Nearly four decades after Caiphus Nyoka was murdered in his own home by apartheid police, a democratic South African courtroom has finally named the crime and the men who committed it. The judgment handed down this week is more than a legal outcome. It is a moment weighted with history, memory and a kind of fragile recognition for families who waited their entire lives for the state to acknowledge the truth they always carried.
Marcelle Gordon sits down with eNCA News Director Lukhanyo Calata to unpack that weight. Calata brings not only his journalistic authority, but also the lived perspective of someone whose own father, Fort Calata of the Cradock Four, was murdered by apartheid security forces. For him, the Nyoka judgment is both familiar and deeply personal. It is a reminder of what justice can sound like after decades of silence, and of the emotional conflict that comes with receiving it too late for those who needed it most.
Where Justice Finally Spoke for Caiphus Nyoka, begins with the immediate reactions to the verdict: peace, gratitude and the bittersweet realisation that Nyoka’s parents died without ever seeing their son’s killers held accountable. Calata speaks of reaching out to the family, recalling their mixture of relief and sorrow. The judgment is undeniably a milestone, but it also highlights the long trail of failure that allowed perpetrators to live full lives while families carried unhealed wounds.
This leads to a central theme of the conversation: the consequences of the state’s decision not to prosecute hundreds of apartheid-era political killings recommended
by the TRC. Calata explains how many of these cases were ready for prosecution as early as 2003, and how political choices prevented accountability. Had the state acted then, prosecutions may have occurred when perpetrators were still in their forties and fifties, not their seventies and eighties. Justice delayed, he argues, has reshaped South Africa’s moral landscape, reinforcing the notion that black lives were negotiable even in a democracy.
The conversation also explores the persistent silence of the “foot soldiers”. While many admitted to pulling triggers, few ever revealed where the orders came from. Calata discusses how the apartheid security apparatus, including the State Security Council; operated as a shadow government in which assassinations were sanctioned, protected and concealed. The failure to identify those higher up the chain remains one of the central unfinished questions of South Africa’s transition.
Gordon and Calata also restore something that the apartheid state intentionally stripped away: the humanity of victims. Through family memories and personal descriptions, Nyoka emerges not merely as an activist or statistic, but as a young man with dreams, humour, style, compassion and a commitment to justice. Reclaiming these narratives, they argue, is part of the work of national healing.
Ultimately, this judgment is not only about the past. It is a call to confront the political decisions that buried truth, to demand transparency from those who blocked accountability, and to recommit to building the kind of society for which men like Caiphus Nyoka gave their lives. Justice may have arrived late, but its echoes carry forward.
Watch the full episode of SA Explained by clicking here.