Look, it’s hard not to feel a bit gut-punched by this one. President Cyril Ramaphosa basically asked retired Justice Sisi Khampepe to step aside as chair of the inquiry looking into why so many apartheid-era crimes recommended for prosecution by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission never actually went to court. He only found out later about her previous role as a TRC commissioner, and now he’s saying he wouldn’t have appointed her if he’d known. She’s refusing to budge, so it’s heading to the High Court in Johannesburg, where Ramaphosa’s made it clear he won’t fight her removal if the judge says so.
The son of slain activist Fort Calata came out swinging, saying this move from Ramaphosa basically undermines the whole push for justice. And you get why people are angry—decades later, families are still waiting for answers on murders and disappearances, and now the very commission meant to dig into the delays is tangled in its own drama over impartiality.
It forces you to ask the hard stuff: Can someone who helped build the TRC’s amnesty system really judge why prosecutions failed without bias creeping in? Or is this just politics getting in the way again, giving the government an easy out from facing ugly truths? In a country still wrestling with reconciliation, this feels like another reminder that the past doesn’t stay buried—it just waits for the right moment to remind us we’re not done healing yet.
