Give credit where it’s due

ALL South Africans welcomed the publicity you gave to the Mendi disaster, “Let us die like brothers” (February 19). However, your journalist did not acknowledge the tremendous effort by Norman Clothier to get this disaster widely recognised.

Although memorial services were held up to the 1960s, it was Clothier who championed the cause of making the men who died our South African heroes. He wrote the definitive work on the South African Native Labour Contingent, Black Valour, published in 1987.

Together with the South African Legion he ensured that the men who died would be remembered with memorials and services.

Your journalist should have recognised this.

The labour contingent did not receive military medals because they were not members of the Union Defence Force. — Jim Findlay, Parklands