Out of the shadows of the gallows they rise
Exhumation project to return bodies of apartheid’s hanged
TOZANA Ncwango, 78, has been waiting 28 years to bury her son Michael Lucas.
“I don’t know how to express myself, but I’ve got two feelings: happiness and sadness. I thought this would never happen. I thought I would die without getting my son back,” said an emotional Ncwango.
Lucas is among the 83 political prisoners who will be exhumed over the next three to six months as part of the Department of Justice’s Gallows Exhumation Project. Their bodies will be repatriated to their families for proper burials.
Between 1960 and 1989, 130 political prisoners were hanged, and 47 have been reburied.
Lucas was convicted of the murder of bus inspector William Blouw during an uprising in Oudtshoorn in the Western Cape in 1986. He was sentenced to death in 1987 and Friday March 25 marked the 28th anniversary of his hanging.
This week, Lucas’s cousin Mzwandile Sazona, a chief director at the Department of Public Works, said the family had been petitioning the government for years over Lucas’s remains.
“His mother’s wish was to bury her child before she dies. Michael was passionate about the struggle. His case is an unsolved mystery because he took responsibility and absolved everyone from the case. Two others that were charged escaped the death penalty because Michael confessed,” he said.
The gallows project is led by Madeleine Fullard, head of the
EXECUTED: Michael Lucas Missing Persons Task Team set up at the National Prosecuting Authority.
The team will begin the laborious task of unearthing the remains of the political prisoners at the Rebecca Street and Mamelodi cemeteries in Pretoria early next month.
Work to trace the unmarked graves had begun in 2011, Fullard said. ‘‘Most graves are sealed in pauper graves. We couldn’t see roads or numbers. We had to do mapping and plotting to determine the grave site locations.”
The team would use records to identify the correct remains and DNA testing would be done if needed, Fullard said.
“Some people were buried together, so we will have a forensic anthropologist on site to ensure the right remains go to the right families.”
Some families have been waiting for more than 50 years to bury their loved ones.
Mveli Tyhopho started look- GRIM: A prison guard looks over the gallows at Pretoria’s maximum-security prison in October 1995, just after capital punishment was abolished. More than 4 200 prisoners were executed, many for politically motivated crimes under apartheid ing into the exhumation of political prisoners in 2007. His father, Bonase, was one of five members of the Vulindlela family to be hanged on July 3 1964— and among 23 people sentenced to death for the PAC-led Mbashe uprising, in 1963, in which five white people were killed.
“It makes us happy as people who didn’t know when this [prolonged process] would finally end. We should celebrate because of that and not cry, because we are now happy because we have won this battle,” said Tyhopho.
It was on the family’s first visit to the gallows, in 2011, that he saw a picture of his father for the first time. “We didn’t know our fathers and how they looked back then because . . . they burnt photos of deceased people.”
Also on July 3 1964, two men, Right and Bawukazi of the Mangqikana family, were executed for their role in the Mbashe uprising.
Zakhele Mangqikana was a baby when his father was executed. “We have been waiting. We grew up without a father. There was no grave to visit.”
But despite never knowing his father, his life had been shaped by his final words. “When my father was about to be hanged he told my mother to send me to school. He said he was illiterate and that iswhy hewas there . . . I never knew my father’s love but I am a teacher by profession. I went to university. I am what I am because of my father.”
PAC deputy president Sibusiso Xaba said: “Future generations should learn about these people and their sacrifice, because history is highly distorted. History has been told from the victor’s perspective, rather than of nation-building.”