In 1992 an ANC self-defence unit (SDU), commanded by a high-ranking ANC underground officer, Donald Makhura, came through Bethlehem in the Free State, ferrying arms to cadres in KwaZulu-Natal. The unit had been ordered that it was not allow itself to be disarmed, that it had to shoot its way out of any sticky situation.
One of the SDU members was the brother-in-law of Mofokeng, then 25 years old and a low-level employee at Checkers. The SDU stayed over at the house where he lived.
The next day the SDU left in a bakkie. But when it broke down just outside Bethlehem, the SDU members were approached by two police constables. The unit members opened fire, killing one of the policemen while the other sustained permanent brain damage. A farmer was also shot in the stomach when he tried to pursue the SDU.
Police launched a manhunt for the killers, shot dead two, while two escaped to Lesotho. Others hid at the house where Mofokeng lived in Bethlehem. The police caught them all - and, nine months later, six men appeared in front of former Free State Judge President PJ Malherbe.
Makhura, three SDU members, Mofokeng and Mokoena were charged with murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit robbery. The state alleged that Mofokeng and Mokoena had conspired with the SDU to rob a smallholding in the area. The state relied on the evidence of a childhood friend of Mofokeng's, a man called Thabo Motaung.
Motaung, who died a few years later, later went to see Mofokeng and Mokoena in jail. He told them that, under intense pressure from the security branch and having been promised money, he had given false evidence against them.
Everyone charged was given a life sentence for murder, even though the court acknowledged that some of the state's evidence was a little questionable.
Even though the court also acknowledged that Mofokeng and Mokoena had not been present at the killings, the two were found guilty in terms of being part of the "common purpose" of the others.
The ultimate irony
In 1995, Mofokeng and Mokoena were visited by an ANC delegation and told to apply for amnesty before the TRC. This they did. But, in what would become a massive and tragic irony, they also told the truth.
This was: that they had not been involved in the shoot-out, had no political motivations of any kind, did not know how to handle a weapon, and were not members of the SDU or the ANC. Makhura, the SDU commander, testified before the TRC that the two men had had nothing whatsoever to do with his unit.
"This being the case," said the TRC officials before whom they appeared, "you have come to the wrong place; we cannot give you amnesty".
Makhura and the others were given amnesty. Mokoena and Mofokeng stayed behind in prison.
One of the most obvious proofs of the innocence of the two men was that if they had not continued to insist on their "innocence", they would have probably been given amnesty and have been hailed as struggle heroes.
"But," Mofokeng said to me when I visited him a month and a half ago, "the truth is the truth. I was not going to lie. We had nothing to do with any of that stuff. I can't handle a gun. I wouldn't know what to do with one."
I had come to visit Mofokeng and Mokoena because Mofokeng had written to the Wits Justice Project in about August last year and my predecessor at the WJP, investigative journalist Jacques Pauw, had investigated their story and written about it…
This story continues on Money Web, where it was sourced. You may click here to read further.
Note: Fusi Mofokeng and Tshokolo Joseph Mokoena were subsequently released on parole in April last year (2010)
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