Attorneys general in two provinces are on the
verge of pressing charges in two celebrated
cases of murder of anti-apartheid activists,
writes Eddie Koch
Suspects in two of South Africa’s most
publicised murder mysteries — the slaying
of the Pebco Three and the gruesome
assassination of Pretoria doctors Fabian
Ribeiro and his wife Florence — could be
arrested within weeks and charged in court.
The Eastern Cape attorney general is preparing
to arrest suspects implicated in the Pebco
Three murders, while investigators in the
Transvaal attorney general’s office are making
steady progress in their probe into the deaths
of the Riberios.
Progress in both cases shows that the criminal
justice system is moving rapidly to solve some
of South Africa’s most intractable political
crimes at the same time the truth commission
swings into full gear. Progress in both cases
stems from sensational evidence given by
former Vlakplaas operative Joe Mamasela to the
attorney general. Some of what he has told the
AG was reported on SABC last week by
journalist Jacques Pauw.
Mamasela said he was present at the killing of
the Pebco Three — Sipho Hashe, Champion
Galela and Qaqawuli Godolozi — in May 1985
after they were sent a false call to meet a
British diplomat at the Port Elizabeth
airport.
He has implicated security police Colonel
Gideon Niewoudt in the murders, saying he
posed as an embassy official and led the men
to the place where they were killed.
Mamasela says the men were taken to a
farmhouse near Cradock, where they were beaten
and tortured. The three were hit with an iron
pipe until they died, “one by one”.
Mamasela was in the Eastern Cape this week in
connection with the Pebco Three and it is
understood that a docket is in its final
stages of preparation in the office of the
attorney general in Port Elizabeth.
“As a result of further investigations in the
Pebco case, a docket will be handed to the
attorney general and a decision will be made
about how to proceed once the Motherwell trial
(in which senior policemen are accused of
killing colleagues suspected of leaking
information about dirty tricks) is over,” said
Mark Wale, investigator for the Eastern Cape
AG.
Mamasela has also introduced investigators
from the Transvaal AG’s office to former
Vlakplaas operative Jeff Boshigo, and they
have questioned him in connection with the
circumstances leading to the murder of the
Ribeiros.
Boshigo, who now lives in Mmabatho, was one of
the first Askaris — turned ANC soldiers to
be recruited into the hit squad situated at
Vlakplaas near Pretoria.
His younger brother had also been a member of
the ANC and is understood to have died in a
detention camp in Angola while under suspicion
of being a spy. Boshigo was turned by the
security police’s master interrogator, Jac
Buchner.
Mamasela has stated on a number of occasions
that he was first assigned to kill the
Ribeiros.
The Mail & Guardian understands the Ribeiro
killings were masterminded by the security
police in the Northern Transvaal. There is no
evidence to directly link Boshigo with the
double slaying, but he has apparently provided
important information in the ongoing
investigation.
Former security policeman General “Suiker”
Brits was originally in charge of the
investigation into the murder of the Ribeiros.
He told the 1989 Harms Commission into hit
squads, that his car, with the docket in the
boot, had been stolen.
Recently he was put on to the re-opened
investigation into the murder of Griffiths
Mxenge and failed to make any significant
progress, even though the names of the men who
carried out the assassination have been known
since 1989, when renegade policeman Dirk
Coetzee told the world about hit squads.
News about impending criminal prosecutions
comes as the truth commission sits to hear
detailed accounts of atrocities committed
under apartheid, and some by the liberation
movements — and it is likely these two
cases and others will be heard over the next
18 months in tandem with the truth commission.
This vindicates Justice Minister Dullah Omar’s
statement this week that the truth commission
would not prevent the courts from prosecuting
people who carried out massive human rights
abuse in the apartheid era.
Omar told a conference on security in Pretoria
there had been some misunderstanding about the
granting of amnesty to perpetrators who
applied to the truth commission.
There would not be automatic amnesty for such
offences and the operaton of the truth
commission did not mean there would be no
prosecutions.
If prima facie evidence emerged against an
individual who had not applied for amnesty,
the attorney general would be bound to
prosecute if a conviction was likely to be
secured.
“It may also happen that the [commission’s]
amnesty committee refuses an application for
amnesty,” Omar said. “In such an event also,
the perpetrator may be charged with a criminal
offence.
“It is therefore wrong to characterise the
truth commission process as one which will
exclude justice and criminal trials,” Omar
said. “The granting of amnesty does not mean
that there will be no justice.”