Caiphus Nyoka’s elderly sister, Alegria Nyoka, has welcomed the conviction of two former apartheid-era police officers for her brother’s 1987 murder.

She said that although the family may never know the full truth of what happened that night, justice has been served.

Speaking at the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg on December 2, Nyoka addressed the media shortly after Judge Mohammed Ismail found former sergeants Abraham Engelbrecht and Pieter Stander guilty.

Their co-accused, former commanding officer Leon van den Berg, was acquitted on all charges. A fourth accused, Johan Marais, was convicted earlier this year and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment after pleading guilty.

Nyoka said that while the family had hoped the truth about what transpired on that fateful night would finally be revealed, they were nonetheless relieved that the court had found the officers guilty.

“We respect the court’s decision to acquit Van den Berg. Morally, he was in charge of the operation, but legally, he has been acquitted,” she said.

She described the convictions of Engelbrecht and Stander as a critical step towards closure after nearly four decades of waiting for justice.

“The fact that three of them have now been found guilty is better than the 38 years we have waited while they continued living normal lives, while ours were turned upside down after that night. This is the first step towards closure, but full closure would have come with the whole truth,” Nyoka said.

She rejected the accused officers’ long-standing claim that they killed Caiphus in self-defence.

“We grew up with Caiphus. We knew what he was capable of and what he was not. We always knew their version was wrong.

“Now the court has confirmed that he was unarmed, defenceless and was murdered while sleeping. He was killed in his own room while we were nearby,” she said.

Handing down his judgment, Ismail said the assailants entered Caiphus’s room not to effect an arrest, but to assassinate him.

“When the deceased was shot, he posed no threat to the officers. Although Engelbrecht did not shoot Caiphus, he gave the instruction that Caiphus should be killed. The court finds that Stander was one of the shooters who fired shots which caused the deceased’s death,” he said.

Board member of the Human Rights Foundation and former member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Yasmin Sooka, said the judgment marked the end of a 38-year struggle for the Nyoka family.

“We are pleased that the judge convicted these two men of murder, and we strongly disagree with the defence argument that this case should be treated differently because of the passage of time. This was a cold-blooded execution of a young man, and it destroyed the lives of his family. It is heartbreaking that Caiphus’s father did not live to witness this moment of justice,” Sooka said.

The matter has been postponed to December 11 for a bail application pending sentencing for Engelbrecht and Stander. Both men remain in custody.

What happened that night

According to the National Prosecuting Authority of South Africa, on the evening of August 23, 1987, Engelbrecht and Stander, who were members of the Reaction Unit within the SAPS, met and planned to kill Nyoka.

In the early hours of August 24, 1987, at about 02:30, the officers and other members of the Reaction Unit arrived at Nyoka’s home and stormed his bedroom, where he and three friends were sleeping. After identifying him, they removed the friends from the room and shot Nyoka nine times. He died on the scene from multiple gunshot wounds.

About the case
In 1988 and 1989, during an inquest at the Benoni Magistrate’s Court, Magistrate JP Myburgh ruled that the police officers had acted in self-defence, despite the family leading evidence that Nyoka posed no threat to them before he was shot multiple times.

In 1997, Nyoka’s sister, Alegria, appeared before the TRC demanding an investigation into her brother’s murder.
Although the TRC found that members of the East Rand security police “executed Nyoka in cold blood”, no one applied for amnesty in this matter.

The case re-emerged more than two decades later, in 2019, when Marais confessed to a journalist that the police murdered Nyoka.

In light of the confession, the NPA was approached, and the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks) prompted a renewed investigation.

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