An act of depravity: the Gugulethu Seven murders
A new book casts the story of the 1986 assassination of the seven young men in a new light and shows how good journalism played a crucial role in thwarting a state cover-up
As atrocities by apartheid death squads go, the cold-blooded murder of the young men who came to be known as the Gugulethu Seven stands out as particularly diabolical. The killing of Mandla Simon Mxinwa, Zanisile Zenith Mjobo, Zola Alfred Swelani, Godfrey Jabulani Miya, Christopher Piet, Themba Mlifi and Zabonke John Konile has been written about extensively, including in Antjie Krog’s There was this Goat, while Lindy Wilson’s 1999 documentary The Gugulethu Seven remains a seminal account.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) amnesty hearings exposed the full inhumanity of those who had participated and how they had glibly lied, planted weapons and gloated about their work and their lawlessness.
Until a journalist, Chris Bateman, who could speak fluent Zulu and who happened to be a colleague of mine at the Cape Times, found eyewitnesses in nearby hostels who had seen through their windows the assassinations of the young men by police, at point-blank range.
The beginning
At about 7.30am on 3 March 1986, during what was known as a “partial state of emergency”, an explosion rocked Gugulethu at an intersection at NY1, the main artery leading to the township. This was followed by volleys of bullets and then silence.
Beverley Roos-muller’s just-published Hunting the Seven: How the Gugulethu Seven Assassins were Exposed is a first-hand account of what went down in the aftermath. She saw it all.
The former University of Cape Town academic, anti-apartheid activist, journalist and broadcaster revisits the story, plucking it out of the blood, guts and rage of the TRC and tossing it into new light.
The assassinations were, she writes, akin to South Africa’s “Watergate”, only worse.
A state cover-up of a well-planned and orchestrated ambush by the South African Police Service (SAPS) and members of the Vlakplaas death squad was only thwarted because of good journalism and intervention by the Progressive Federal Party Member of Parliament for Green Point, Tian van der Merwe, and others. Van der Merwe was a practising attorney and had been in Parliament for nine years as its youngest member.
Solid and fearless on-scene reporting, encouraged by courageous editors like Tony Heard, who died on 27 March this year, drove this story, alongside a committed legal team which launched a full-scale defence when the mighty state attacked.
Heard was my first editor and the man who poured courage into my veins.
This is why Roos-muller’s book is so necessary at present, when the trust factor in media is being eroded by grifters and fake members of the fourth estate.
It also reminds us of the absolutely crucial role of journalism in the face of serious state persecution and prosecution. It is a master class.
Both Bateman and another former Cape Times colleague, Tony Weaver (now a Daily Maverick colleague), understood from the start that the Gugulethu massacre was an unusual event.
Weaver’s time covering the
Namibian war had taught him about Koevoet, the notorious counterinsurgency unit of the South West African Police, and its operations in the region.
These were men, black and white, seconded from the Security Branch’s Special Task Force. Their brutality and their modus operandi were well known and documented.
It was the sight of a Casspir in Gugulethu, seen usually only in the Namibian deserts, that heightened the spoor the journalists, including Roos-muller and Van der Merwe, began to follow.
The lies and the cover-up
The official line by the SAPS was that it had been ambushed in a “terrorist” attack and had simply retaliated, killing all the insurgents who were, it claimed, members of MK, the ANC’S banned armed wing.
It was a victory for the SAPS and it was lauded for its swift work defending the state from terrorists now operating in the Western Cape, a region not known for this kind of operation.
Roos-muller takes us into the homes of the grieving mothers and their confusion at seeing their sons’ bodies for the first time on television during the news.
Hunting the Seven reminds us that resistance is in the DNA of the South African media and we should look to our institutional memory of the power of shining a light of truth in the face of even the threat of death, detention or a prison sentence.
We have countless examples apart from Bateman and Weaver. There are Peter Magubane, Henry Nxumalo, Ruth First, Noni Jabavu, Juby Mayet, Aggrey Klaaste, Joyce Sikhakhane-rankin, Zwelakhe Sisulu, Allister Sparks and Harvey Tyson. The list is long.
The blurb for Roos-muller’s book sets out that “never have seven people been so hunted. By assassins. By journalists, lawyers and activists in search of the truth and TRC investigators wanting justice for the victims’ families.”
The entire operation, it was finally revealed, was planned by Eugene de Kock’s Vlakplaas death squad, but the motive has always been unclear.
Revisiting the matter, researching from scratch, sifting through evidence, interviews and affidavits, she reveals that the operation by Vlakplaas was “an elaborate and deadly scheme designed to keep the money rolling into the death squad’s slush fund”.
The Gugulethu Seven had been lured to their death by members of the unit, one of whom later confessed to this. The dead were not members of MK, neither were they heavily armed.
In the end, it was all about money and depravity. Roos-muller’s book is an excellent read and highly recommended for anyone working in the media space.
Hunting the Seven reminds us that resistance is in the DNA of the South African media and we should look to our institutional memory of the power of shining a light of truth in the face of
even the threat of death