In Search of the Disappeared:

Unburying Truths of Apartheid South Africa

Amelia Seman

John Daniel, SIT

School for International Training

South Africa: Social and Political Transformation

Fall 2013

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“You can say we go to the ends of the earth to find these people.”

-- Deborah Quin, Senior Investigator for Missing Persons Task Team

“For my mother, this event is about closure. My mother says this event today will ensure that she can account for all of her children. She says when people ask her

what happened to Moss, she will no longer say, ‘I don’t know.’”

--Palesa Moruda, whose brother was missing for two decades,

on the occasion of his symbolic burial at Freedom Park

“It is better when you can see the bones of the one you love.”

--Hleziphi Ngwenya, widow of B.P. Ngwenya, who disappeared in 1991

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Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements 4

Abstract 6

Introduction 7

Literature Review 9

Forced Political Disappearances Internationally 9

Disappearances According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission 12

Missing Persons Task Team 16

Methodology 19

Limitations 20

Findings 22

The Search for the Disappeared 22

Challenges 25

Case Study 1 – Busani Ngubo 30

Case Study 2 – B.P. Ngwenya 32

Broader Implications 36

Conclusions 39

Bibliography 43

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Acknowledgements

This project would not have been possible if not for the invaluable guidance I received

from a few very caring individuals.

Firstly, I would like to thank Jeffrey Ayres for igniting my interest in human rights

processes around the globe, for advising me at Saint Michael's College in the months leading up

to my trip to South Africa, and for his continued interest in my project even from the other side

of the Atlantic.

I must also thank John Daniel, for introducing me to the subject of the disappeared of

South Africa, for encouraging my interest in the Missing Persons Task Team, and for presenting

me with the once in a lifetime opportunity to work there. Additionally, he helped me to shape

my research and provided me with literature on my topic and advice on my paper, but more

importantly he shared with me his wealth of knowledge on the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission, the disappearances, and the search for the missing. His passion for my research

inspired me to be engaged, inquisitive, energetic, and hopeful.

Finally, I am eternally grateful to Deborah Quin, who made my month at the Missing

Persons Task Team unforgettable. She threw me into work on the very first day, forcing me to

dive into researching the disappeared, searching through old records, and coming up with the

needle in the haystack. She encouraged me in my findings, celebrated my discoveries, and

shared with me the experience of hard work paying off when a case is cracked. She answered all

my questions, even the hard ones, shared her own story of apartheid pain, and pushed me to find

the answers and tie up the loose ends. She allowed me to see not only the work she does, but to

be a part of it; not only how a case is solved, but how it affects a family; not only the rosy

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picture, but also the internal politics, the challenges, and the harsh truth. She helped me to feel

welcome with her tea and scones, her lunch dates, her advice on weekend events. She took me

to rural police stations, her favorite restaurants, meetings with the premier's staff, the border of

Lesotho, an old cemetery, and to meet the family of a missing person. Above all, she showed me

what it means to be truly passionate for one’s work.

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role that the Missing Persons Task Team

plays in addressing the human rights violation of forced political disappearances in South Africa

which occurred during the apartheid regime. Through a practicum with the unit, which was set

up in 2005 at the recommendation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I discovered the

ways in which the Missing Persons Task Team responds to the needs of the individual victims as

well as how it attempts to heal the society as a whole.

In my practicum, the primary research methods employed included participant

observation, field visits, informal interviews, and archival research. I spent one month working

as an intern under Deborah Quin, lead investigator for the KwaZulu-Natal unit of the Missing

Persons Task Team, which afforded me opportunities to delve into the work of this unit and to

see how it affects ordinary South Africans and their country.

Through discovering the fates of individuals who have been missing for decades, the

Missing Persons Task Team affords the families of the disappeared closure and peace, as they

can finally put the bones of their loved ones to rest in the traditional way. The crime of the

disappearances finally comes to a close when the fates are discovered and the remains brought

home, and the stories of the disappeared contribute to a national narrative of accountability and

forgiveness with the prerogative to learn from the past in order to shape a better future.

