Darkness had fallen on 27 June 1985 when Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe, Sicelo Mhlauli and Sparrow Mkonto set off from a meeting of anti-apartheid activists in Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) for the 150-mile drive back to Cradock (now Nxuba). About an hour into the journey they were stopped by three white security police officers, handcuffed and driven back towards Gqeberha. Mkonto was shot after a struggle; the other three were struck from behind, stabbed several times by three black officers who joined the group to make it look like a vigilante attack, and their bodies were set alight. When Mhlauli’s body was found, one hand was missing. The four men became known as the Cradock Four, their murders a symbol of apartheid’s brutality.
The advent of democracy in 1994 brought neither the justice the families sought nor clarity about whether the killings were sanctioned at the highest levels. More than 40 years later, the families are still fighting — a struggle that highlights perceived deficiencies in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), whose hearings began on 15 April 1996. Led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the TRC aimed to uncover human-rights violations committed by the apartheid state and liberation movements; it offered or denied amnesty to perpetrators who confessed.
Successive African National Congress governments did not pursue hundreds of cases the TRC referred to state prosecutors. Victims’ families have accused former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma of an informal deal with apartheid generals to bury prosecutions in exchange for not pursuing crimes by ANC members. Both Mbeki and Zuma deny stopping TRC cases and have resisted a judicial inquiry into possible political interference.
The Cradock Four’s legal odyssey illustrates the gaps. A 1987 inquest returned a finding of “unknown persons”; a 1993 inquest blamed “members of the security forces” but named no individuals. At the TRC the three white police officers admitted the murders in attempts to avoid prosecution; another three admitted planning or ordering them. The TRC denied amnesty to those involved; all six have since died. The three black police officers who participated were themselves killed in a car bombing in 1989 amid fears they might reveal more.
A third inquest into the murders opened in June last year after families pressed the government for years. Their central question: if the TRC denied amnesty, why were the killers not prosecuted decades earlier?
The TRC’s early hearings gave victims and relatives a rare public platform. Nomonde Calata, widow of Fort Calata, broke down on the second day of hearings, her televised anguish seen across the country. The commission covered 1960–1994, collected testimony from about 21,000 victims (2,000 in public sessions), and heard accounts of torture, abduction, disappearances and killings. The confessions of some apartheid security operatives, including Eugene de Kock — the Vlakplaas commander known as “Prime Evil” — had powerful impact. De Kock was sentenced in 1996 to long prison terms and later testified at the TRC, bitter that higher-ranking generals and politicians had not been held accountable.
The amnesty process ran until 2000. Over 7,000 applications were made; 849 were granted. Public broadcasting of the hearings helped cement the moral case that apartheid was a violent, oppressive system, observers say. Yet critics argue the TRC failed to expose apartheid’s systemic features. Yasmin Sooka, a TRC commissioner and human-rights lawyer, said the commission did not secure political responsibility from leaders such as FW de Klerk, undermining full disclosure.
As the ANC’s post-apartheid government has governed South Africa for three decades amid persistent inequality, poverty and corruption, disappointment with the TRC’s scope and outcomes has grown. Investigative journalist Zanele Mji, who was eight when the TRC began, says she absorbed an idealised reconciliation narrative but later came to see the commission’s limits: structural issues such as land, education and housing that persist today were never prosecuted or fully addressed.
Psychologist Cyril Adonis links the enduring harm to material deprivation: poverty predicts intergenerational trauma among victims and their descendants, he says, especially when a father or breadwinner was killed, tortured or incapacitated during apartheid.
Families point not to the TRC alone but to subsequent political choices. Lukhanyo Calata, son of Fort Calata, says the ANC government “sold us out” by failing to hold killers to account — a failure that, he argues, denies equal affirmation of black lives. The FW de Klerk Foundation has said prosecutions were suspended because of an informal agreement between ANC leaders and former operatives of the pre-1994 government. Authors and former generals claim secret talks took place between 1998 and 2004 involving ANC officials; in 1999 Mbeki, Zuma and other senior ANC figures were denied amnesty for failing to disclose specific acts.
In January 2025 Lukhanyo Calata led 25 families and survivors in suing the South African government for failing to prosecute TRC cases. In May, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a judicial inquiry into potential political interference, headed by retired constitutional court judge Sisi Khampepe. Mbeki, Zuma and their justice ministers have refused to cooperate and attempted to have Khampepe removed; the high court rejected their bid in March and they have appealed to the constitutional court, arguing she is biased because she was a TRC commissioner. Meanwhile, the inquiry’s hearings have continued and former prosecutors have testified they faced obstruction. The inquiry’s final report to Ramaphosa is due on 31 July.
The human toll remains central. Lonwabo Mkonto was six when his father Sparrow was killed. Now 47, he recalls a father who organized sports teams, taught politics and was beloved in the community. He remembers missing the initiation-visit that fathers customarily pay; “you just sit there and wait for nobody,” he said. The Cradock Four were activists: Goniwe and others led boycotts after Goniwe was fired as a headteacher in 1983 for his activism. In June 1985, a provincial military commander, Christoffel “Joffel” van der Westhuizen, authorised a signal suggesting Calata, Goniwe and a nephew be “removed permanently from society as a matter of urgency.” Three weeks later they were dead. In 1993 a second inquest said Van der Westhuizen intended the signal as a recommendation to kill; Van der Westhuizen has denied involvement.
Eugene de Kock, who has testified in the recent inquest, previously told the TRC he had advised a police officer who shot Mkonto how to dispose of the gun — for which he received amnesty. In March he told the inquest “removed permanently from society” meant murder. After evidence sessions Lukhanyo Calata shook De Kock’s hand, saying De Kock “is perhaps coming here and helping us,” but adding that he is far from a hero given the pain he caused other families.
Nombuyiselo Mhlauli, widow of Sicelo Mhlauli, who never remarried, recalled her husband as a loving headteacher who sang in church choirs. “I don’t even have a house in Cradock,” she said. “If my husband was here, we would be having our house, reading newspapers, sharing spectacles. I hope that the judge will keep that in mind.”
Lonwabo Mkonto said he simply wants answers: “That’s the only thing we are left with, is to know the truth. And maybe why did they do it?” He does not expect anyone to be jailed now, noting any criminal trial would be separate from the inquest and doubting many implicated will live to face trial. For the families, decades of legal limbo and political contestation have prolonged grief and left core questions about responsibility and accountability unresolved.
