Former apartheid officer seeks state funding for Simelane trial

A former apartheid police officer Tim Radebe will on Wednesday file an urgent application in the High Court in Pretoria, to request the state to fund his trial for murder and abduction of activist Nokuthula Simelane.

Radebe is expected to stand trial with three co-accused, Willem Coetzee, Anton Pretorius and Frederick Mong.

These three were granted state funding last month.

All four former officers were granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), but Simelane’s family later re-opened the case.

Simelane an African National Congress (ANC) operative was abducted at the Carlton Centre in Johannesburg in 1983 and was later allegedly tortured to death at the police’s Vlakplaas farm near Pretoria.