Cape Town - Police Minister Bheki Cele has been urged to rethink his approach with regard to the issue of the SAPS refusing to pay the legal fees of former police officers charged with apartheid-era crimes.
In an open letter to Minister Cele, Foundation for Human Rights (FHR) Executive Director Zaid Kimmie made the plea on behalf of the families of the apartheid-era victims in the Congress of South African Students (Cosas) Four and Caiphus Nyoka cases.
The Cosas Four murders took place more than 40 years ago, while Caiphus Nyoka was murdered more than 35 years ago.
Kimmie said the window of opportunity to bring justice to the perpetrators in these cases was fast closing, and that most of the suspects had already died and the few remaining were in their twilight years and could die at any time, or become medically unfit to stand trial.
The FHR said in the letter to the minister that the families were of the view that there were elements within the SAPS who wished to protect apartheid-era perpetrators from justice through the orchestrating of further delays, which will result in the collapse of the few remaining cases.
Appealing directly to Minister Cele, Kimmie said: “In this regard it is telling that a former Security Branch officer accused in the Cosas Four case, Christiaan Rorich, is not opposing your appeal of the court’s May 4, 2022 order compelling you to pay his legal costs.
“We urge you to change course and not inadvertently advance the interests of apartheid-era perpetrators. It is their strategy to engineer endless delays in order to escape justice. Your current approach to the legal costs question plays directly into their hands.”
As of Tuesday, Minister Cele had yet to respond to the open letter and a request for comment had not been answered by the time of writing this article.
FHR spokesperson Kholekile Mnisi said they hoped Cele would respond before the judgment on the legal cost question in the Cosas Four matter, scheduled for January 12 next year.
Mnisi said the idea behind the open letter, which follows attempts by the attorneys for the Cosas Four to reach out to the minister via regular correspondence without success, was to put the minister under public pressure to reconsider his position on the legal fees, as well as with respect to the TRC cases.
“It is difficult to believe that the minister, himself involved in the struggle as an MK operative, would support the delays, which may lead to the only criminal trials dealing with the apartheid-era crimes to collapse.”
To date, 129 TRC matters are under investigation and 64 new investigations have been re-opened.
In a progress report on the cases last month, national prosecutions deputy head Rodney de Kock told Parliament's justice committee that the NPA was delving into old records to make sure no stone was left unturned.