Pebco Three

The Pebco Three were three black South African anti-apartheid activists who were abducted and subsequently murdered in 1985 by members of the South African Security Police.

The Disappearance

On May 8, 1985, Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation (PEBCO)members Sipho Hashe, Champion Galela, and Qaqawuli Godolozi disappeared from an airport in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. PEBCO is thought to have been an affiliate of the United Democratic Front, which was believed at the time to be a secret internal wing of the then-banned African National Congress. Although it was strongly suspected that the Security Police had something to do with the three activists' disappearance, nothing was known of their fate of until November 1997.

The Confession

On November 11, former Security Police Officer Colonel Gideon Nieuwoudt, while applying for amnesty during a Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing, confessed to participating in the beating, robbery, and murder of the Pebco Three. According to his testimony, Nieuwoudt lured the three men by having a paid police informant pose as a British embassy official interested in providing a cash donation to Pebco call Sipho Hashe at his home. The informant convinced Sipho and his two friends to come to the airport to pick up the donation. (Nieuwoudt later refused to name the informant for fear of his safety.) The three men were apprehended by members of the Security Police and taken to an abandoned police station on a farm at Post Chalmers, near Cradock. They were then interrogated, stripped of their possessions, beaten, sedated, and finally strangled. The bodies were burned and the remains were thrown into the nearby Fish River.

The Court Case

Also incriminated in the case were former policemen Johan Hannes "Slang" Van Zyl and Johannes Koole. Van Zyl voluntarily surrendered to police in Port Elizabeth on February 11, 2004. He had been out of the country on a United Nations humanitarian mission in Southeast Asia. Because amnesty was denied to all accused in the case, each man faces three counts of murder and three counts of assault to do grevious bodily harm. The trial was set for October 12, but has since been postponed by the defense, pending a Truth and Reconciliation Commission review of the 1989 Motherwell Bombing in which Nieuwoudt was also involved.

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