Forensic scientists exhume the remains of political prisoners from their graves at Rebecca Street Cemetery in Pretoria on December 14, 2016. The 12 members of the Azania People's Liberation Army (APLA) were buried after being hanged in Pretoria Prison (Kgosi Mampuru II) in 1964. The remains of 50 exiles, victims of apartheid prosecutions, are due to be returned to South Africa from Zimbabwe and Zambia within the next 10 days. (Photo by Veli Nhlapo/Sowetan/Gallo Images/Getty Images)
The head of the National Prosecuting Authority's (NPA) Missing Persons Task Team said on Tuesday that the remains of 50 exiled victims of apartheid prosecutions are expected to be returned to South Africa from Zimbabwe and Zambia within the next 10 days.
Addressing parliament's justice committee from Harare, Madeleine Hlaal said teams were exhuming the bodies of 15 freedom fighters who died in exile.
The repatriation ceremony will be held on September 27th and will mark the launch of a national plan approved by Cabinet nearly two years ago to repatriate the remains of those who died overseas during the struggle.
The NPA said that the remains of 188 of the 477 people killed in politically charged crimes in South Africa between 1960 and 1994 had been recovered and handed over to their families.
Jurado cited the Mamelodi 10 case as an example of how long such cases can take to resolve.
“We first recovered nine of the Mamelodi 10 bodies in 2005, but the 10th was never found and we continued to investigate the case and actually used drones and aerial mapping to try to pinpoint the location of the final grave.”
A group of teenage activists were arrested in 1986 by an operative from the ANC's militant wing, Umkhonto we'Sizwe, who was acting as a government informant and falsely allegedly recruiting them for military training in Zambia. They were killed in a minibus rigged with explosives and buried in an unmarked graveyard north of Pretoria.
Jurado said drone footage was the first time it had been used to locate the group's last remaining members, in a human rights case in Africa in 2019.
The Mamelodi ten were Jeremiah Ntuli, Morris Kabini, Jeremiah Magagula, Stephen McKenna, Roivard Geldenhuys, Samuel Masilela, Thomas Phiri, Elliot Satezi, Philip Sibanyoni and Abram McColane.
Jurado said most of the bodies his team found were of activists killed in clashes with police, but tracing those who were secretly abducted and disappeared had proven particularly difficult.
In these cases, as in the cases of the Mamelodi 10 and the Pebko 3, the possibility of locating the location of the remains will depend on the availability of information from amnesty applications.
“For example, without the amnesty application we would never have found the burnt bodies of the Pebco trio. The amnesty application revealed that the trio had been kidnapped and taken all the way to Cradock.”
No one applied for amnesty for the murder of Ramata “Boity” Klaafe, who was presumably tortured and killed in 1986.
“We were primarily working with hearsay information from certain police officers and so forth, so there were a lot of challenges in cases where there wasn't a pardon application and we weren't really successful,” Jurado said.
She spoke to the committee as part of a briefing by the NPA and addressed ongoing criticism over the lack of process for handling cases identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for investigation and prosecution.
Deputy Director of the National Prosecuting Authority, Rodney de Kock, said a total of 126 cases were under investigation but that figure was fluctuating as the number of cases continued to increase.
Since the NPA established a dedicated unit to handle TRC cases in September 2021, 104 new investigations arising from the commission's work have been identified and are being pursued.
“This is an ongoing feature of the work that we are doing, as we are doing more work in relation to the TRC investigation, new issues are being introduced to us through families and the work that we are doing.
“So this is not a static number. This is a number that will continue to grow, and that's right, because ultimately we want to address all of the injustices that have occurred in the past.”
Of the cases under investigation, 54% were at an advanced stage.
“We're hearing that there could be at least 45 cases ready for decision in the next quarter,” he said.
De Kock said prosecutors and investigators were working within deadlines to ensure cases were registered and were required to submit monthly reports to NPA headquarters.
“Of course, we can't always predict what delays a potential defendant or suspect may experience with their case, but to the extent possible, our prosecutors and investigators work according to schedule so that cases can be finalized.”
De Kock said considerable progress had been made since the unit was established. The unit delivered its first conviction in KwaZulu-Natal in November 2023, when Wesley Madonsela was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the 1989 murder of teenage activist Siphilele Nxumalo.
He cited as another success the reopening of the inquest into the death of Ernst Dipali last year, after an earlier finding that the activist had hanged himself while in custody at the John Vorster Square branch of the Security Police.
Similarly, the Pietermaritzburg High Court last year overturned an initial verdict at the inquest into the death of Husen Haffejee which concluded he had committed suicide by hanging while in police custody in Durban.
At a resumed inquest, the Western Cape High Court ruled in October that Imam Haron's death in 1970 was due to injuries sustained from torture, and not from a fall down the stairs.
In his ruling in Hafezi, Justice Zaba Nkosi criticised the NPA for delaying the resumption of this and other hearings, leaving families in limbo “for years”.
“We have heard there are many more families waiting for their loved ones’ inquests to be opened or reopened to find out the truth about how they died while in the custody of the sheriff’s service.”
Evidence heard at the Haffejee inquest has reopened the investigation into the murder of anti-apartheid activist Rick Turner.
The inquest into the deaths of the Craddock four was reopened earlier this year following continuing pressure from the families of the victims who were murdered in 1985. The matter was heard at the Coroner's Court in June but was adjourned until next year due to unpaid legal costs owed by lawyers representing former state security and police officers.
In the Griffith Musenge case, the NPA was waiting for a judge to be appointed to preside over the resumed inquest.
De Kock said the NPA would consider whether it could prosecute the suspects in Zama Sokulu's murder after the inquest was completed.
“The matter has been referred to the NPA for a decision and in this case they will be assessing whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed with charges and whether the suspect is still alive and able to be charged.”
National Prosecuting Director Shamila Batohi stressed that the NPA force was relying on the Directorate General of Priority Crimes Investigations (DPCI, Hawks) to carry out the investigation.
“We are working with the DPCI to ensure that charges are laid and/or inquests are carried out as appropriate. It's a very hands-on approach that the team is taking in these matters and it's paying off,” she said. “We're almost micromanaging these cases to move them forward.”
Batohi acknowledged that victims' families were “losing confidence that justice would be achieved” and that there were “clear gaps” in the pursuit of the TRC case.
She said the lack of accountability, plus the time that has passed, has compounded the situation, and she agreed with the committee that the NPA needed to communicate better with families.
“If matters are postponed, matters are not going ahead, inquests are not being held, prosecutions cannot be filed, why is that the case? Even if they don't agree and it may still hurt, to say the least, justice will not be served but at least they understand what the effort has been,” Batohi said.