Themba Khoza

Thembinkosi Samson Khoza (17 May 1959 – 28 May 2000) was a South African politician who represented the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in the National Assembly from 1994 until his death in May 2000. He was a former leader of the IFP's Youth Brigade and served as the party's leader in Gauteng province. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was credited with expanding the IFP's political presence in the Transvaal.

At the time of his death, Khoza was awaiting trial on 19 criminal charges arising from his alleged involvement in gunrunning and inciting political violence between IFP supporters and supporters of the African National Congress (ANC) during apartheid. At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, officers of the police's Security Branch testified that Khoza was a key recipient and distributor of state-supplied weapons, which they said were later used in massacres in the Transvaal.

Life and early career Khoza was born on 17 May 1959 in Eshowe in Zululand in the former Natal Province. A former bank clerk, he joined the Inkatha Youth Brigade in 1975 and helped establish the national profile of Inkatha (later the IFP) at a time when much of its power base was confined to the KwaZulu bantustan. He was re-elected to his parliamentary seat in that election and served in the National Assembly until his death, although he was excused from his duties from April 2000 onwards due to illness. Though he had long had a reputation as the IFP's "warlord-in-chief", The TRC later concluded that links between the IFP and Vlakplaas originated in a 1990 meeting at which Khoza had asked a Vlakplaas operative to supply the party with weapons; Vlakplaas operatives, including commander Eugene de Kock, testified to having provided several consignments of weapons, including homemade explosives and hand-modified AK-47s, to Khoza, who allegedly distributed them among IFP supporters in mineworkers' hostels in the townships. De Kock also testified that Khoza was a paid Security Branch informant, as well as a paid informant of the National Intelligence Service. Moreover, three former policemen applied for amnesty for their role in a cover-up that secured Khoza's acquittal on weapons possession charges in the aftermath of the massacre. Khoza had been arrested the morning after the massacre after being found at the scene with an assortment of weapons in the boot of his Nissan Sentra (which de Kock claimed had been a gift to Khoza from the Security Branch). The policemen involved said that, upon recognising Khoza's political importance, they had tampered with witness statements and with forensic and ballistic evidence in order to ensure that Khoza and the weapons could not be linked to the killings. They also said that they had paid Khoza's bail.

Boipatong massacre Khoza was also frequently, though less concretely, linked to the planning and orchestration of the 1992 Boipatong massacre, the most deadly of the period.

Witnesses linked Khoza to other incidents, including the murder of ANC leader Sam Ntuli and the planning of a massacre of 11 people in Nqutu, KwaZulu in 1993. which some suggested had been intended as a precursor to an attack on ANC leaders;

Personal life and death He died on 28 May 2000, aged 41, in hospital in Benoni outside Johannesburg. His death coincided with the height of HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa and there was much public debate about the nature of his illness, given unconfirmed reports that it was AIDS-related. He was married to Sonosini Khoza and had six children, four sons and two daughters.