The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) will open an inquest to unearth the truth into the May 1985 murder of three Port Elizabeth freedom fighters known as the PEBCO Three – Sipho Samuel Hashe, Qaqawuli Godolozi and Twasile Champion Galela.
This follows a nod from the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Ronald Lamola, after the Eastern Cape Director of Public Prosecutions, Barry Madolo, recommended that it should be reopened.
Unlike in other cases like those of Chief Albert Luthuli and Ahmed Timol, where the apartheid government held sham inquests and covered up the truth, there was no formal inquest held into the deaths of the PEBCO Three.
According to the NPA, Hashe, Godolozi, and Galela were leaders of the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation (PEBCO), which was affiliated to the United Democratic Front (UDF). At the height of civil resistance against the apartheid government and its deadliest reign in the Eastern Cape, the three left their homes on 08 May 1985 to meet a prospective donor at the former Hendrik Verwoerd Airport (now named Chief Dawid Stuurman International Airport), and they were never to be seen again.
Their fate came to the public light in November 1997 during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings when a former Security Branch (SB) policeman, Colonel Gideon Niewoudt, applied for amnesty. The notorious Niewoudt confessed to participating in the abduction, robbery, and murder of the PEBCO Three.
He told the commission that he paid a police informant to pose as a British embassy official to lure the three deceased to a meeting that was to discuss a potential donation to PEBCO. When they arrived at the airport, they were abducted by members of the SB and taken to an abandoned police station near Cradock (Inxuba), Post Chalmers, where they were interrogated, stripped, beaten, repeatedly suffocated, drugged, strangled, and burnt on a diesel-soaked pyre whilst their killers enjoyed braaied meat nearby.
Some of the remains of the deceased were thrown into the nearby Fish River in the Eastern Cape.
Later, ten more members of the SB, including askaris, applied for amnesty for the deaths of the three.
However, amnesty was only granted to two applicants (who are both dead) for conspiracy to commit murder, abduction, and assault.
Niewoudt, Johannes Martin “Sakkie” Van Zyl and Johannes Koole were indicted in the Gqeberha High Court after the TRC hearings. Due to interlocutory applications and the subsequent deaths of the three accused, the matter could not proceed.
