New inquiry opened into apartheid-era killings known as Cradock Four

JOHANNESBURG (AP): When Nombuyiselo Mhlauli was given her husband’s body back for burial, he had more than 25 stab wounds in his chest and seven in his back, with a gash across his throat. His right hand was missing.

Sicelo Mhlauli was one of four black men abducted, tortured, and killed 40 years ago this month by apartheid-era security forces in South Africa. No one has been held accountable for their deaths.

But a new judge-led inquiry into the killings of the anti-apartheid activists who became known as the Cradock Four — and who became a rallying cry for those denied justice — opened this month.

It is part of a renewed push for the truth by relatives of some of the thousands of people killed by police and others during the years of white minority rule and enforced racial segregation.

Mhlauli described the state of her husband’s body during testimony she gave at the start of the inquiry in the city of Gqeberha, near where the Cradock Four were abducted in June 1985. Relatives of some of the three other men also testified.

Thumani Calata never got to know her father, Fort Calata, who had been a teacher. She was born two weeks after the funerals of the Cradock Four, which drew huge crowds and galvanised resistance to apartheid.

“I don’t know how it feels, and I will never know how it feels, to be hugged by my dad,” Thumani Calata, now 39, told the inquiry as she wept.

Two previous inquiries were held during apartheid. A two-year inquest that started in 1987 found that the men were killed by unknown people. Another in 1993 said they were killed by unnamed policemen.

Relatives of the Cradock Four likely will never see justice. The six former police officers directly implicated in the abductions and killings have died, the last one in 2023. None was prosecuted despite the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission identifying them and denying them amnesty in the late 1990s.

That commission, set up by then-President Nelson Mandela, attempted to confront the atrocities of apartheid in the years after the system officially ended in 1994. While some killers were granted amnesty, more than 5,000 applications were refused and recommended for criminal investigation.

Hardly any made it to court.

Oscar van Heerden, a political analyst at the University of Johannesburg, said the bitter emotion of relatives at the Cradock Four inquiry showed that wounds have not healed.

“Where it was felt that truth was not spoken and there wasn’t sufficient evidence to warrant forgiveness, those were cases that were supposed to be formally charged, prosecuted, and justice should have prevailed,” van Heerden said. “None of that happened.”