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Introduction

For undemocratic regimes, politically-motivated killings have long been a tactic used to

suppress resistance and create internal strife between dissenting groups. From East Timor to

Guatemala, armies, security forces, secret death squads, or paramilitaries have systematically

eliminated perceived threats to the governments in power. Forced disappearances are one type

of political killing, arguably the most painful for the victims’ loved ones and the most

intimidating for the society which suffers from this human rights violation. In these cases,

victims literally disappear and are often never heard of again. No notice is given as to their

whereabouts, no bodies are found, and their fates remain mysterious.

In South Africa, politically-motivated killings, in particular disappearances, were

prevalent during apartheid. After the country’s transition to democracy, the Truth and

Reconciliation Commission sought to uncover the buried stories of the bloody past, and many

South Africans came forward to tell of their missing loved ones. Today, a special unit, the

Missing Persons Task Team, is charged with investigating these individuals, and where possible,

finding their bodies so that they may be returned to their families for proper burial. This work is

not only significant to the families who can finally put the bones of their loved ones to rest, but is

also symbolically important for a country which chose to pursue justice not through retribution,

but through reconciliation.

The research conducted in this study focused on how the Missing Persons Task Team

addresses the private pain of ordinary South Africans through their work in investigating

individuals who were disappeared during apartheid. Furthermore, I hypothesize that by tending

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the wounds of individuals affected by the crimes against humanity committed during apartheid,

the nation can find closure and healing.

This paper consists of five main sections. The first gives a background on previous

research on the topic, and covers forced political disappearances as a transnational phenomenon,

the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s response to disappearances in South Africa, and the

role of the Missing Persons Task Team in the country post-apartheid. The second section

addresses the research methods I employed for this project, and the third discusses the limitations

I faced. The fourth section, the findings of my research, makes up the heart of the paper. In this

section I discuss the processes and resources used by the Missing Persons Task Team in working

through a case, as well as the challenges the MPTT has faced at several stages in their

investigations. I have included two case studies, both of which I helped Deborah Quin

investigate during my internship with the Missing Persons Task Team. Finally, I discuss the

broader implications of the unit’s role in individual lives, South Africa’s national narrative, and

international human rights discourse. In the final section of my paper, I will conclude my

findings and recommend further research in various areas.

In my discussion, I will sometimes refer to the Missing Persons Task Team as the MPTT.

The TRC is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. NPA stands for the National Prosecuting

Authority. I also use abbreviations for well-known South African political organizations such as

the ANC (African National Congress), MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe, the militarized branch of the

ANC), or IFP (Inkatha Freedom Party). Other abbreviations include the UN (United Nations),

KZN (KwaZulu-Natal, the province of South Africa where Durban is located), and MP (Missing

Person). Any other unfamiliar terms I will explain as I discuss them.

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Through my research, I hope to contribute to the body of knowledge on responses to

human rights violations, in particular forced political disappearances. In addition, I hope that by

studying South Africa’s approach to the disappearances, others may learn how to utilize this

strategy in other contexts, to hone and perfect it so that in the future, governments are able to

effectively meet the needs of their citizens in the wake of mass human rights atrocities and

disappearances.

Literature Review

Forced Political Disappearances Internationally

The term “disappeared” is used in reference to individuals forcibly removed from their

communities, their fates remaining a mystery to their families and friends. It is a word which

takes on a whole new meaning in this context. Usually when we say that a person has

disappeared, the person does the disappearing, implying that they actively chose to drop off the

map for some reason or another. However, when we say that a person has been disappeared, the

word changes. Here, the person was not an actor in the event. The disappearance was forced

upon them by an unnamed actor. “When used as a transitive verb, to disappear means to arrest

someone secretly, to imprison them and/or to kill them” (Gutman & Rieff, 125). This second use

of the word is relatively new. It was first used in the Guatemalan context, where los

desaparecidos numbered in the tens of thousands between 1954 and 1996. However, one of the

most well-known uses of the term was in Argentina.

