2 bodies exhumed, echoes of dark past
2013-03-12 16:26
Johannesburg - Relatives sang hymns and songs from the
struggle for the liberation from racist white rule on Tuesday as forensic
scientists exhumed two bodies, hoped to be those of young activists last seen
24 years ago at the home of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
The discovery could force a new investigation into the
fate of the two from the late 1980s, when she was becoming increasingly
militant and people accused of spying for the apartheid government were being
killed out of hand.
The two were messengers for the armed wing of the ANC.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in the late
1990s said that Madikizela-Mandela was responsible for the disappearances of
21-year-old Lolo Sono and his friend Siboniso Tshabalala, 19.
Madikizela-Mandela has denied all knowledge of the men.
"We never thought that the cloud that has blackened
the Sono family will be removed," a pastor told more than 100 family
members gathered under a tent amid gravestones overgrown with grass at Avalon
Cemetery.
"What we never thought we were going to see we are
going to see," he added, referring to Sono's body.
Madeleine Fullard, head of the missing persons department
of the National Prosecuting Authority, cautioned the families that DNA tests
must be done and it could be months before definitive identifications are made.
Only then, she said, can the remains be returned to the
families for burial.
Davis Tshabalala, brother of the missing 19-year-old,
said his family had gone from mortuary to mortuary in search of the body at the
time of his disappearance.
Mortuary reports on the two bodies cited multiple stab
wounds, Fullard said.
The bodies were found in a field and buried here, the
identities unknown.
In the late 1980s, people accused of spying for the government
were routinely killed, including more than a dozen by the Mandela United Football
Club, which had been formed by Madikizela-Mandela.
- AP
