policeman, explosives expert WO Rorich, whom Coetzee had persuaded to illegally join him for the operation from his normal post at Ermelo.
They went to an old pump house on a deserted mine property near Krugersdorp, where Rorich primed the explosive device and hid in an old building nearby to await the arrival of the activists.
Musi picks up the story: “He (Mfalapitsa) came with a Kombi with a gentleman with a scar on his face (this was askari Joe Mamasela). We went to a spot that was next to a mine. We walked from the Kombi and we went through the forest to that venue. We were told to rush into that place. We got into a room in the mine. He opened the door. We got inside. He was the first one to get inside and we followed him.
“After getting in there, he closed the door. He told us that he was in a hurry. He did not waste time. He took out a grenade in his pocket and a firearm and he put them down. He connected the detonator to the grenade. After that he demonstrated how to pull this detonator. And then he told us that he was coming back. He said he was going to fetch some weapons in the Kombi.
Mfalapitsa left the pump house, locking the door to trap the boys inside. As he joined the other policemen, Rorich detonated the explosives. They all left immediately.
Musi continues: “After he had left, within a short time, there was a box that I didn't know what was inside that box. When I looked at the box, I heard an explosion.
“We fell. I thought that what had exploded was the object that we had in the hand ... I couldn't walk, I couldn't see. I tried to cry for help.
“I was unconscious and I woke up in the (next) morning and I was feeling cold and my clothes were torn. At about eight in the morning, the police came.
“I was taken to Leratong Hospital. After getting treatment, some stitches and some plaster on my leg, even my face, it was burnt, and they gave me treatment for that. And they took me out of the hospital.
“I was taken to a place that looked like a veld. I remember that the car was driving on the grass. A white policeman ... put a firearm in my mouth and then he demanded me to tell him who that person was. The one who took us.
“And I told him I did not know the person. And he said I was lying ... they took me to Krugersdorp Prison. When I arrived I was put inside a cell. The police would come, even in the evening, they were assaulting me. They demanded the name of this person who gave us the bombs, the explosives ... I think I spent the whole month in there. And I was taken to court. I was granted bail for R500 ... after that I was acquitted in the court.”
Musi spent nearly a year in hospital. He had to have an operation to connect the bones in his one leg, and an operation to fix damage to both ears. He could not continue with his schooling. “Everything would flash on my mind just before writing the exam,” he said. He had to lip-read, as his hearing was badly damaged.
Musi died in mid-2021 from Covid-19.
The families were told the children had “blown themselves up”. The police would not tell them where the bodies were.
The families were told the children had 'blown themselves up'. The police would not tell them where the bodies were.
Maide Selebi said she found out about the murder of her brother, Eustice Madikela, the weekend after it happened. “I was training as a nurse at Tembisa Hospital at the time, and I received a call from my mother telling me to come home. She did not tell me why I needed to come home. As I was arriving home on that weekend, I saw that there were a lot of people at my house. Only when I actually arrived at my house did my mother tell me that my brother was dead.”
Her mother had found out from police who came to show her a piece of paper that had her brother's name and her parents' address on it.
“They asked her if she knew this person. When she replied yes, they told her that he and two others had blown themselves up and that this piece of paper had been found at the warehouse where they blew themselves up.
“My mother was asked to identify his body at the morgue, which she did. She said his body was badly blown up.” Her mother died in July 1986, just three years later.
The three were buried hastily without the mandatory post mortem to prevent the police removing the bodies to undisclosed sites. There was no inquest, as legally required. The security police covered up the murders.
No-one would have known until Mfalapitsa, racked with guilt and now a pastor, applied to the TRC for amnesty, forcing his police companions to do the same.
The court will make a decision on the SAPS delaying tactics on Tuesday.
David Forbes is a documentary filmmaker, writer, activist and social commentator who made the award-winning film The Cradock Four in 2010.
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