JOHANNESBURG - The families of apartheid-era crime victims are frustrated over former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma's bid to remove Justice Sisi Khampepe from the inquiry.
They held a joint media briefing earlier.
The TRC Cases Inquiry is chaired by retired Justice Sisi Khampepe. Earlier this month, President Cyril Ramaphosa joined former presidents Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki in calling for her to step down.
He said he would not oppose the application for her recusal, citing that at the time he appointed her to chair the Inquiry, he was unaware that she had been appointed by the late former president Nelson Mandela as a TRC Commissioner in the 1990s.
The court bid by Zuma and Mbeki to have Khampepe step aside, a case that pits judicial independence against political influence, will be argued before a full bench in Johannesburg on Monday and Tuesday.
Minister of Human Settlements, Thembi Simelane who’s sister Nokuthula was abducted, tortured, and forcibly disappeared by members of the Security Branch of the South African Police (SAP) in 1983, said for them as families, this was not just another inquiry or commission for them, because they had lost loved ones.
“The actions of former presidents Mbeki and Zuma, coupled with the support from our current President to halt the work of the commission are deeply troubling for us. Yet given the testimony heard so far about political interference, they are perhaps not entirely surprising,” she said.
Also at the briefing was Alegria Nyoka, the sister of Caiphus Nyoka who was an anti-apartheid activist and student leader in Daveyton. He was killed in 1987.
There was Nomonde Calata, the widow of Fort Calata who was one of the Cradock Four, a collective name given to Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe, Sicelo Mhlauli, and Sparrow Mkonto. On 27 June 1985, on their way back to Cradock from Port Elizabeth, the four were arrested at a roadblock set by the Security Branch, assaulted, and murdered.
Simelane’s mother Ernestina was also in attendance, as well as Hlekani Rikhotso, sister of the late Ignatius 'Iggy' Mthebule. He was a student activist and leader associated with the Azanian Student Organisation (AZASO). He was forcibly disappeared in 1987.