Former deputy justice minister John Jeffery refutes claims of ANC compromises with apartheid-era leaders as he testifies at the Khampepe Inquiry on TRC prosecution delays.

Appearing before the Khampepe Commission of Inquiry into delayed Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) prosecutions, John Jeffery, Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, denied claiming that the ANC had made compromises with apartheid-era leaders.

Lukhanyo Calata, son of activist Fort Calata - one of the Cradock Four murdered by security police in 1985 - has presented evidence to the inquiry that Jeffery, in 2017, had said that the lack of TRC prosecutions had been part of a "negotiated settlement" at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa, 1991/92).

AGge of accountability In the name of our father -- Lukhanyo Calata's devastating testimony to Khampepe Inquiry February 15, 2026 Calata was three when his father was murdered alongside Matthew Goniwe, Sicelo Mlauli and Sparrow Mkonto. In June 2025, he told the reopened inquest into their deaths that the deputy minister had intimated that delayed TRC issues were "the price that had to be paid for the negotiated settlement".

This, he recalled, had been "a punch in the gut".

Jeffery, however, disputed that he had conceded that the ANC government had agreed not to prosecute TRC cases or that compromises reached with perpetrators had prevented some cases...