Highgate attack – still no justice 25 years later
TWENTY-five years have passed and victims of the 1993 East London Highgate Hotel shooting are still looking for justice.
The group is frustrated that the wheels of justice have dragged on for this long – yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the mysterious slayings.
The attacks were first blamed on Apla, which denied responsibility, and then former police investigator Captain Daryl Els later suggested evidence pointed to a propaganda killing carried out by a right-wing element in the apartheid state which sought to poison and disrupt the 1994 elections.
While there were plans to have an inquest opened, the group is sceptical. The gruesome random shooting on May 1 1993 claimed five lives and left scores of people injured, some permanently disabled.
Victims spoken to this week continue to question why no one had been brought to book.
The Highgate Survivors’ Support Group claim that their efforts to find closure have been thwarted by slow progress of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in setting up an inquest.
On that fateful day, Derek Whitfield, Stan Hacking, Deon Wayne Harris, Dave Wheeler and Douglas Gates were shot dead in cold blood, while three other people were left disabled and four others seriously injured.
Survivor Neville Beling, who took bullets in his back, left hip and left arm, said yesterday the group of survivors were still “frustrated” that 25 years down the line, no one has ever been called to account.
Beling said there was nothing planned to commemorate the massacre yesterday. “We would have liked to host a commemoration event on this day, but due to funding constraints, nothing was planned.”
Beling, who was 20 when he was gunned down, said the survivors were “not pleased” that investigations had yielded no results in 25 years.
“We are also frustrated by the NPA’s failure to reopen an inquest into the matter after they had promised to do so years ago. The NPA now even avoids our calls,” Beling said.
In 2006, Beling said that the NPA had responded positively to a request to reopen the investigation into matter, “but since then, nothing has materialised”.
Leads were followed, Beling said, and evidence was found that should have pushed the investigation further, but no progress was made.