Johannesburg, South Africa – On the night of June 27, 1985 in South Africa, four Black men were travelling together in a car from the southeastern city of Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha, to Cradock.
They had just finished doing community organising work on the outskirts of the city when apartheid police officials stopped them at a roadblock.
The four – teachers Fort Calata, 29, and Matthew Goniwe, 38; school principal Sicelo Mhlauli, 36; and railway worker Sparrow Mkonto, 34 – were abducted and tortured.
Later, their bodies were found dumped in different parts of the city – they had been badly beaten, stabbed and burned.
The police and apartheid government initially denied any involvement in the killings. However, it was known that the men were being surveilled for their activism against the gruelling conditions facing Black South Africans at the time.
Soon after, evidence of a death warrant that had been issued for some members of the group was anonymously leaked, and later, it emerged that their killings had long been planned.
Though there were two inquests into the murders – both under the apartheid regime in 1987 and 1993 – neither resulted in any perpetrator being named or charged.
“The first inquest was conducted entirely in Afrikaans,” Lukhanyo Calata, Ford Calata’s son, told Al Jazeera earlier this month. “My mother and the other mothers were never offered any opportunity in any way whatsoever to make statements in that,” the 43-year-old lamented.
“These were courts in apartheid South Africa. It was a completely different time where it was clear that four people were murdered, but the courts said no one could be blamed for that.”
Soon after apartheid ended in 1994, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up. There, hearings confirmed the “Cradock Four” were indeed targeted for their political activism. Although a few former apartheid officers confessed to being involved, they would not disclose the details and were denied amnesty.
Now, four decades after the killings, a new inquest has begun. Although justice has never seemed closer, for families of the deceased, it has been a long wait.
“For 40 years, we’ve waited for justice,” Lukhanyo told local media this week. “We hope this process will finally expose who gave the orders, who carried them out, and why,” he said outside the court in Gqeberha, where the hearings are taking place.
As a South African journalist, it’s almost impossible to cover the inquiry without thinking about the extent of crimes committed during apartheid – crimes by a regime so committed to propping up its criminal, racist agenda that it took it to its most violent and deadly end.
There are many more stories like Calata’s, many more victims like the Cradock Four, and many more families still waiting to hear the truth of what happened to their loved ones.
The coffins of the Cradock Four were carried to their funeral service in the Cradock township of Lingelihle in South Africa, on July 20, 1985 [Greg English/Reuters]
Known victims
Attending the court proceedings in Gqeberha and watching the families reminded me of Nokhutula Simelane.
More than 10 years ago, I travelled to Bethal in the Mpumalanga province to speak with her family about her disappearance in 1983. Simelane joined Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), which was the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC) – the liberation movement turned majority ruling party in South Africa.
As an MK operative, she worked as a courier taking messages and parcels between South Africa and what was then Swaziland.
Simelane was lured to a meeting in Johannesburg and it was from there that she was kidnapped and held in police custody, tortured and disappeared.
Her family says they still feel the pain of not being able to bury her.
At the TRC, five white men from what was the special branch of the apartheid police, applied for amnesty related to Simelane’s abduction and presumed murder.
Former police commander Willem Coetzee, who headed the security police unit, denied ordering her killing. But that was countered by testimony from his colleague that she was brutally murdered and buried somewhere in what is now the North West province. Coetzee previously said Simelane was turned into an informant and was sent back to Swaziland.
Until now, no one has taken responsibility for her disappearance – not the apartheid security forces nor the ANC.
The case of the Cradock Four also made me think of anti-apartheid activist and South African Communist Party member, Ahmed Timol, who was tortured and killed in 1971 but whose murder was also covered up.
Apartheid police said the 29-year-old teacher fell out of a 10th-floor window at the notorious John Vorster Square police headquarters in Johannesburg, where he was being held. An inquest the following year concluded he had died by suicide, at a time when the apartheid government was known for its lies and cover-ups.
Decades later, a second inquest under the democratic government in 2018 found that Timol had been so badly tortured in custody that he would never have been able to jump out of a window.
It was only then that former security branch officer Joao Rodrigues was formally charged with Timol’s murder. The elderly Rodrigues rejected the charges and applied for a permanent stay of prosecution, saying he would not receive a fair trial because he was unable to properly recall events at the time of Timol’s death, given the number of years that have passed. Rodrigues died in 2021.
‘A crime against his humanity’
Apartheid was brutal. And for the people left behind, unresolved trauma and unanswered questions are the salt in the deep wounds that remain.
Which is why families like those of the Cradock Four are still at the courts, seeking answers.
In her testimony before the court this month, 73-year-old Nombuyiselo Mhlauli, wife of Sicelo Mhlauli, described the state of her husband’s body when she received his remains for burial. He had more than 25 stab wounds in the chest, seven in the back, a gash across his throat and a missing right hand, she said.
I spoke to Lukhanyo a day before he returned to court to continue his testimony in the hearing for his father’s killing.
He talked about how emotionally draining the process had been – yet vital. He also spoke about his work as a journalist, growing up without a father, and the impact it’s had on his life and outlook.
“There were crimes committed against our humanity. If you look at the state in which my father’s body was found, that was a clear crime against his humanity, completely,” Lukhanyo testified on the sixth day of the inquest.
But his frustration and anger do not end with the apartheid government. He holds the ANC, which has been in power since the end of apartheid, partly responsible for taking too long to adequately address these crimes.
Lukhanyo believes the ANC betrayed the Cradock Four, and this betrayal “cut the deepest”.
“Today we are sitting with a society that is completely lawless,” he said in court. “[This is] because at the start of this democracy, we did not put in the proper processes to tell the rest of society that you will be held accountable for things that you have done wrong.”
Fort Calata’s grandfather, the Reverend Canon James Arthur Calata, was the secretary-general of the ANC from 1939 to 1949. The Calata family has a long history with the liberation movement, which makes it all the more difficult for someone like Lukhanyo to understand why it’s taken the party so long to deliver justice.
Seeking accountability and peace
The office of South Africa’s Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Mmamoloko Kubayi, says the department has intensified its efforts to deliver long-awaited justice and closure for families affected by apartheid-era atrocities.
“These efforts signal a renewed commitment to restorative justice and national healing,” the department said in a statement.
The murders of the Cradock Four, Simelane and Timol are among the horrors and stories we know about.
But I often wonder about all the names, victims and testimonies that remain hidden or buried.
The murders of countless mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters by the apartheid regime matter not only to those who cared for them but for the consciousness of South African society as a whole, no matter how normalised the tally of the dead has become.
It’s not clear how long this new inquest will take. It is expected to last several weeks, with former security police, political figures and forensic experts testifying.
Initially, six police officers were implicated in the killings. They have all since died, but family members of the Cradock Four say senior officials who gave the orders should be held responsible.
The state, however, is reluctant to pay the legal costs of apartheid police officers implicated in the murders, and that may slow down the process.
Meanwhile, as the families wait for answers about what happened to their loved ones and accountability for those responsible, they are trying to make peace with the past.
“I’ve been on my own, trying to bring up children – fatherless children,” Nombuyiselo told Al Jazeera outside the court about the years since her husband Sicelo’s death. “The last 40 years have been very difficult for me – emotionally, and also spiritually.”