- At the TRC investigations commission on Tuesday, former police minister Bheki Cele admitted that his refusal to fund legal fees for apartheid police hindered prosecutions.
- Cele accepted that this affected victims’ families, including the Cosas 4 and Nokuthula Simelane.
- Cele defended his decision based on his own experiences of torture and his opposition to state funds being used to defend perpetrators of crimes against black people.
Former police minister Bheki Cele has conceded that his refusal to have the government fund the legal fees of apartheid police accused of committing crimes against humanity saw perpetrators die without facing prosecution.
Cele made the concession on Tuesday at the commission of inquiry into the halted Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) investigations. The commission is under way in Newtown, Johannesburg.
Cele told the commission that he accepts that this affected the victims’ families.
In addition, Cele told the commission that the rationale for his refusal was based on his own experience of torture and arrests at the hands of apartheid police.
These include the families of the Cosas 4 and Nokuthula Simelane.
The Cosas 4 are Eustice “Bimbo” Madikela, Peter “Ntshingo” Matabane, Fanyana Nhlapo and Zandisile Musi. They were teenage anti-apartheid activists and members of the Congress of South African Students from Kagiso, Johannesburg.
READ | Delays in apartheid-era crimes: Only 1 prosecuted while 158 remain under investigation
On 15 February 1982, the Security Branch of the South African Police (SAP) lured them to a pump house near Krugersdorp under the false promise of receiving military training, the Foundation for Human Rights website states.
Simelane, who is the sister of senior ANC national executive committee member and Human Settlements Minister Thembi Simelane, was abducted, tortured, and forcibly disappeared by members of the Security Branch of the SAP in 1983. In 2001, the TRC’s Amnesty Committee granted some of the perpetrators amnesty for Nokuthula’s abduction, but none of the perpetrators applied for amnesty for her murder.
Cele served as police minister from 2018 to 2024.
Giving testimony at the commission on Tuesday and also reading from his sworn affidavit, Cele said: “I accept that as a result of the position I adopted, there are members of the Security Branch that never faced prosecutions, which affected members of the families appearing before this commission and beyond.”
Cele argued that for him, it made no sense that perpetrators of crimes against black people used money sourced from the same black people to defend their atrocities.
The decision was taken despite a Gauteng High Court and later a Supreme Court of Appeal judgment that the South African Police Service (SAPS) has a legal obligation to cover the reasonable legal fees of former Security Branch members facing prosecution for apartheid-era crimes.
Cele said:
My position then, and it continues to be, that SAPS ought not to have extended monies to pay for the legal costs of lawyers who were, in essence, providing legal representation of members of SAPS, like Colonel Botha, who had tortured, kidnapped and killed innocent activists who were fighting for the liberation of this country.
He explained that Botha was his enemy.
Cele said he did not wake up to become a police minister.
“I had a history before then, which I carried with me into this position. When I had to make decisions as a minister of police, and issues came across my desk, I approached them with all of my biographical experience,” Cele said.
He added that insofar as police matters were concerned, he had a painful history.
Cele further said:
I had lost comrades, graves had been dug up by Madeleine Fullard’s Unit, the Missing Persons Unit, where I had stayed in the same premises. I had seen exhumations of bodies of my friends in sitting positions, indicating that they were buried alive.
In his affidavit, he also argued that when he took office, he learned that the state had spent about R218 million on prosecuting Wouter Basson.
Cele stated that Basson used his medical knowledge to wage biological warfare against black people inside and outside the country, “only for him to be found not guilty”.
2010 FIFA World Cup prioritised over TRC cases
During his testimony, Cele revealed that, during his tenure as police commissioner from 2008 to 2011, a decision was made to prioritise the 2010 World Cup.
This meant that TRC cases were put on the back burner. The information did not sit right with the commissioners, who grilled Cele on the rationale.
Cele told the commission that when he was appointed as police commissioner, the SAPS had a “very serious project”: the 2010 World Cup.
“I admit that many other things would have taken a little bit of a back seat, because we had to make this 2010 happen,” Cele said.
READ | ‘SAPS saved 2010 World Cup’: Cele recalls how generals calmed FIFA’s crime fears
He said that, at the time, the major issue was the narrative globally that the 2010 World Cup couldn’t come to South Africa because “we were a crime paradise”.
“South African Police saved the World Cup, and perhaps that isn’t a big good story that is spoken about the SAPS,” Cele said.
He said the police saved the World Cup because months before the tournament was meant to start in June 2010, the South African Football Association president called on the national commissioner, who was in KuGompo (formerly East London) on police business, to come to OR Tambo International Airport, where a discussion was under way that the World Cup would be hosted by another country.
Former police minister Bheki Cele testifies before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) inquiry.
Following that meeting, Cele flew a group of 13 generals to Zurich to convince the powers that be that the World Cup in South Africa would be safe.
“That is the trip that saved the World Cup, but unfortunately, that story is not told,” Cele said.
It was at this point that one of the commissioners, Andrea Gabriel SC, interjected and asked Cele: “But what about the stories of the families who are awaiting justice, arising from the report of the TRC?”
Cele said no other operation had been halted, “however, South Africa and the world had this particular task”.
The commission will continue on Wednesday with testimony from former police minister Fikile Mbalula.
