The Birth of a Travesty
The Operation
18 years ago an APLA (Azanian People's Liberation Army) operation left three people dead and two injured in an attack that would have widespread implications for South African justice. It resulted in a case that not only exposed the injustice of Apartheid courts in their death throes, but also showed that serious flaws were inherited by the post-Apartheid criminal justice system, which has so far refused to resolve it, despite a successful appeal and a finding from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that leaves no room for doubt that the Eikenhof Three (Siphiwe Bholo, Boy Titi Ndweni and Sipho Gavin) were, as they had always insisted, entirely innocent.
On March 19th 1993 Norman Mitchley was driving his Volkswagen Passat on the Vereeniging Road, near Eikenhof. Craig Lamprecht was a passenger, along with Norman's wife Zandra, their 14 year-old son Shaun and friend Claire Silberbauer. Mziwamadoda Mpunga was driving his BMW on the same road. He was held up at gunpoint by members of APLA and it was used in the attack with AK47s that killed Silberbauer and Zandra and Shaun Mitchley. Lamprecht and Norman Mitchley were injured, but survived. The Eikenhof attack shocked South Africa, but significant facts that should have prevented a gross miscarriage of justice took damaging years to emerge.
Incredible Evidence
While I was in South Africa last year I met the Eikenhof Three and the President of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), Letlapa Mphahlele. Shortly after the attack confusion or misinformation reigned. While some believe that APLA did not take responsibility for its attack, Mphahlele insists that APLA swiftly claimed responsibility for the Eikenhof attack by telephoning media. This is vitally important as Bholo, Ndweni and Gavin were African National Congress (ANC) members and activists.
They were dragged into this appalling case deliberately and maliciously by a moribund police force and criminal justice system anxious to discredit and weaken the ANC. Despite a long and wretched history of unreliable identification cases in South Africa, the crux of the case that the Apartheid state in its death rattle brought against the Eikenhof Three was identification evidence. Mpunga had seen the men who took his car at gunpoint. He was the crucial 'independent' witness, but Mpunga wrongly identified three innocent men – Bholo, Ndweni and Gavin at an identification parade that was held at a police station.
Mistaken or malicious misidentification feature in many miscarriages of justice and this was well known in South Africa even at the height of Apartheid. Another major cause of wrongful convictions is coerced confessions. Both occurred in what would become one of the worst miscarriages of justice in African history, but there was another element to this case – a malevolent one. It was an APLA operation, but there were dark forces operating in South Africa in those times that wanted to blame the ANC to either derail the political process totally, or at least weaken the ANC's credibility and position in the negotiations that eventually consigned Apartheid to history. Disgracefully, South Africa's criminal justice system would be used and abused to secure that result and that continued even after apartheid had been defeated. The notorious Judge David Curlewis accepted the confessions as true and freely given and Mpunga's identification of the three as accurate. He sentenced Bholo and Gavin to death – later commuted to life imprisonment – and Ndweni to 17 years imprisonment. It was an atrocious miscarriage of justice that disgraced any court – even an Apartheid one. There was no scientific evidence whatsoever linking the Eikenhof Three to the Eikenhof attack and that would later prove crucial. The injustice continued even after the innocence of the Eikenhof Three became undeniable, but the truth eventually found an unusual way to emerge and proclaim their innocence from the rooftops.