The graves of 195 people suspected of being secretly killed by security forces during the struggle against white rule in South Africa have been traced by a policeman seconded to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), South Africa's Sunday Independent reported yesterday. Neither TRC investigation head, Mr Dumisa Ntsebeza - who last week witnessed the exhumation of three unmarked graves containing the remains of ANC guerrillas - nor TRC deputy chairman, Dr Alex Boraine, were available for comment yesterday. But the report is consistent with evidence unearthed by the TRC of the clandestine execution of guerrilla combatants and political activists by security forces.
The evidence is uncontested in the sense that it is contained in affidavits of former officers seeking amnesty for their actions during the undeclared war. Yesterday's report suggests that the security force's practice of murdering political foes and secretly disposing of their bodies may have been more extensive and frequent than indicated by evidence so far.
One of bodies was exhumed last week near Piet Retief, close to South Africa's border with Swaziland, has been identified as that of Barney Malokonane, the ANC guerrilla commander who led the attack by an elite unit on oil installations at Sasolburg in mid1980. Yesterday's report comes in the wake of last week's hearing by the TRC of applications for amnesty from seven former policemen and an Askari (ANC renegade) for the murder of in the mid-1980s of three men known as the Pebco Three. The dead men, who disappeared after being falsely lured to the Port Elizabeth airport, were Sipho Hashe, Champion Galela and Qaqawuli Godolozi.
The commander of the police death squad, Hermanus du Plessis, told the TRC the men were abducted, taken to a misused police station, interrogated, drugged and shot. After being soaked in petroleum their bodies were incinerated on a pyre of wood, and their ashes collected in plastic bags and thrown into the Fish River.
Reuters adds: The South African President, Mr Nelson Mandela, yesterday started his party's campaign for the 1999 election, which he will not personally contest, telling supporters that the fruits of democracy could take years to deliver.
"I am not bringing you anything tangible. I am not making false promises," he told nurses at a hospital in rural Nelspruit, close to the border with Mozambique.
Mr Mandela has already said he will relinquish the presidency of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) next month and will not be a candidate in South Africa's second democratic election, due between April and October 1999. He has endorsed his deputy president, Mr Thabo Mbeki, as his heir.