By Lebone Rodah Mosima
The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) and the GOOD party have hailed the conviction of two former apartheid police officers for the 1987 murder of student activist Caiphus Nyoka.
The Pretoria High Court, sitting in Johannesburg, on Tuesday found former sergeants Abraham Hercules Engelbrecht and Pieter Stander guilty of the premeditated murder of Nyoka at his family home in Daveyton, east of Johannesburg.
The pair, members of a police reaction unit, will return to court on 11 December for a bail application ahead of sentencing. They were both remanded in custody.
Nyoka, a student activist, was a member of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and active in other youth structures on the East Rand.
He served as an organiser for the Transvaal Students Congress (TRASCO), was involved in the South African Youth Congress (SAYCO) and was president of the student representative council at Mabuya High School.
In the early hours of 24 August 1987, officers stormed his room during a raid and shot him multiple times after removing three other youths who were sleeping there.
A 1988 inquest cleared the police, but the TRC later recognised Nyoka as a victim of gross human rights violations and recommended that the case be investigated for possible prosecution.
The ANCYL said the guilty verdict vindicated what young activists, the democratic movement and Nyoka’s family had long maintained about his killing.
“Caiphus Nyoka was brutally assassinated by the apartheid security machinery for daring to stand on the side of justice, freedom and the liberation of Black children,” the ANCYL said.
“His murder was not an accident of history; it was a cold and calculated act of political repression.”
The league said it stood with the Nyoka family, “who had to endure a long generational pain”, and welcomed the role of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks) in finally bringing the case to trial and securing convictions.
“The Youth League remains clear: every individual who participated in, ordered, enabled or covered up apartheid crimes must face full consequences, no matter their age, rank or political protection,” the youth league said.
They called for a swift resolution of all outstanding Truth and Reconciliation Commission matters and said that justice — particularly for families whose loved ones were murdered, disappeared, or tortured by the apartheid regime — should be resolved.
“We further call on young people to draw strength from the courage of Comrade Caiphus Nyoka and the generations of students who refused to bow to tyranny.”
The league said it would closely monitor sentencing proceedings, to ensure the killers were handed appropriate sentences.
The GOOD party said that Nyoka’s murder was among 300 other serious human rights violations that were recommended for prosecution by the TRC over 30 years ago, but which lay dormant for decades.
The party said the appointment of a judicial commission of inquiry by President Cyril Ramaphosa followed a High Court application by survivors and families of apartheid-era victims seeking constitutional damages for the alleged political suppression of TRC cases.
The commission, established in May 2025 and chaired by retired Constitutional Court Judge Sisi Khampepe, was mandated to investigate whether successive governments or state institutions interfered with, delayed or blocked the investigation and prosecution of apartheid-era crimes identified by the TRC, and to recommend steps to remedy those failures.
“Under extreme pressure from the families, the State has, of late, shown signs of renewed interest in seeing justice done,” GOOD.
“It has reopened the Cradock Four and Chief Albert Luthuli inquests — among others — leading to calls last week from the Pan-Africanist Congress for the re-examination of the death of its former leader, the legendary anti-apartheid activist Robert Sobukwe”.
GOOD called for justice in all the 300-plus cases.
“When prosecutors are allowed to act selectively to satisfy their political masters, the integrity of the entire criminal justice system is undermined”.
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