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.
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.
[6][3] Ahead of the 1999 general election, Khoza was co-chair, with the ANC's Mathole Motshekga, of a joint IFP–ANC committee established in Gauteng to monitor and ease tensions between the parties.
[3] At the time of his death in 2000, Khoza was awaiting trial on 19 criminal charges arising from his alleged involvement in the IFP–ANC political violence of the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly in the townships of the Vaal and East Rand.
[3][8] Though he had long had a reputation as the IFP's "warlord-in-chief",[4][3] the allegations against him received substantiation in evidence collected by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the mid- and late 1990s.
[4] One of the 16 people convicted of carrying out the killings told the TRC that Khoza had been involved in both planning and executing the attack, including by supplying the killers with weapons obtained from the police.
[18] Witnesses linked Khoza to other incidents, including the murder of ANC leader Sam Ntuli[19] and the planning of a massacre of 11 people in Nqutu, KwaZulu in 1993.