During the Argentinean “Dirty War” of 1975-78, targeted civilians, often intellectuals,

student activists, schoolteachers, community leaders, or other vocal figures were abducted by

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men in civilian clothing driving unmarked cars, and then taken to secret locations. Many were

tortured, killed, and buried in unmarked graves. “Others were drugged, put on planes, stripped

of their clothes, flown out over the Atlantic Ocean, and tossed out—alive” (Neier, 34). The fates

of these individuals were never made known to the victims' families, who were told when they

pressed the government for details that their loved ones had joined a terrorist group and gone into

hiding abroad. In some countries where disappearances have taken place, “governments deny all

responsibility, often blaming “death squads” or other forces which they say are acting completely

beyond their control. Sometimes the killings are disguised as accidents or the result of random

violence” (Amnesty International, 17). These tactics were used by the apartheid regime in South

Africa to avoid taking responsibility for all the people who went missing without a trace.

Most basically, disappearances can be viewed as a violation of international humanitarian

law in terms of the UN's 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. According to this

document, “everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person” (Amnesty International,

103). In 1998, the International Criminal Court deemed ‘enforced disappearance of persons’ a

crime against humanity when committed as a widespread or systematic attack, and defined it as

“the arrest, detention or abduction of persons by, or with the authorization, support or

acquiescence of, a State or a political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that

deprivation of freedom or to give information on the fate or whereabouts of those persons, with

the intention of removing them from the protection of the law for a prolonged period of time”

(Robertson ,499).

As a crime against humanity, disappearances directly violate several human rights.

Disappearances typically include “unlawful confinement, failure to allow due process, and

failure to allow communication between the arrested person and the outside world. It often

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involves torture and cruel and inhuman treatment, and too commonly it involves murder”

(Gutman & Rieff, 126). Thus, disappearances violate numerous statutes in international

humanitarian law. Article 2 of the UN Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from

Enforced Disappearance states, “No state shall practice, permit or tolerate enforced

disappearances,” and Article 1 of the UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and

Investigation of Extra-Legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions states, “Governments shall

prohibit by law all extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions” (Amnesty International, 103).

The apartheid government in South Africa, through deception, cover-ups, blatant lies, and

feigned ignorance, committed the crime of disappearing its own people, while outright denying

it. During apartheid, fear was typically employed as a means to get away with disappearing

people. If a person inquired as to the details on their missing family member and was ignored or

lied to by the state, it was anything but an invitation to press your luck again. People never knew

who was next, and who might be punished just for the crime of asking too many questions. Even

during the period of transition and in the early days of democracy, “once their activities became

known, the political authorities of the former state continued to insist that they had no knowledge

of the actions of [units within the police and military secretly involved in disappearances and

killings], and that [these units] had been acting without authorization” (TRC Report Vol. 6, pg.

516). However, even this dodging of the inquiries would implicate people of the crimes they

pretended to know nothing about.

“Crimes against humanity could be committed in peace as well as in war, and by a single

sovereign state within its own territory,” as was the case in apartheid South Africa (Robertson,

236). In the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of

Apartheid, Article 3 stated that “International criminal responsibility shall apply, irrespective of

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the motive involved, to individuals, members of organizations and institutions and

representatives of the State, whether residing in the territory of the State in which the acts are

perpetrated or in some other State, whenever they commit, participate in, directly incite or

conspire...(or)...directly abet, encourage or co-operate in the commission of the crime of

apartheid” (Robertson, 236). However, South Africa during transition chose not to implicate the

guilty parties criminally in all cases. Rather, through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,

the government “offered immunity from prosecution only to political criminals prepared to earn

it by testifying fully and frankly” (Robertson, 272). It was through many such testimonies at the

TRC that cases of missing persons were opened. Finally, people could talk openly about

disappearances, and the Missing Persons Task Team was given the job of investigating these

disappearances.

