CityVision-WC

LUSANDA SOLOSHE was only a year - and - a - half old when her father Christopher Piet and six others were mowed down in a hail of bullets by security policemen in 1986, in a callous incident which made headlines across the country.

For 20 year-old Lusanda the loss of a dad she flimsily remembers, came to full circle on Saturday, as she, her grandmother Cynthia, aunts and uncles, and 500 other people including clerics and community leaders paid tribute to a gallant "Rasta" Piet.

The moving service was the unveiling ceremony of Piet's and his father's tombstone at the Ikhwezi centre in Guguletu.

Piet and his comrades had been members of the internal wing of uMkhonto we Sizwe. The seven of them were lured into a trap by former comrades turned police agents, who later became notoriously known as "askaris" who, working in tandem with the apartheid security forces, blasted the life out of the seven young men.

It was on the Monday morning of March 3, 1986. In the autopsy that followed, it was discovered that Piet's body had been riddled with 25 bullet holes. They became famously known as the "Guguletu Seven".

According to press reports at the time the seven were shot even as they raised their arms in surrender at the corner of NY1 and 111.

Later the circumstances surrounding their deaths became one of the most touching during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission sittings as their families recounted of only becoming aware of their deaths during a TV news bulletin.

The bodies were displayed on television as those of terrorists and the state boasted that it had broken the back of insurgency in the Western Cape.

On Saturday Piet's heroism was vindicated and now there is a green heart-shaped tombstone marking his grave, a fulfilment of a long yearning by his mother to erect something she will remember her son by.

Rev Allan Boesak asked the mourners to remember the days when the struggle was at its height, and the apartheid state at its most ruthless.

" . . . When people like Piet and others laid down their lives in the hope of creating a non-racial order.".

The family has erected the tombstone despite there being a monument in NY1 in honour of the Guguletu Seven.

The families have dismissed it as miniscule and not a true refelction of the sacrifices their sons made.

During the service on Saturday Piet's sister said she was happy that the TRC had brought them face to face with her brother's killers, for at last they found the answers they were looking for.

"But our challenge to the TRC is why none of the perpetrators has been arrested . . . John Steerenberg posed with his foot on the corpse of my brother."

"It is equally sad to see so few of his comrades here, from the days when Christopher was a member of CAYCO (Cape Youth Congress)," she added.

The Rev Vuyani Mtini described the ceremony as one of celebrating the heroism of gallant young men.

At the graveyard, tasked with reading the inscription on the tombstone, Piet's only daughter Lusanda became more emotional, with tears streaming down her cheeks as her turn neared.

After graveside counselling from her aunt, she built up enough courage to read the engraving.

"Our heart still aches with sadness. We miss you day by day. It is hard to accept your passing. Remembered by your mother, sisters, brother and daughter," the inscription says.