Special Report Transcript Episode 39, Section 2, Time 04:37

Phila’s death was not an isolated occurrence. A member of Umkhonto we Sizwe’s special operations unit a man known as Raymond Mkhwanazi, or MK Tekere was kidnapped from Swaziland a month after Phile. His was one of the bodies found this week and a local newspaper investigation claims that the third body belonged to Dion Cele, abducted out of Swaziland by a serving South African policeman Captain Jerry Brookes just three months before they took Phila. ‘The skeleton is that of Dion Cele. The witness discovered his name from mortuary records at the Alexandra Police Station. His name was subsequently deleted by TRC investigation co-ordinator Magistrate Ashin Singh on the basis that the identity of the deceased has not been conclusively proven. It has been verified that Captain Jerry Brookes of Pietermaritzburg (still serving in the SAPS) has made an amnesty application admitting his involvement in the abduction only.’ About the same time that the Ndwandwe family was viewing their daughter’s remains at the Pietermaritzburg mortuary another body was dug up on a farm in Verulam. There’s a good chance the bones will be identified as Phumezo Nxiweni, an Eastern Cape activist who became an MK in Durban while he studied for his medical degree at the University of Natal. General JA Steyn, Lt-Col Vorster and Col Hentie Botha are implicated in the disappearances of both Phila Ndwendwe and Phumezo Nxiweni. But many of the ten murder sites pointed out this week didn’t have much evidence to offer. A railway site near Bulwer showed no sign that police shot and then blew up ANC member Blessing Ninela. Likewise, the Tugela river shows no indication of the fate of Charles Ndaba and Mbuso Tshabalala – Operation Vula members who were murdered and their pockets filled with rocks before their corpses were thrown into the river.

Notes: Pietermaritzburg mortuary, exhumed remains; Newspaper report extract; Exhumation