• On Tuesday, Caiphus Nyoka’s sister, Alegria Nyoka, testified in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria in aggravation of sentencing for Johan Marais.
• Former apartheid police officer Marais pleaded guilty to Caiphus Nyoka’s 1987 murder in November last year. 
• Alegria Nyoka became emotional on the stand, recalling seeing her brother in the mortuary.

Thirty-seven years later, Alegria Nyoka still becomes emotional when she remembers the bruised and bloodied body of her brother, murdered anti-apartheid activist Caiphus Nyoka, in the mortuary.

The now 70-year-old cradled her head in her hands on the stand of the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria on Tuesday as she recalled seeing a bullet wound on his forehead.

“It came to us as a shock. The last time we had seen him, he was alive. Now all we were seeing was his corpse,” she said slowly, the pain in her voice evident.

Alegria was testifying in aggravation of sentencing for apartheid-era police officer Johan Marais who, in November, pleaded guilty to having murdered her brother.

Nyoka was shot and killed by the apartheid police at his parents’ home in Daveyton in the early hours of the morning on 24 August 1987. He was just 23 years old.

An inquest at the time found that the police had been acting in self defence. In 2022, however, three former officers – among them, Marais – were charged with his murder and defeating the administration of justice. A fourth was also subsequently added to the case.

Marais pleaded guilty to the murder charge in November, saying he had been instructed to “take out” Nyoka.

He said Nyoka – who was affiliated to various groups, including the Congress of South African Students, the South African Youth Congress and the Transvaal Students Congress – had been identified as a “threat to the apartheid government”.

The matter was last in court last week, when it was postponed for the defence to secure a specialist report for sentencing. The court heard on Tuesday this report was still outstanding but that it was expected to be available on Friday.

Bloody mattress

On the stand on Tuesday, Alegria told the court the family had attended a neighbour’s funeral the day before her brother’s murder and that she had heard footsteps in the yard that night.

“After he was killed, his body was then taken without informing us,” she said – adding that when they went into the room in which he had been sleeping the next morning, all they found was a pool of blood on his mattress.

They were shuffled from pillar to post by police, she said, until they eventually took it upon themselves to check the mortuary and found his body there.

Allegria on Tuesday said even after her brother’s death, the apartheid government would not let her and her family grieve in peace. They were slapped with restriction orders for his funeral and there was a heavy police presence at the ceremony.

She spoke about the impact her brother’s death had on her family, saying because of his youth “we were still awaiting big things from him”.

“We had also hoped and wished he would go to university and become something,” she said.

“Our family was never the same after his death. We were a very close-knit family, we loved each other. And as a result, we became quiet, we were no longer the same.”

Broken heart

“He died with a broken heart,” she said.

“He became withdrawn and antisocial. We could tell he was always thinking of Caiphus.”

Asked how she imagined her brother’s life would have turned out had he not been killed that day, Alegria said she had no doubts.

She said:

Alegria wrapped up her evidence on Tuesday afternoon and the matter was subsequently postponed to Wednesday.

In the meantime, the trial of the remaining accused – Leon Louis van den Berg, Abram Hercules Engelbrecht and Pieter Stander – got under way in the High Court sitting in Benoni in December last year. They have all pleaded not guilty and are due back in court again next month.