Mystery slaughter trail cold

Twenty-five years later, the victims of the 1993 East London Highgate Hotel shooting are still looking for justice.

The group is frustrated that the wheels of justice have dragged for this long. Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the horror attack.

At first it was blamed on Apla, which denied responsiblility. Then former police investigator Captain Daryl Els suggested evidence pointed to a propaganda killing carried out by a right-wing element in the apartheid state which had sought to poison and disrupt the 1994 elections.

While there was talking of an inquest being opened, the group is sceptical.

The gruesome random shooting on May 1, 1993, claimed five lives and left scores of people injured, some permanently disabled.

Victims spoken to this week continue to question why no one has been brought to book.

The Highgate Survivors’ Support Group say their efforts to find closure have been thwarted by the slow progress of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in setting up an inquest.

On that fateful day, Derek Whitfield, Stan Hacking, Deon Wayne Harris, Dave Wheeler and Douglas Gates were shot dead in cold blood. Three people are permanently disabled and four others were seriously injured.

Initially Apla, the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress, was blamed for the terror attack, but later revelations pointed towards a “third force”, perhaps elements of the apartheid-era security forces who wanted to whip up hostile emotions in the runup to the historic 1994 election.

Survivor Neville Beling, who took bullets in his back, left hip and left arm, yesterday said the little group of survivors were still “frustrated” that 25 years down the line, no one has ever been called to account.

Beling said there was nothing planned to commemorate the massacre yesterday. “We would have liked to host a commemoration event but there are funding constraints. Every year around this day we would get a lot of messages from sympathising people, but this year it has been quiet,” he said.

Beling, who was 20 when he was gunned down, said the survivors were “not pleased” that investigations has yielded no results in 25 years.

“We are also frustrated by the NPA’s failure to reopen an inquest into the matter after they had promised to do so years ago. The NPA now even avoids our calls,” charged Beling.

In 2006, Beling told the Dispatch that the NPA had responded positively to a request to reopen the investigation into matter. “But since then, nothing has materialised”.

Leads were followed, said Beling, and evidence was found that should have pushed the investigation further, but no progress was made.

Attempts to get comment from NPA provincial spokesman Tsepo Ndwalaza proved fruitless at the time of writing yesterday.

In November 2006, then PAC president Letlapa Mphahlele denied that Apla was involved, saying that as Apla’s former commander he would have known about it.

In the same year, former police investigator Captain Daryl Els suggested to the victims that such a massacre could have been the work of a “third force” acting on behalf of elements of the apartheid regime.

Els provided a list of disturbing features of the massacre:

lThe attackers wore black or dark blue uniforms and balaclavas, and used AK47s, a hand grenade and teargas but Apla used R1s, R4s and R5s as they could not get ammunition for AK47s;

lThe shooters withdrew under clouds of tear gas which was “a first”;

lSome attackers had heavy camouflage paint on their faces, raising speculation they could be white;

lApla routinely hijacked vehicles to use in attacks, which were later found abandoned, but no vehicles were reported stolen or hijacked in East London before the Highgate attack;

lThe Highgate killers appeared have had more training and had far greater accuracy in shooting compared the modus of other Apla attacks;

lApla re-used their weapons, so attacks were linked ballistically. The AK47s used at Highgate were never linked ballistically before or after that attack to anything, which shows that they were used specifically for that attack and destroyed; and

lPolice investigators received intelligence reports from different branches of the security forces on other attacks, but there was nothing compiled about the Highgate slayings. —