Apartheid police may have bugged car the 'Cradock Four' travelled in, inquest hears

JOHANNESBURG - The inquest into the assassination of the "Cradock Four" has heard how apartheid police may have bugged the car that the anti-apartheid activists were travelling in.

Prominent anti-apartheid activist Professor Derrick Swarts is the first witness to take the stand in the inquest.

The court has spent the last two days on an in loco inspection, where significant spots related to the lives and killings of the "Cradock Four" were visited.

Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sicelo Mhlauli and Sparrow Mkhonto were assassinated by the apartheid special branch police in 1985.

Swarts was the general secretary of the United Democratic Front, an anti-apartheid group to which the "Cradock Four" belonged.

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Swarts was in the same meeting as Goniwe, Calata, Mhlauli and Mkhonto in what was then Port Elizabeth.

He recalls warning them as they returned to Cradock after the meeting.

"He indicated that he's got to make his way back because of family pressures; they had not made the arrangements, but he agreed that he would not stop unless it would be a police car or a traffic warden stopping him."

Mhlauli and his comrades would be stopped that very evening by the security branch police at the Olifantskop Pass on the N10 highway, taken back to PE and killed.

When the Goniwe family lawyer, Tembeka Ncgukaitobi, pointed out how the "Cradock Four" were stopped suspiciously, matched the warning given by Swarts who said Goniwe's beige Honda Ballade could have been tapped by police.

IN PICS: Gqeberha High Court Judge visits key locations linked to lives of ‘Cradock Four’