'Cradock Four' families provide different accounts of where slain activists' bodies were found

JOHANNESBURG - The families of the "Cradock Four" have provided differing accounts of where they believe the slain activists' bodies were found after being killed by apartheid police.

The "Cradock Four" inquiry has been on an on-site inspection in Gqeberha on Wednesday, identifying locations linked to the 1985 assassination of the anti-apartheid activists.

Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sicelo Mhlauli and Sparrow Mkhonto were killed in what was then Port Elizabeth after members of the special branch abducted them.

On Wednesday, Gcobani Zonke, Mhlauli’s brother-in-law, told the court that after Goniwe, Calata, Mkhonto, and Mhlauli went missing, he was part of a search party that found Goniwe and Calata’s charred bodies in a veld with their burnt car nearby.

"I actually found the bodies because they were not very deep in the thicket- I found the charred bodies which were lying close to one another, and you could see the bodies, they were burned, they were so small from burning they shrank."

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The State then took Judge Thami Beshe to another spot near the Bluewater Bay dunes, where they believe the Goniwe and Calata were found.

This was a spot different from where apartheid police told the families that the bodies had been found, which is nearer to the beach.

Zonke believes the bodies had been moved.

"The police, the perpetrators, do you think in their right minds they would show exactly where it happened? I doubt!"

The Calata and Goniwe families performed rituals to repatriate the spirits at the conflicting locations.