The TRC Unit in the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development together with the Missing Persons Task Team (MPTT) in the National Prosecuting Authority will on Thursday conduct the exhumation of the remains of ten members of the Pan Africanist Congress's armed wing Poqo who were hanged in the period from 1963 to 1967.
These exhumations form part of the Gallows Exhumation Project launched by Minister Michael Masutha in 2016, aimed at recovering the remains of 130 political prisoners who were hanged on the Gallows prior to the suspension of the death penalty in 1990. The bodies of the hanged political prisoners remained the property of the state and were given pauper burials in municipal cemeteries around Pretoria. Families were denied the opportunity to bury them.
At least sixty PAC members were hanged in the 1960s. The ten PAC members to be exhumed this week arise out of the period of intense political protest in Paarl in 1962 when members of the PAC (Poqo) based in the single men's migrant worker hostels in Mbekweni township undertook a series of campaigns and attacks on suspected informers and white residents.
The period of protest culminated in a mass night time march on the white town of Paarl in November 1962 in which two whites were killed. In all, nine persons were killed by the PAC protestors that year and five PAC protestors were shot dead by police.
The remains will be exhumed from Mamelodi West cemetery where they were buried in pauper graves on the same day that they were hanged. The other ten PAC members hanged for the events in Paarl will be exhumed in the coming months.
The TRC Unit will first take the families of the deceased to visit the Gallows at Kgosi Mampuru prison at 9.30 am. Thereafter they will arrive at Mamelodi West cemetery to witness the exhumations.