Disappearances According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, according to the Promotion of National Unity

and Reconciliation Act of 1995, sought to “provide for the investigation and the establishment of

as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human

rights committed” in South Africa or neighboring states between March 1st, 1960, and May 10th,

1994 (TRC Act 1995, pg. 1). This act went on to define ‘gross violation of human rights’ in two

parts:

(a) the killing, abduction, torture or severe ill-treatment of any person; or

(b) any attempt, conspiracy, incitement, instigation, command or procurement to commit

an act referred to in paragraph (a).

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The TRC asked for statements from any and all victims of the crime of apartheid. People came

forward to tell their own stories or the stories of others. The TRC reported that “it received over

1500 victim statements concerning people who were missing or disappeared and 477 people

named in the statements remained missing” at the end of the TRC (EDIEC). The statements

from the victims were taken locally by trained volunteers, and forms had to be filled out by each

person for the purpose of gaining as much information as possible about the event. The

Statement concerning Gross Violations of Human Rights, which all victims reporting to the TRC

had to fill out, addressed the specific conditions under which a disappearance would have

occurred. For an abduction or disappearance to be considered, there must be “evidence that

someone was taken away forcibly and illegally, or the person vanished mysteriously and was

never seen again” (Statement concerning Gross Violations of Human Rights). In addition, there

must be sufficient “evidence to show that this was an event which was politically motivated as

part of the conflict of the period.”

Eventually the TRC expanded its category of ‘abductions’ to include not only “persons

who were forcibly detained or arrested” by security forces or agents of the apartheid South

African government, but also “those forcibly and unlawfully abducted by other known or

unknown armed groups or parties” (TRC Report Vol. 6, pg. 515). This was a significant

alteration because it shifted responsibility for the crimes committed from only apartheid agents

to other groups as well. It essentially acknowledged that individuals and groups within the

liberation movement could be guilty of crimes too, and that not all methods of working for

freedom were justifiable. Thus, even the African National Congress, Umkhonto we Sizwe,

Inkatha Freedom Party, and other liberation groups were expected to own up for any sins their

members had committed against the citizens or country of South Africa.

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Due to the extreme violence in KZN in the early 1990s, perpetrated in large part by

Inkatha, a disproportionate number of the MPTT cases come from this period and are suspected

to implicate IFP members. Therefore, a brief overview of this violence may be helpful. In 1990,

the apartheid government under President F.W. de Klerk lifted the bans on the ANC, which

meant that leaders in exile could return to South Africa and leaders in prison like Nelson

Mandela were released. The ANC and its allies, the Pan-Africanist Congress, the South African

Communist Party, and the United Democratic Front, led the negotiations for a new constitution.

However, the apartheid regime, intent on weakening and destabilizing the alliance, instituted a

policy of ‘low intensity war,’ “waged against the alliance by surrogates of the state—particularly

Inkatha…The security forces, especially the KwaZulu Police (KZP), also played a vital role in

this regard” (Jeffery, 213).

Beginning in 1990 and continuing in some areas well after the first democratic election,

Inkatha acted as an agent of the state in carrying out the strategy of low intensity war, subjecting

the townships in particular to gruesome violence. Hiding behind the IFP was the apartheid

regime, simultaneously pretending to negotiate a new constitution and terrorizing the black

townships in the following manner:

The implementation of ‘low intensity warfare’ (LIW) was part and parcel of the

government’s negotiating strategy. It was effected in various ways, including the

assassination of alliance leaders and the sowing of terror in communities supporting the

alliance. Implemented through proxies—so as to obscure the state’s role in the

strategy—LIW aimed at demoralising communities, eroding support for the alliance, and

enabling the government to control and direct the process of negotiation towards the

maintenance of the status quo. (Jeffery, 213)

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Inkatha during this period was responsible for frequent random violence against perceived ANC

members or supporters. A great deal of the cases of the disappeared, therefore, came from this

period of intense political violence. In many cases, the bodies of the people killed were never

identified because of the sheer number killed at once, or because of the brutal manner in which

they were killed (many people were burned to death, which leaves little to identify).

