EDITORIAL: Finding truth and closure

The reopening of inquests into the gruesome deaths of anti-apartheid activists has to be welcomed but approached with due care to avoid unintended consequences.

On Monday, the high court in Pietermaritzburg began a fresh inquest into the murder of anti-apartheid activist and human rights lawyer Griffiths Mxenge. The hearing was immediately postponed to June so that those implicated in his murder could apply for assistance from the SA Police Service, their employer at the time. 

The same court is also to reopen an inquest into the death of former ANC president and Nobel peace laureate Albert Luthuli in the 1960s.

Mxenge, who was stabbed to death, died in the 1980s, and his body was found at a Durban stadium, while Luthuli was allegedly run over by a goods train, according to the verdict of an inquest at the time.

Apartheid hitmen Butana Nofomela and his commander, Dirk Coetzee, were implicated in Mxenge’s murder but granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Several other inquests are due to be reopened.

This is welcome. The families of the deceased deserve the unvarnished truth of what really happened to their loved ones. This is important in the process of finding closure.

The state — the executive and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) — has come under intense pressure to follow through on TRC-related cases and those that were not dealt

with by that process.

For example, the families of the so-called Cradock Four, ANC activists who were killed in the Eastern Cape, are suing the government for over R100m in connection with the deaths of their loved ones.

Shamila Batohi, the head of the NPA, has been accused of ignoring these cases. The reopening of these high-profile inquests will come as a relief to her. For politicians, especially the governing ANC, the re-hearings will provide a new campaign subject.

These are likely to be costly hearings. The accused, those who are still alive at least, will require legal representation from the post-apartheid state, which is struggling to fund other socioeconomic priorities.

Yet the truth is essential to the reconciliation project, which badly needs rekindling.

In the case of Mxenge, for example, there is an eyewitness who never testified. Also, no connection has ever been made to the killing of Victoria, Mxenge’s wife, after the husband’s death.

In Luthuli’s case, the official version that he was killed by a freight train is highly contested. Luthuli’s associates believe that he was killed first before his body was thrown onto the rail track and subsequently run over by the train.

These are old cases. They will need expert witnesses to reconstruct the evidence. Skilled detectives and probably private investigators will need to be brought in to track witnesses who can shed light on these complex cases.

The judiciary is grossly under-resourced. In Gauteng, for instance, the judge president has had to introduce mandatory mediation for civil cases to ease pressure on the court’s roll.

In these circumstances, it will make more sense to appoint retired judges to lead these inquests.

Care needs to be exercised in conducting these hearings to ensure they achieve the intended purpose: unearthing the truth so that justice is achieved and seen to have been achieved.

Politicians need to be urged to avoid turning these inquests into a political football or tools of further polarising the country, which is trying to redefine itself after three decades of all-race democracy which is showing disturbing signs of straying from the spirit of the 1994 breakthrough.

In addition, the affected families must be provided with support in traversing this new journey.

Finally, it is important that these inquiries are conducted by people with unimpeachable integrity and that their outcomes are beyond reproach.

The families have already been traumatised once by unsatisfactory findings. Another botched set of inquests will reopen old wounds. This has to be avoided.