GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General
18 May 2025
The President must instruct his Ministers of Police and Justice to cover the reasonable legal costs of former State agents appearing as accused or key witnesses in long-delayed apartheid-era cases. Reasonable costs include the costs of defending accused persons in criminal trials and facilitating the co-operation of witnesses critical to the prosecution’s success. Reasonable costs do not include the execution of legal strategies to delay cases or abuse court processes. Such costs must be covered by the accused persons, themselves.
It emerged this week that former police death unit chief Eugene de Kock was approaching the High Court to demand that police fund a lawyer to assist him to give evidence as a witness at the re-opened inquest into the so-called Cradock Four. The murder of the Cradock Four in 1985 was one of more than 300 cases that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended for further investigation with a view to prosecution more than 20 years ago.
Last month, the President announced the establishment of a commission to investigate why the NPA delayed following the recommendations for decades. Besides the family of victims, the country needs to know who decided these cases shouldn’t be prosecuted, and why. This knowledge will get to the heart of the politicisation of the country’s prosecutorial processes and the criminal impunity to which it has contributed.
If, however, legal disagreements over whether the State should pick up legal costs of its former agents ensue whenever cases are eventually enrolled, it will only occasion more delays of justice and more anguish for family members. Besides which, these crimes were committed many decades ago; accused persons and witnesses who are still alive are becoming physically and mentally more decrepit.
The President can expedite the cases by instructing Ministers in his Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster on rules regarding legal fees.
If the State does not urgently resolve this matter, with the appropriate balance and nuance, it will be complicit with those who regard it in their interests to keep their spokes firmly in the wheels of justice.
- In 2018, in an effort to get the case moving, the current Minister of Human Settlements Thembi Simelane – who was then the Mayor of Polokwane – was forced to take the extraordinary step of joining her sister, Nokuthula’s, accused killers in a court action to compel the police to pay the accused’s legal costs. The murder case remains on the roll…
In 2019 it emerged that the State had paid R3.6m on the “legal defence” of Joao Roderigues, the former security policeman accused of murdering activist Ahmed Timol. His lawyers effectively executed a Stalingrad Strategy, attacking court procedure until Roderigues died.
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