The Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Jeff Radebe will on Saturday, 12 September 2009 hand over the remains of the PEBCO three (Sipho Hashe, Champion Galela, Qaqawuli Godolozi), and the COSAS two (Topsy Madaka and Siphiwo Mtimkhulu) back to their families for burial. The handover will take place in Port Elizabeth.
The remains were excavated at the Post Chalmers farm near Cradock in the Eastern Cape by the Missing Persons Task Team, a unit established within the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to locate the human remains or the whereabouts of those people who disappeared under mysterious political circumstances during the apartheid era and where those cases had been reported to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
The COSAS two and PEBCO three activists were abducted by members of the Eastern Cape Security Police in 1982 and 1985 respectively. They were taken to the Post Chalmers farm (an abandoned rural police station near Cradock) where they were interrogated, tortured, drugged and shot dead, after which their bodies were burnt on a wood fires.
The security police perpetrators told the TRC during their amnesty applications that the burnt 'ashes' of these activists were then removed and thrown into the Fish River. However, excavations at the farm located large quantities of burnt fragmented human remains and associated artefacts including bullets, tyre and clothing fragments in a large shallow pit and in a nearby underground septic tank.
Government mobilised necessary resources to ensure that all leads are pursued and employed highly skilled specialists to support the team that worked relentlessly on these cases in an effort to assist the families to find emotional closure to the wounds that probably never healed since 1980s. The outcomes of the investigations and the scientific verifications conducted have been accepted by the families, hence the hand over.
Enquiries:
Tlali Tlali
Spokesperson: Department of Justice and Constitutional Development
Cell: 082 3333 880
Issued by: Department of Justice and Constitutional Development
10 September 2009
