Families of COSAS 4 slam one accused’s appeal challenging TRC amnesty refusal decision
The families of the COSAS activists have described the accused’s appeal as nothing more than ‘a last-ditch attempt to evade justice’.
Picture: Pixabay/WilliamCho
JOHANNESBURG - The families of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) Four have slammed an appeal brought by one of the accused in the case challenging the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)'s 2001 decision to refuse them amnesty.
In 1982, three COSAS activists were killed in a bomb blast at a pumphouse in Krugersdorp rigged by the apartheid police, and a fourth activist was injured.
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The families of the victims have described the appeal as nothing more than "a last-ditch attempt to evade justice".
Former police officer Christiaan Rorich and ex-informer Tlhomedi Mfalapitsa were finally meant to go on trial for the crime this week, but the matter’s now been postponed for Mfalapitsa’s challenge to be dealt with, among other things.
But the families of the COSAS four have applied to intervene in Mfalapitsa’s challenge.
In their papers, they said that they should have been joined from the outset and that it’s necessary now “to prevent a grave injustice from unfolding”.
They argued that the challenge, brought more than 20 years after the initial decision, is a “gross abuse of the court process”.
In the two or three years they estimate it would take to finalise, they said the already-elderly accused “may die or become medically unfit to stand trial”.
They also argued that further delays in the matter, which has already dragged on for more than 40 years in total, “may permit the accused to escape justice”.