South African anti-apartheid activists sue govt over lack of justice

Twenty-five families of victims and survivors of apartheid-era crimes are suing the South African government over a "gross failure" to investigate and prosecute perpetrators, said the rights group representing victims on Thursday.

The suit filed Monday at the Pretoria High Court targets President Cyril Ramaphosa, the justice and police ministers and the heads of the public prosecutor service and national police, according to documents shared by the Foundation for Human Rights (FHR).

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) established to after apartheid ended in 1994 granted hundreds of amnesties but also recommended prosecutions in more than 300 cases, most of which were never pursued.

The victims' relatives include the son of Fort Calata, one of the so-called Cradock Four anti-apartheid activists who were abducted and murdered in June 1985.

They are "seeking constitutional damages for the government's gross failure to adequately investigate and prosecute apartheid-era political crimes", FHR said in a statement.

"They also seek an order compelling the president to establish an independent and public commission of inquiry into the political interference that resulted in the suppression of several hundred serious crimes arising from South Africa's past," it said.

Lukhanyo Calata, whose father Fort was burnt and stabbed to death, said in a statement the families had been "denied our constitutional right to justice" because successive governments had "failed to implement the recommendations of the TRC's Amnesty Committee".

Critics had long suspected a secret agreement to avoid prosecutions between the post-apartheid leadership of the African National Congress and former white minority government.

The deal was confirmed in a 2021 statement by the foundation of the country's final white president FW de Klerk.

Housing minister Thembi Nkadimeng, who was also once the justice minister, is among the applicants in the latest case.

Her sister Nokuthula Simelane, killed in 1983, was believed to have been abducted and tortured by security forces.

The trial for Simelane's murder, first opened in 2016, has been postponed repeatedly.

© Agence France-Presse