South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission work 'unfinished' 30 years on
From 1996 to 1998, the TRC heard harrowing accounts of murders, torture and other apartheid-era abuses from hundreds of victims and some perpetrators, aiming to expose the horrors and begin healing.
Internationally hailed as a model in reconciliation, 30 years later its reputation is tarnished at home, where critics say the exercise allowed some to get away with their crimes.
Calata was one of the first to appear at a hearing. In her mid-thirties, she told of the 1985 assassinations by police of her husband and other anti-apartheid activists known as the Cradock Four, one of the era's most notorious cases.
She recounted the story again this year in June at a new inquest, still seeking justice and closure, this time supported by lawyers from the "Unfinished Business of the TRC" programme of the Foundation for Human Rights (FHR), a non-profit organisation.
Set up by the July 26, 1995 "Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act", the TRC heard about 7,000 applications for amnesty from perpetrators of gross human rights violations from 1960 to 1994, the year white-minority rule ended.
It rejected most, including for six apartheid policemen who confessed to involvement in the Cradock killings, and recommended criminal prosecutions for 300 cases where there was no full disclosure or when the acts did not have a clear political purpose.
But only a handful of these were pursued.
Claims that follow-up was deliberately squashed, including by politicians in the post-apartheid leadership, led President Cyril Ramaphosa to appoint an enquiry in May.
With many perpetrators now deceased, the FHR hopes the investigation will uncover who blocked prosecutions and make them accountable instead, the group's executive director Zaid Kimmie, said.
"So it would not be the original perpetrators," he told AFP.
"But where people in the democratically elected post-1994 government interfered with criminal prosecutions, we hope that those people in turn will be pursued for the role that they have played in the miscarriage of justice."
The TRC was a compromise for the "move forward without further bloodshed, without a civil war," Kimmie said.
"Did it wipe away the antagonisms and the hurt that accumulated over the previous centuries? No, it couldn't do that," he said.
Failure
Of around 20,000 written witness accounts submitted to the TRC, more than 2,000 were heard in televised hearings open to the public.
The process exposed the "full brutality" of apartheid as well as "some very hard truths" about anti-apartheid groups, said Verne Harris, who was a member of the TRC team.
"Its most important achievement was to make any form of denial impossible -- denying the state terror, denying the special formations that were put in place by the apartheid state to assassinate activists and so on," he said.
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New Indian Express
11-07-2025
- New Indian Express
South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission work 'unfinished' 30 years on
JOHANNESBURG: Nomonde Calata's tears as she testified in court last month about her husband's assassination 40 years ago echoed the raw anguish heard during South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings after apartheid ended in 1994. From 1996 to 1998, the TRC heard harrowing accounts of murders, torture and other apartheid-era abuses from hundreds of victims and some perpetrators, aiming to expose the horrors and begin healing. Internationally hailed as a model in reconciliation, 30 years later its reputation is tarnished at home, where critics say the exercise allowed some to get away with their crimes. Calata was one of the first to appear at a hearing. In her mid-thirties, she told of the 1985 assassinations by police of her husband and other anti-apartheid activists known as the Cradock Four, one of the era's most notorious cases. She recounted the story again this year in June at a new inquest, still seeking justice and closure, this time supported by lawyers from the "Unfinished Business of the TRC" programme of the Foundation for Human Rights (FHR), a non-profit organisation. Set up by the July 26, 1995 "Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act", the TRC heard about 7,000 applications for amnesty from perpetrators of gross human rights violations from 1960 to 1994, the year white-minority rule ended. It rejected most, including for six apartheid policemen who confessed to involvement in the Cradock killings, and recommended criminal prosecutions for 300 cases where there was no full disclosure or when the acts did not have a clear political purpose. But only a handful of these were pursued. Claims that follow-up was deliberately squashed, including by politicians in the post-apartheid leadership, led President Cyril Ramaphosa to appoint an enquiry in May. With many perpetrators now deceased, the FHR hopes the investigation will uncover who blocked prosecutions and make them accountable instead, the group's executive director Zaid Kimmie, said. "So it would not be the original perpetrators," he told AFP. "But where people in the democratically elected post-1994 government interfered with criminal prosecutions, we hope that those people in turn will be pursued for the role that they have played in the miscarriage of justice." The TRC was a compromise for the "move forward without further bloodshed, without a civil war," Kimmie said. "Did it wipe away the antagonisms and the hurt that accumulated over the previous centuries? No, it couldn't do that," he said. Failure Of around 20,000 written witness accounts submitted to the TRC, more than 2,000 were heard in televised hearings open to the public. The process exposed the "full brutality" of apartheid as well as "some very hard truths" about anti-apartheid groups, said Verne Harris, who was a member of the TRC team. "Its most important achievement was to make any form of denial impossible -- denying the state terror, denying the special formations that were put in place by the apartheid state to assassinate activists and so on," he said.
