CAPE TOWN — In a dramatic turn of history, two former police officers from the apartheid era in South Africa have finally been found guilty for the murder of student leader and activist Caiphus Nyoka, a crime committed nearly 38 years ago, when apartheid’s brutal grip still choked the nation.
The ruling came on Tuesday from the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg, which held that ex-sergeants Abraham Engelbrecht and Pieter Stander were guilty of killing Nyoka in his home in Daveyton back in 1987. A third accused officer was acquitted after the court found insufficient evidence linking him to the crime.
At the heart of the case lies a grim chapter in South Africa’s history. According to pathologists and court records, when officers, part of the notorious Reaction Unit and other apartheid-era security forces, stormed Nyoka’s family home before dawn, they opened fire. Nyoka was reportedly shot at least 12 times, including bullets to the head, neck, shoulders, chest, arms and hands. The initial claim of self-defence used by police was widely accepted then, as it often was under apartheid, but the court’s verdict now categorically rejects that narrative as a cover-up.
This conviction follows earlier action taken in 2025: a former Reaction Unit member, Johan Marais, had already pleaded guilty for his part in the murder. He received a 15-year prison sentence this year, a rare act of accountability after decades of impunity.
For years, Nyoka’s death, like that of many others killed under apartheid, was written off as part of “law enforcement” or dismissed under vague claims of threat to the state. At the time, no one dared admit responsibility, and official investigations gave the police a clean chit. Even the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), established after apartheid’s fall, failed to bring direct perpetrators to justice in many such cases, leaving immense frustration among victims’ families and activists.
Now, nearly four decades later, this judgment sends a resounding message: the door to justice remains open, no matter how much time has passed. For survivors, victims’ families, and a nation still healing from apartheid’s scars, it’s a milestone. It’s acknowledgment that some truths refused to die in silence.
Still, the road ahead remains uncertain. Engelbrecht and Stander await sentencing. It remains to be seen whether their punishment will bring closure, or whether larger systemic reckonings, accountability for those who ordered the killing, structural reforms, and reconciliation, will finally follow.
The verdict, at least, offers a rare moment of justice in a country wrestling with its past. As one longtime activist said outside the courtroom, “This doesn’t bring Caiphus back. But it tells future generations: even when the world sleeps, the truth waits.”