Majodina in UK for cadre’s exhumation

ARTS and Culture MEC Pemmy Majodina has led a delegation to UK to exhume the body of a former liberation soldier.

The late Nkululeko Jako went into exile under the banner of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army, and died in 1983.

Majodina and the delegation left for Birmingham on April 8, and she is due back home on Sunday.

Her spokesman, Andile Nduna said the MEC had left for the UK to “oversee the exhumation and repatriation of the remains of Jako”.

A special unit in the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has spent years exhuming struggle victims’ remains and releasing them to loved ones following DNA testing.

After the NPA began its work, the Eastern Cape government in 2013 adopted a policy on the exhumation, repatriation and reburial of the remains of conflict victims.

Nduna said this policy was a follow up to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations, which highlighted the symbolic importance of repatriating victims’ remains, “to ensure families of victims begin healing and finally find closure through programmes of this nature and magnitude”.

More than 10 bodies have been exhumed and returned to their Eastern Cape families since the provincial government adopted the policy in 2013. These include:

● The exhumation of Mlungiseleli Velaphi’s body, which Justice Minister Jeff Radebe, together with the bodies of four others, handed over to their families in an official ceremony at the East London City Hall in March 2014. Velaphi of NU2, Mdantsane was killed in action in Venda on March 28 1988. The other four victims died in operations in Botswana, the former Bophuthatswana and Limpopo.

● In August 2014, the remains of Duncan Village’s Bongani Ngamlana, Reuben Rhigala from Cofimvaba and Samson Mnoneleli Kana of Port Elizabeth were transported from Lesotho after more successful exhumations. The three were among a number of operatives associated with either the ANC’s Umkhonto weSizwe or the Pan Africanist Congress’ Azanian People’s Liberation Army, who died in exile. Ngamlana’s body was exhumed in Outhing, Lesotho, and the other bodies were exhumed in Maseru in 2014.

Nduna said the repatriation of the remains was “another attempt to promote reconciliation, unity and justice and national-building as well as social cohesion”.

Jako will be reburied at his family home in Elliotdale on April 22, Nduna added. —