June 27 1985 was a dark apartheid winter's night. Vrek koud. Four men sped east on the N2 highway, escaping the then Port Elizabeth after a clandestine meeting.
The road was nice and quiet by 9.30pm. Like a restless spirit, sea fog eddied across the piled concrete dolosse, then hazed the yellow street lights of Bluewater Bay.
Then a traffic sign in the road lit up in their headlights: POLICE.
Their car slowed. Armed soldiers and police appeared from the roadblock. Torches shone in the men's eyes. Staccato commands in Afrikaans. The men were roughly dragged out of the Honda Ballade.
The murky Hammer unit, set up by the then Eastern Province military commander Christoffel "Joffel" van der Westhuizen, was allegedly involved.
One of the four grabbed at a policeman's pistol. A scuffle. A shot echoed. After being subdued and searched, handcuffs.
The Port Elizabeth security police were notorious for their brutality (they killed Steve Biko and many others). They separated the men into two pairs, then drove them away. The Ballade was taken nearby, doused with petrol and set alight.
One pair, not needed for interrogation, were murdered that same night, shot and stabbed. Their bodies were separated, burnt and abandoned in the deserted sandy scrub dunes. One of the men had his hand cut off. Later it was allegedly used in a bottle of formaldehyde to terrify suspects in interrogations.
The other pair, families believe, were taken to a nearby hangar where they were interrogated and tortured for days, before they too, were stabbed to death. Their murderers set fire to them to disguise their identities. The two burnt bodies were dumped together in the dunes.
Have you ever seen a burnt human body? Even the families at the morgue had to view the bodies from behind a glass screen, and then only for a short time. The four bodies had more than 60 stab wounds. An unfathomable hatred. Cruel. Barbaric.
These murdered men became known as the Cradock Four.
The two burnt bodies were dumped together in the dunes.
Today marks 36 years since those depraved security police officers abducted Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlauli.
The version above is not what the police officers seeking amnesty told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). But it is closer to the truth.
Harold Snyman, Nicolaas Jacobus Janse van Rensburg, Hermanus Barend du Plessis, JM "Sakkie" van Zyl, Eric Taylor and Gerhardus Lotz were all denied amnesty. They lied.
Vlakplaas hit-squad commander Col Eugene de Kock, who knew of the killings but was not part of the murder squad, told a different version, and received amnesty.
De Kock, however, became one of the only fall guys to serve jail time for the entire apartheid machinery.
The military didn't participate in the TRC beyond making a general submission. None of the senior soldiers who ordered assassinations, nor their political superiors, has ever been brought to justice.
This is about to change. The Supreme Court of Appeal judgment earlier this week should end the delays in the prosecution of Joao Rodrigues, the security police officer charged with the murder of Ahmed Timol in 1971. Other post-TRC prosecutions will now follow.
So who were the Cradock Four exactly? Why did president PW Botha want them dead?
Goniwe and Calata were two progressive teachers. Goniwe had earlier served four years in jail for having a Marxist reading group before returning to Cradock in 1981 with Nyameka, his wife.
Calata, whose father the Rev Canon James Arthur Calata was a former ANC secretary-general, was a religious but radical activist who "liked action", his wife, Nomonde, says.
In 1983, Goniwe and Calata became firm friends. Goniwe was articulate and popular, a talented and brilliant teacher who quickly won over his pupils' parents. He was also an exceptional organiser, and worked both legally as a United Democratic Front (UDF) regional organiser and underground for the ANC.
Together, they had formed the Cradock Residents' Association and later the Cradock Youth Association to fight rent hikes and improve conditions in the townships and schools. Their civic activism rapidly gained police attention.
They were joined by Mkonto, a railways worker fired for union activities and who was also now on the police radar.
The security police ordered the education department to transfer the "troublemaker", Goniwe, to Graaff-Reinet. He refused to be transferred. The department thereupon said he had "dismissed himself", sparking the schools boycott as a protest at his dismissal.
Meetings were banned. Political unrest ensued. Teargas. Guns. Funerals. Repeat.
By March 1984, finance minister Barend du Plessis suggested to the State Security Council (SSC) that the two "agitators" be "removed". The SSC was a shadowy, parallel government of securocrats that few people knew about.
Days later, security police intelligence boss Craig Williamson sent an operative to Cradock to see how Goniwe could be "taken out".
Then Goniwe, his cousin Mbulelo Goniwe, Calata, and schoolboy Madoda Jacobs were detained for six months. Resistance escalated to a seven-day boycott of white business. The activists were freed on Kruger Day, October 10 1984.
Early the following year, Matthew Goniwe met US senator Edward Kennedy. Violent protests raged in the Eastern Cape.
Goniwe chaired the ANC military working committee for the Karoo, reporting to Chris Hani. He was transforming political structures into military ones, and introduced bottom-up democratic governance (called the "G-Plan"), using street, zone, area and regional committees.
This new self-governance plan had persuaded local community councillors to resign en masse, creating the first "liberated zone". The G-Plan was later used around SA.
Goniwe negotiated. He called off the schools boycott in April.
As the SSC doves debated his future, the hawks seized the initiative, led by Van der Westhuizen, who earlier had sent a top-secret signal to the SSC requesting the "permanent removal from society" of the two Goniwes and Calata.
The SSC marked the "terrorist" Matthew Goniwe for assassination, although FW de Klerk denies knowledge of the "death order". Within days the Port Elizabeth security police were ready. Goniwe reported to the UDF in the city every week, so the cops set a roadblock.
Mhlauli, working as a headmaster in Oudtshoorn, was a childhood friend of Goniwe's in Cradock for a holiday and had come along to "catch up on old times". A tragic journey.
After the death of the Cradock Four, Van der Westhuizen was promoted, although he denied planning any murders. The first inquest found "unknown persons" responsible.
When Van der Westhuizen's top-secret signal was revealed in 1992, De Klerk reopened the inquest, and the "security forces" were found responsible.
To date, none of the killers has been prosecuted. The post-1994 government illegally quashed all post-TRC prosecutions as it feared some ANC members might also face prosecution.
The families continue to grieve without closure, without justice, while the killers walk free.
- Forbes is an independent social and political commentator who researched the murders for seven years to make the award-winning film "The Cradock Four". www.thecradockfour.co.za
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.