Start of COSAS 4 murder trial postponed again
The historic trial which was set to begin on Tuesday was postponed to 6 June. This pending two review applications from the defence.
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JOHANNESBURG - There was yet another delay in the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) Four case.
The historic trial, which was set to begin on Tuesday, was postponed, again.
This pending two review applications from the defence.
COSAS supporters Eustice ‘Bimbo’ Madikela, Ntshingo Mataboge and Fanyana Nhlapo were killed, and their comrade, Zandisile Musi, injured in a bomb blast at a pump house near Krugersdorp in February 1982.
It subsequently emerged that the pumphouse was rigged with explosives by the apartheid police and two former officers, Christiaan Sebert Rorich and Thlomedi Ephraim Mfalapitsa, who have now finally been charged.
The case has been hamstrung by delay after delay, though.
While the trial was finally expected to get underway, the matter was postponed until 6 June instead.
This for an application that Mfalapitsa brought to review the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)’s decision refusing amnesty to those implicated in this matter, and another, from Rorich, challenging the historic charges of crimes against humanity of murder and apartheid that they’re facing.
Rorich’s position is that these charges have now lapsed.
When the matter returns to court next month, the parties involved will plot out a way forward.
In the meantime, the decades-long wait for justice that the families of the Cosas Four have already endured continues.