WeeklySA_AdminTrigger: The confession was triggered by the case of the mysterious death of anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol
By WSAM Reporter
One of the four apartheid security policemen implicated in the murder of a Daveyton, Benoni political activist nearly forty years ago, tried to commit suicide by drinking an overdose of 30 pills after being haunted by the fact that he had lied before court and that he had pulled the trigger that killed the student leader.
According to the major Afrikaans newspaper, Rapport, Johan Marais (62), confessed to the killing of Caiphus Nyoka, a student leader who was shot while lying on his bed at the backrooms of his parents’ 999 Lemba Street, Daveyton home on August 23, 1987.
Nyoka, an anti-apartheid activist and senior member of the local branch of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), was with three of his friends when they were awakened by a group of security policemen.
After being cleared of any wrong doing by a magistrate during an inquest in 1989 when the court ruled that they acted in self defence, Marais, in a dramatic turn of events, told a journalist of the Rapport newspaper that on that fateful day, one of his colleagues had told him that he must ‘’ take out ’’ Nyoka as soon as they were alone with him. He ( Marais) shot him in the head after they had ordered his friends to leave the room.
One of the policemen also told Marais not to worry about the killing because they (police) were going to reconstruct the crime scene to look as if there was a struggle inside the room.
Haunted by the murder of the innocent student leader, Marais tried to take his own life by drinking an overdose of thirty pills and an anti – freeze liquid while he was in Amanzimtoti. The attempt to end his life was unsuccessful.
He tried again to commit suicide by lying on the rail tracks but no train went past that area that day. The following day he went to the police station in Amanzimtoti to make a statement confessing to Nyoka’s murder.
The Rapport newspaper also confirmed that Marais had told them that his confession was also triggered by the case of former apartheid special branch policeman, Joao Rodrigues, who was charged with the murder of anti-apartheid activist, Ahmed Timol on October 22, 1971.
Timol, a teacher from Roodepoort, was arrested and interrogated by police at the then John Vorster Square police station. After his mysterious death- a few days after his arrest- police said he threw himself out of a window on the 10th floor.
Timol was one of many political activists whose lives ended mysteriously after being arrested and interrogated at this police station.
An inquest held in 1972 found nobody responsible for Timol’s death. The magistrate ruled that Timol had committed suicide. His family however refused to believe that their son had taken his life and were adamant that the police were responsible for his death.
This finding by the magistrate was reversed by Judge Billy Mothle at the re-opened inquest in 2017. The Judge also recommended that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) should investigate the role Rodrigues played in Timol’s murder. The former policeman was later charged with murder.
He did not live long to face the music. He took his secrets to the grave when he died after an illness in September 2021. He was in his 80s.
According to Marais, the Rodrigues ordeal opened old wounds and he thought it better to confess to his crime. He told the Rapport newspaper : ‘’ I can no longer look over my shoulders about the problems of my past’’.
Marais (62), Leon Louis van den Berg (72), Abram Hercules Engelbrecht (60) and Pieter Egbert Stander (61) – are expected to appear in the Benoni Magistrate’s Court on November 18, 2024 to face charges of murder, conspiracy to murder and defeating the ends of justice. They are alleged to have planned the execution of the anti-apartheid leader, Nyoka.
Three of the policemen who were fingered as the alleged killers, were let off the hook when they appeared at an inquest hearing in 1989 to determine if any of them should be held liable for Nyoka’s death.
The court ruled that none of them could be held criminally responsible as they had acted in self defence when they fired the shots that killed the student activist.
Marais and Stander were members of the Riot Unit, Van den Berg, the commander of the security branch in Benoni while Engelbrecht was a member of the security branch in the area.
The State now contends that the four accused had ‘’acted in the furtherance of a common purpose’’ in the commission of the alleged offences and in furtherance of the apartheid policies of the time.
In earlier reports about the family’s efforts to pursue justice, it had been reported that in 1997, Nyoka’s sister, Alegria, had testified at a sitting of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Benoni about how she was prevented or blocked by an ‘’aggressive white policeman’’ when she tried to exit through the kitchen door of the house to get to the backyard to see what was taking place during the police raid on the day her brother was brutally murdered.
The Nyoka family is represented pro bono by the prominent firm of lawyers, Webber Wentzel.
