Call for judicial inquiry into apartheid-era crimes

Imtiaz Cajee, nephew of murdered anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol, will recommend that President Cyril Ramaphosa establish a judicial commission of inquiry into the lack of apartheid-era investigations and prosecutions by the SAPS and the NPA, says a Mail & Guardian report. In court papers, Cajee has called the NPA’s failure to investigate and prosecute former apartheid policemen who were denied amnesty for their crimes by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) a ‘deep betrayal of all those who participated in good faith in the TRC process’. ‘I will be calling for an inquiry into those prosecutors and police who failed in their duties to uphold the rule of law,’ Cajee stated in court papers. The papers were filed in opposition of an application by former Security Branch clerk João ‘Jan’ Rodrigues for a permanent stay of prosecution. Rodrigues has been charged with the murder of Timol and defeating the ends of justice after a reopened inquest into Timol’s death last year found that he was involved in the activist’s murder in 1971. Cajee says that 24 years after apartheid, an investigation needs to be held into why there has yet to be a prosecution of perpetrators in TRC-related cases. The TRC recommended a list of more than 300 cases for investigation to the NPA. Affidavits filed by former NPA boss Vusi Pikoli and prosecutor Anton Ackermann in 2015 detail how the likes of former Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla and former National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi sought to unduly interfere in the prosecution and investigation of TRC-related cases. Pikoli alleged that the political interference was the result of a fear by the ANC that should prosecutions begin, then the ANC, too, could face investigations for some of its actions in the struggle against apartheid.

Full Mail & Guardian report