Meyers Donne

Michael Meyers, aged 49, was a farmer from the Elliot district in the Eastern Cape who travelled into the former Transkei each day to sell milk. On 27 August 1993, he was selling milk at Xhangara near Engcobo when two APLA operatives, Zama Thutha and Luvuyo Kulman, approached him with the intention of taking his truck. Shots were fired during the attack. Michael was shot in the stomach and was taken to hospital, but his wounds became infected and he died ten days later, on 6 September 1993. His 21-year-old daughter, Donne Meyers, was accompanying him because he had injured his foot and needed her assistance with the milk deliveries. She was in the truck when the attackers drove it away. She was wounded by a gunshot during the attack and was taken with them to the Mbashe River, approximately 50–60 km from the scene. She was subsequently killed and her body was found by police later that afternoon. The precise sequence of Donne's shooting was disputed in the later evidence, but the post-mortem established that her cause of death was a severely crushed skull rather than simply the earlier gunshot wound. The two attackers, Zama Thutha and Luvuyo Kulman, were members of the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA), the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress. They were arrested and convicted of the murders of Michael and Donne Meyers, the kidnapping of Donne, the robbery with aggravating circumstances of Michael's truck and unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition. Both were serving 25-year prison sentences when they later applied to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for amnesty. Their applications for amnesty for the Meyers murders were ultimately refused. The TRC proceedings also recorded that the attackers had claimed the operation was politically motivated and that Michael had been identified as an alleged AWB member, although the Amnesty Committee noted contradictions in their accounts and found the killing of Michael had occurred during the robbery of his truck.