Time of India
10-07-2025
- Time of India
South African court jails ex-cop for apartheid murder
AI- Generated Image JOHANNESBURG: A South African court Thursday served a 15-year jail sentence on an ex-policeman for the 1987 murder of a young anti-apartheid activist in a rare conviction for such crimes. In 2019, Johan Marais admitted killing Caiphus Nyoka, a member of the Congress of South African Students, in a township east of Johannesburg. High Court judge Papi Mosopa said Marais, lacked genuine remorse and ruled the 66-year-old be jailed for 15 years as "retribution". More than a dozen people wearing T-shirts bearing Nyoka's image burst into anti-apartheid songs in court after the verdict was read out. The National Prosecuting Authority hailed it as "ensuring accountability for atrocious crimes" referred to it by South Africa's truth and reconciliation commission (TRC), set up in 1996 to process crimes committed under apartheid. The TRC heard about 7,000 applications for amnesty from perpetrators of gross human rights violations from 1960 to 1994, the year white-minority rule ended. But only a handful were prosecuted. Nyoka was sleeping with three friends when officers raided his home and shot him nine times, it said. He died from multiple gunshot wounds. "This sentence is therefore significant and impactful, not only for the state and society, but most importantly for the victims' families to finally find closure," the NPA said in a statement.
Time of India
12-06-2025
- Time of India
'We won't rest': S.African families seek justice for apartheid killings
A winter chill hung over the windswept cemetery in South Africa's eastern town of Cradock where the untended graves of four activists assassinated by the apartheid regime were watched over by a monument in their memory, itself in disrepair. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now In the city of Gqeberha two hours' drive away, the murders in 1985 of the young men in one of the most notorious atrocities of the previous regime was the focus of an emotional courtroom inquest into the deaths. Forty years on from the killings, the families of Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe, Sicelo Mhlauli and Sparrow Mkhonto -- husbands, fathers, three of them teachers and one a unionist -- are still bereft and seeking answers. "We are not going to rest in this matter up until there is some form of justice," Calata's son, Lukhanyo, told AFP in Gqeberha, an Indian Ocean city formerly called Port Elizabeth. The 43-year-old journalist was barely in school when his father did not come home one night in June. His body was later found beaten, stabbed and burned with the others. "I was pregnant and my hope was taken away... everything was taken away in such a brutal manner," his mother, Nomonde Calata, now in her mid-sixties, told the inquest. Her third child was only born two weeks after her husband was buried. "I couldn't show the enemy my pain because they would laugh at me," she told the court, fighting back tears. A first inquest was held in 1985 in Afrikaans, a language Nomonde did not understand, but did not identify the killers. A second inquest in 1993 confirmed the security police were responsible but gave no names. After the apartheid regime that enforced a brutal system of racial oppression ended in 1994, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) into the atrocities committed during apartheid also heard the case of the Cradock Four. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Led by Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, it found six members of a police hit squad were involved and denied them amnesty from further prosecution. But there was no follow-up action and all six have since died. Lukhanyo Calata was unsurprised that the apartheid authorities covered themselves for this killing, one of scores of government-ordered actions against people seen as threats to the apartheid system. "They did everything that they could to protect themselves. We weren't actually expecting better from them," he said. 'Will not forgive' But this time he and the other relatives in the latest inquest are expecting more. Relatives are allowed for the first time to give testimony, which is regularly broadcast live on national television. The court has also visited the location where the four are believed to have been killed after being pulled off a road at night while driving back from a political event in Port Elizabeth. Of the one former police officer who confessed before he died, Nomonde said: "He robbed me from the love of my husband, he robbed the children from the love of their father. I will not and did not forgive." Besides wanting accountability, these families and many others who lost loved ones in apartheid-era killings want to know why there have been no prosecutions 30 years since the fall of the previous regime. Delays may have been due to a "toxic mix of idleness, indifference, incapacity or incompetence" and even political interference, one of the families' lawyers said at the opening of the inquest. President Cyril Ramaphosa set up a judicial inquiry in April into claims of deliberate delays in prosecuting apartheid-era crimes. A separate court case by 25 families, including these ones, is seeking government compensation. Finding peace In the small and dusty town of Cradock itself, now called Nxuba, residents who knew the slain activists have watched the decades pass without answers and their sense of loss is still unresolved. "I grew in front of those people," said Sibongile Mbina Mbina, in his late 50s. "Two of them taught me in high school, so I'm worried that this has not been solved." "It's painful because it has been quite a long time," said Mawonga Goniwe, 65, whose uncle was among the Cradock Four. "We wanted closure as a family. How did our family member die?" "The truth must come out... they must face what they have done," he told AFP who was in Gqeberha for the inquest.
