TWO former members of the Apartheid police’s death squad are set to go on trial for the 1982 kidnapping and murder of three youth activists and the attempted murder of another in the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg this week.
Christiaan Sebert Rorich and Tlhomedi Ephraim Mfalapitsa, both former Vlakplaas operatives are facing charges of kidnapping, murder and attempted murder of four youth activists who later became known as the COSAS 4.
Three of the four activists Eustice ‘Bimbo’ Madikela, Peter ‘Ntshingo’ Matabane and Fanyana Nhlapo were killed in an explosion carried out by the Vlakplaas operatives.
The fourth Zandisile Musi suffered serious injuries that left him partially disabled for the rest of his life. Musi passed away in 2021 before the case could be concluded.
The Foundation for Human Rights which represents the families of the victims of the COSAS 4 said in a statement that in 2019 with the assistance of legal firm Webber Wentzel, “the families [were] able to enter substantive discussions with the SAPS Directorate for Priority Crimes Investigations and the National Prosecuting Authority, which reinvigorated investigations into the COSAS 4 matter.”
The Foundation said as a result, in 2021 Mfalapitsa and Rorich were indicted for their roles in the murder and serious injury of the COSAS 4.
“Other perpetrators went to their graves without having faced justice. In 2021, the last remaining survivor of the COSAS 4, Musi, succumbed to his injuries and passed away. The delay in the indictment of the perpetrators was caused as a result of political interference by the Executive into the work of the NPA and the South African Police Services and the suppression of the cases arising from the TRC process, in the period 2003-2017.”
“The political interference resulted in the decision to neither investigate nor prosecute any of the several hundred serious criminal cases in which amnesty had been denied or not applied for. Among others, it included efforts by the Executive to introduce ‘back door amnesties’ for the perpetrators of gross human rights violations.”
Rorich and Mfalapitsa are two surviving members of a Vlakplaas team that lured the youths to a disused mine pump station near Krugersdorp under the guise they were going to be trained in the use of explosives in furtherance of the struggle against Apartheid.
The other perpetrators Jan Carel Coetzee, Abraham Grobbelaar and Willem Frederick Schoon have since died. Another perpetrator implicated in the incident Joe Mamasela is still alive but has not been charged in connection with the crimes.
Mamasela did not apply for amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission but testified in a camera and the matter was then referred to the SAPS and the NPA for further investigation and prosecution.
According to the evidence led before the TRC, one of the activists Zandisile Musi approached Mfalapitsa in early 1982 to help him and his comrades leave the country to join the ANC in exile.
https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/amntrans/1999/99050321_jhb_990504jh.htm
Musi had known Mfalapitsa as an Umkhonto we Sizwe operative. However unbeknown to him, the former guerilla had switched sides and joined the Vlakplaas death squad after giving himself up to the South African Police due to dissilussionment with the ANC.
In the book Umkhonto We Sizwe The ANC’s Armed Struggle, author Thula Simpson details conditions under which Mfalapitsa left the organisation in September 1981. Mfalapitsa was on a mission to infiltrate the country from Botswana with two other comrades when he decided to give himself up to the SA Police at the Derdepoort Border post.
“He tells them [SAP] he has come to South Africa because it is the land of his birth, but he is not interested in joining either side of the conflict. He wants to go home. The officer taking his statement says that having been in a military structure in which Joe Modise, the chief of the armed forces of MK, was the head, they are hardly going to just debrief him and let him go,” Simpson wrote.
In his amnesty application before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1999, Mfalapitsa testified that he had reported his meeting with Musi to his superiors at Vlakplaas because he thought the request was as a trap to test his loyalty.
“After this first meeting, seeing that in my own personal feeling, I thought maybe because I was just, I have just recently arrived at Vlakplaas and somebody [there] was a suspicion that I was sent in for the South African Police, and I thought perhaps Musi, he’s sent by the South African Police to trap me and if I don’t report the incident or my meeting with him, and the contents of our meeting, may then work against me and I end up being assassinated,” Mfalapitsa told the TRC Amnesty hearing into the incident on on 4 May 1999.
Mfalapitsa said he then reported the matter to Captain Jan Carel Coetzee.
“I told [Coetzee] that I met a few chaps who want to leave the country for military training…The impression I got from them is that they thought I was still a member of the ANC and therefore in a position to facilitate their leaving the country for military training,” Mfalapitsa said.
A plan was then hatched by the Vlakplaas duo to lure the four activists to a disused mine pump station where they were to be killed.
Musi told the same TRC hearing that Mfalapitsa had dissuaded them from going into exile and instead said he would arrange for them to be trained internally. But on 15 February 1982 the Vlakplaas men put their plan into action.
This is how Musi recalled the chilling details of that fateful day before the TRC: “He [Mfalapitsa] came with a Kombi with a gentleman with a scar on his face [later revealed to be Joe Mamasela]. We went next to, we went to a spot that was next to a mine. The Kombi was parked far from the venue. We walked from the Kombi and we went through the forest to that particular venue. We [were] told to rush into that place. We got into a room in the mine.
“He [Mfalapitsa] opened the door. We got inside. He was the first one to get inside and we followed him, the three of us 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 then he put them down. And he connected the detonator to the grenade and after that he demonstrated to us as to 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.”
“After he had left, within a short time, there was a box that I didn’t know what was inside in that box. When I looked at the box I heard an explosion. We fell. I could even see the clothes on this guy. I thought that what had exploded was the object that we had in the hand. We thought that perhaps the person made a mistake by detonating the grenade or something like that. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t see. I tried to cry for help. I, in that process, I was unconscious and I woke up in the morning and I was feeling cold and even my clothes were torn. I tried to, tried to shout for help.”
The Foundation said in November 2021, charges of the crime against humanity of murder and the crime against humanity of apartheid as per Section 232 of the Constitution were added to the indictments of Rorich and Mfalapitsa.
“The addition of these international charges is significant. This is the first case in South African history which has ever included international charges, and it is the first case in the world that includes the international charge of the crime against humanity of apartheid,” the Foundation said.
The trial is set to run until September 1. – news@mukurukuru.co.za
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