2 former South African apartheid police officers are convicted of killing an activist 38 years ago

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) – Two former apartheid-era police officers in South Africa were found guilty of murder Tuesday in the 1987 killing of activist and student leader Caiphus Nyoka.

Nyoka’s fatal shooting at his family home near Johannesburg during the period of white minority rule was one of many alleged abuses by apartheid police that went unpunished for decades.

Abraham Engelbrecht and Pieter Stander, who prosecutors said are both in their 60s, were convicted by a judge in the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg. They will be sentenced later. A third former police officer was acquitted.

They were brought to trial after another ex-police officer confessed publicly to Nyoka’s killing in 2019 – more than 30 years later. Johan Marais, who was a member of a special police unit called the Reaction Unit, pleaded guilty to murder in Nyoka’s killing and was sentenced to 15 years in prison in July.

Nyoka, a local anti-apartheid activist, was shot at least 12 times when officers from the notorious Reaction Unit and Special Branch unit stormed his family home in the predawn hours, according to a 1988 pathology report and court records. The pathologist found that he was likely shot in the head, neck and shoulder while sitting up in bed and was then shot multiple times in the chest, arms and hands after he fell back.

At the time, police were cleared of wrongdoing after claiming they acted in self-defense. It was common during apartheid for authorities to clear the police of any blame to cover up political killings.

Nyoka’s case was reexamined in 1997 by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an inquiry set up after white minority rule ended in 1994 to expose apartheid-era abuses and give perpetrators the chance to confess and apply for amnesty in an effort at reconciliation. No one came forward then to accept responsibility for Nyoka’s killing.

The commission found that there were thousands of cases of political killings, abductions and torture during apartheid and recommended hundreds for criminal investigation, but hardly any were prosecuted, leading to years of anger from victims, family members and others.

South African authorities finally moved to revisit some of the alleged abuses this year after public pressure. A new inquest into the 1967 death of Albert Luthuli, the then-leader of the African National Congress anti-apartheid movement, ruled in October that he was beaten to death, likely by security police, and rejected a finding by an apartheid-era inquest that he died as a result of being hit by a freight train.

Authorities have also said they will hold a new investigation into the 1977 death in police custody of iconic anti-apartheid figure Steve Biko, whose killing sparked a renewed global outcry against South Africa’s brutal system of forced segregation.

Another inquiry will examine if South Africa’s democratic post-apartheid governments that were led by the ANC deliberately blocked investigations into killings, as some families of victims alleged.