PRESS RELEASE
To: All Media
ATT: News Editors, Human Rights Reporters
For Immediate Release
14 May 2025
Call for Urgency in Nokuthula Simelane Trial Amid Ongoing Delays
Press Statement by the Foundation for Human Rights
The Simelane family and the Foundation for Human Rights (FHR) express deep concern over ongoing delays in the commencement of the trial into the 1983 abduction, torture, and enforced disappearance of MK operative Nokuthula Simelane. The start of the criminal trial has been delayed for nearly three years due to claims that one of the accused, Willem Helm Johannes Coetzee, is unfit to stand trial.
An inquiry into Coetzee’s fitness to stand trial in terms of section 77(3) of the Criminal Procedure Act is set to resume on 19 May 2025 in the Pretoria High Court. The inquiry itself has been running for more than sixteen months, contributing to a broader pattern of delay in a case where justice has remained elusive for over four decades.
In June 2022, Coetzee’s legal team claimed that he was mentally unfit to stand trial. The claim was based on a two-page preliminary medical report that was submitted less than 24 hours before the scheduled start of the trial on 6 June 2022. An independent panel of three psychiatrists and a clinical psychologist appointed in terms of section 79 of the Criminal Procedure Act found Coetzee fit to stand trial in November 2022. Coetzee and his legal team challenged the panel’s findings. Coetzee and his legal team have orchestrated several attempts to delay the finalisation of the inquiry in the preceding twenty-nine months.
Coetzee, along with Anton Pretorius, is among the remaining accused Security Branch officers implicated in Nokuthula Simelane’s disappearance. Two other accused, Msebenzi Radebe and Frederick Mong, died in 2019 and 2021 respectively, without ever being brought to trial.
The Simelane family’s pursuit of truth and accountability has been marred by a series of delays since the NPA formally indicted the four men on 14 March 2016. In the early years, the trial was delayed because the SAPS refused to cover the accused’s legal costs—prompting a successful court challenge by the family, which compelled SAPS to pay the legal costs of the accused as the institutional successor to the apartheid-era police.
These sustained delays have taken an immeasurable toll on Nokuthula Simelane’s family, particularly her elderly mother, Sizakele Simelane, who continues to await justice for her daughter, last seen in 1983. The Simelane family and FHR remain committed to ensuring justice is served and call on all parties to proceed with the trial as a matter of urgency, without further delay.
Media Contact:
Foundation for Human Rights: Zaid Kimmie zkimmie@fhr.org.za / 082 883 4934
