Bheki Cele, the former national police commissioner, faced pointed questioning Thursday about his knowledge of unresolved apartheid-era cases, appearing before the Khampepe Commission at its Newtown, Johannesburg hearing. The inquiry, formally the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Cases Inquiry, is examining why cases referred to the South African Police Service and the National Prosecuting Authority decades ago never reached prosecution.
The commission is chaired by retired Deputy Chief Justice Sisi Khampepe, alongside retired Northern Cape High Court Judge President Justice Frans Diale Kgomo and advocate Andrea Gabriel, SC. Its mandate is to establish the operational and institutional reasons behind the investigative and prosecutorial failure. The core question is blunt: what happened to the cases, and why did the system fail to deliver justice.
This was Cele’s second appearance. During his first testimony last month, he said he had been unaware of outstanding TRC cases in 2010, when he held the commissioner’s post, attributing his focus at the time to the security arrangements required for South Africa’s hosting of the FIFA World Cup.
On Thursday, questioning turned to specific cases and Cele’s personal knowledge of individuals involved. When asked about Musawakhe “Sbho” Phewa, an uMkhonto we Sizwe operative who disappeared around 1987 from Lamontville, south of Durban, Cele acknowledged knowing him but expressed uncertainty about the circumstances. “I know him. I am not very sure if he was abducted or not. What I know and I have heard is that he went missing en route to exile,” he told the commission. He added that new information had later emerged suggesting Phewa had gone into exile, though he remained unclear about the timing of any abduction.
Phewa’s son, Mbuso Khoza, filed an affidavit with the inquiry calling for damages and documenting efforts by his aunt, Zama Khoza, to secure a special pension from the government. The affidavit identified Cele as Phewa’s closest ally and expressed frustration that, despite the family’s hopes when the ANC came to power, resources were never allocated to investigate what happened. Cele confirmed he had received the pension application but pushed back against the broader implications, stating that national leadership, not provincial structures, had been responsible for addressing TRC matters.
Questioning also extended to Ntombi Kubheka, an anti-apartheid activist kidnapped, tortured and killed in 1987 when her daughter, Thuli Kubheka, was three years old. Thuli and other family members continue to seek justice for her mother’s murder.
A significant portion of Thursday’s session involved advocate Howard Varney pressing Cele on his stated refusal to use taxpayer funds to support perpetrators of apartheid crimes. Cele argued that operatives, despite having been ordered by the apartheid regime, were carrying out criminal activities in the name of that system. Many taxpayers were themselves victims of apartheid, he contended, and should not be forced to fund the perpetrators’ support. “It should not have been debated; no need for the eye of the needle. We are debating how to take care of the proponents of apartheid. Nobody is taking the Steve Biko inquest very seriously, for example,” Cele said, referencing the activist killed in 1977 for whom no one has been held accountable.
Varney countered that families of victims had received far less support than perpetrators. He went further: even the inquiry itself, he said, lacked adequate state funding. According to reporting at https://mg.co.za/news/south-africa/2026-08-27-cele-tears-into-apartheid-operatives/, the commission has been forced to rely on pro bono legal work and charitable contributions to sustain its operations.
That detail cuts to the heart of the inquiry’s predicament. The mechanisms established to investigate and prosecute apartheid-era crimes have themselves struggled with inadequate resources and inconsistent political commitment, leaving families of victims without resolution decades after the crimes occurred. Whether the commission, operating on goodwill and donated labour, can compel the institutional accountability it was created to deliver remains the open question hanging over every session.