Reburying the struggle ’ s hidden dead
NPA task team finds unmarked graves
YNTHIA Mocumi battled to hold back her tears as she stood at the neglected burial plot — grave number 4749 — in the Mamelodi cemetery on Thursday.
This is where her father, Josiah Mocumi, was buried after he was hanged on June 16 1964. Until this week, Cynthia had not known where to find his remains.
Josiah, 40, had been executed at the Pretoria Central Prison along with Richard Motsoahae, 23, Thomas Molatlhegi, 31, and Petrus Ntshole, 22 — the so-called Krugersdorp Four.
The men had been members of the PAC ’ s armed wing, Poqo, and had murdered a black special branch detective on March 18 1963.
Now their remains are among those of about 80 political prisoners whom the National Prosecuting Authority’s missing persons task team plans to exhume for reburial.
Cynthia, who was only 11 when her father was hanged, said she was heartbroken to see his grave in such a neglected state. “But I am happy that we will have an opportunity to give him a dignified funeral,” she said.
The NPA confirmed that the task team was planning to recover the corpses of political prisoners who had been hanged by the apartheid state.
“The bodies of executed prisoners were kept by the state and not given to families,” the NPA said.
Cynthia ’ s aunt, Maphakedi Tselanyane, 86, described her brother as an introvert who was involved in politics.
“He was probably one of the ringleaders [in the PAC] because of the way people spoke about him,” she said.
Ntshole’s family have decided to honour his mother’s dying wish: that the 22-year-old’s remains not be exhumed. Instead, they have put a tombstone at his grave.
Thomas Molatlhegi’s son Pat said
Chis mother had asked, before she died in 2000, that her husband’s remains be reinterred in Krugersdorp, on the western outskirts of Johannesburg. Motsoahae’s daughter, Olga Mmoni, 52, was three when her father was put to death. She said the man who had sacrificed his life for the country “didn’t deserve to be hanged”.
“He was only 23. The apartheid government was very cruel,” she said.
A total of 134 political prisoners were hanged at the Pretoria prison between September 1961 and September 1989. They included:
Solomon Mahlangu, who was executed on April 9 1979;
The Vulindlela brothers — Maliza,
He didn t deserve to be hanged. The apartheid government was very cruel
Sadunge, Shilegu, Bonase and Bekapansi — who were hanged on July 3 1964. The siblings were put to death for murdering five white people in the Transkei on February 4 1963;
The only white political prisoner, John Harris, was executed on April 1 1965 for planting a bomb at Park Station in Johannesburg; and
Jeffrey Mangena, 37, the last political prisoner to be hanged. He died on September 29 1989.
Those executed at Pretoria Central Prison were secretly buried by the apartheid government in unmarked graves in the city’s cemeteries.
Of the 134 political prisoners executed, the task team has so far exhumed the remains of only six Poqo members: the Langa Six who were hanged in the late 1960s for attacking police vehicles in the Western Cape.