Hunting the Truth: Beverley Roos-Muller on Exposing the Gugulethu Seven Assassination

In the landscape of South Africa’s painful history, some stories demand to be told with unflinching clarity. Beverley Roos-Muller’s book, Hunting the Seven: How the Gugulethu Seven Assassins Were Exposed, shortlisted for the prestigious Non-Fiction Award, is one such essential narrative. It meticulously dismantles the official cover-up surrounding the 1986 killing of seven young men by apartheid security forces, pursuing the full truth with the tenacity of a seasoned investigator.

The Deliberate Hunt: From Men to Prey

Roos-Muller’s use of the word “hunting” is deliberate and chilling. She explains how the seven Gugulethu men, innocent of the terrorist accusations leveled against them, were systematically hunted down like animals.

“The police hid on the outskirts of Gugulethu on that morning in 1986 and waited for their prey to be delivered to them in a van by an undercover Vlakplaas askari (a turned guerrilla),” Roos-Muller states. Those not killed immediately were pursued and slaughtered in a wild, armed shoot-out. All were shot in the head, a grim signature of an execution at close quarters.

The depravity was then filmed as a trophy scene, with policemen shown as bakgat (excellent/cool) while dragging the bodies. This footage was broadcast on television and shown to the Cabinet, a public spectacle of state-sanctioned murder. The families of the victims, none of whom were informed, discovered their sons’ fates by seeing their bullet-riddled bodies on the evening news or through desperate searches of hospitals and morgues.

Decades later, Roos-Muller decided to hunt down the full truth. “I had met their families before and at the funerals, and knew that the story we had been fed was fake,” she recalls. “Nothing really added up until I began to finally connect the many dots together.”

A Mother’s Lens: Grief, Threat, and Resilience

Roos-Muller’s perspective is uniquely shaped by her experience not just as a journalist, but as a mother. This dual lens informed her engagement with the grieving mothers during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings and defined the personal risks she faced.

“Being a mother, a woman, is a vital part of how I see the world,” she explains. That reality became terrifyingly personal when, after attending the large funerals, she began receiving phone threats against her own ten-year-old daughter, Nandi. Security police would call in the small hours, laughing, detailing her daughter’s school and full name.

Against this backdrop of personal fear, she witnessed the profound strength of the mothers of the seven. “Yet, it was the mothers of the seven who kept the faith,” Roos-Muller says. The first Cape TRC hearing for the case was emotionally shattering, with nearly everyone in the room in tears, especially when the police video was shown.

She recalls Cynthia Ngewu, mother of Christopher Piet, as a woman of faith who compassionately forgave the only killer who asked for it. “I last saw Cynthia about a year ago in her Gugulethu home before she died; she said she’d let go of bitterness, but still did not understand why they never got compensation,” Roos-Muller shares. A visit to Christopher’s grave underscored the personal loss behind the political tragedy—a family had lost a greatly loved son and brother.

Combating Historical Amnesia: The Necessity of Record

In her epilogue, Roos-Muller writes, “Apartheid in the fullness of its cruelty must be remembered and recorded.” This sentiment fuels the book’s core mission. She expresses a constant worry about historical amnesia, especially as those under 50 have no lived memory of apartheid’s brutal reality.

“If we don’t record it, such generational trauma will be forgotten, or dismissed, or downplayed. There are many who are invested in ignoring the past,” she warns. The book places significant emphasis on the atrocities committed by Eugene de Kock’s Vlakplaas unit, arguing that de Kock took the fall for politicians and generals who funded the killing and torture.

“I examine the disgrace of that in this book: of how much money changed hands from the secret cash cow of Vlakplaas,” she says. “We are obsessed with corruption today, without acknowledging that it had become entrenched in the business of politics way back then. Atrocities were the price that others paid for apartheid to work.”

Illuminating Truthfulness in a Post-TRC World

So, how does Hunting the Seven illuminate truthfulness? While the televised TRC hearings eviscerated the narrative that “apartheid wasn’t that bad,” Roos-Muller believes time has eroded that clarity. The TRC was abruptly ended by Thabo Mbeki before its task was complete.

“I wanted to write Hunting the Seven as an illuminating story of real people and events, so that at least one case was exposed in its entirety and can never be dismissed,” she states. This is why the book is evidence-heavy, incorporating formerly unpublished hard evidence to ensure the story’s integrity is paramount. It also tracks the wider context of ongoing apartheid violence and the immense difficulty journalists faced in reporting it.

The Lasting Impression: A Warning and a Hope

What impression does Roos-Muller hope readers are left with? A stark understanding that these human rights atrocities were deliberate and gruesome, engineered to support an ideology of white superiority and outright greed, paid for in “blood, pain and imposed poverty.”

“There is some urgency in this, for if we avert our eyes, history shows that such events may repeat themselves; we see this today in global events,” she reflects. Yet, within this warning lies a seed of hope. “We can do better, if we have the will and the information to do so. South Africans have shown that despite our past horrors, we are also capable of greatness.”

Source: Original interview with Beverley Roos-Muller, author of Hunting the Seven: How the Gugulethu Seven Assassins Were Exposed (Jonathan Ball Publishers).