Through testimony from victims' families and loved ones, the TRC heard the stories of

many who went missing during the darkest days of apartheid. In addition, individuals who were

guilty of abductions and killings came forward to tell their stories and to apply for amnesty.

These testimonies provided a fuller picture of what actually became of many of those who had

been disappeared, and families finally had their questions answered. However, a great deal of

cases remained unsolved after the TRC closed, and South Africans still wanted answers about

their missing loved ones. The Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act mandated

that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission make recommendations to the President based on

their findings. “The TRC recommended, among others, the establishment of a task team to

investigate the nearly 500 cases of missing persons that were reported to the TRC, but remained

unsolved. The President endorsed this recommendation in April 2003, upon tabling the TRC's

Final Report in Parliament” (Notice 1539 of 2008: Exhumation Policy, pg. 2).

President Thabo Mbeki, in a speech in Parliament on the TRC's Final Report, provided

greater detail for the follow-up to the many unsolved cases of missing persons. He elaborated on

the TRC’s recommendations, saying, “The National Directorate of Public Prosecutions and

relevant Departments will be requested to deal with matters relating to people who were

unaccounted for, post mortem records and policy with regard to burials of unidentified persons”

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(Mbeki, 2003). The following year, the Missing Persons Task Team was established to fill this

role.

The Missing Persons Task Team

The TRC created guidelines for disappearances that proved important for the Missing

Persons Task Team in its work. After analyzing “the statements it received in respect of

abductions, the Commission identified the following categories:

a abductions and enforced disappearances;

b disappearances in exile;

c disappearances during periods of unrest;

d disappearances regarded as out of the Commission's mandate, and

e cases of indeterminate cause” (TRC Report Vol. 5, pg. 519).

The Missing Persons Task Team was burdened with the 477 remaining unsolved cases of

disappearances, which fell into one of the above five categories. However, according to

Madeleine Fullard, head of the MPTT in Pretoria, “families consistently call in with legitimate

political cases, so that number is always growing,” with a potential to reach more than 2,000

cases due to the political violence in KZN in the early 1990s (Savides, 2012). During the course

of the TRC, efforts were made to uncover the fates of many of the disappeared and to eventually

locate their bodies. The second volume of the TRC report describes this process:

Cases of disappearances came to the attention of the Investigation Unit largely through

statements made to the Commission by deponents who believed their relatives had

disappeared as a consequence of their political activities. These statements were cross-

referenced to applications for amnesty, yielding some positive results. The Investigation

Unit also referred to a list supplied by the African National Congress (ANC) of members

who had been kidnapped by South African security forces, or who had disappeared after

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infiltrating the country. Mortuary registers, cemetery registers and undertakers were

consulted in the process of locating bodies. (TRC Report Vol. 2, pg. 544)

After the TRC's conclusion, virtually the same process was used by the Missing Persons Task

Team to continue this work. There was not a great deal of literature on the process of

researching cases, although there was some on the exhumation process itself. Since most of the

work that the Missing Persons Task Team does takes place before an exhumation, this warrants

further study. I delved into this through my practicum with lead investigator for KwaZulu-Natal

Deborah Quin.

The Missing Persons Task Team was initially meant to tie up loose ends left after the end

of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. What it attempts to do, though, means a great deal

more to the families of the victims. According to Palesa Morudu, whose brother's fate was a

mystery for two decades, the work of the Missing Persons Task Team has finally given her

mother peace. “For my mother, this event is about closure,” she says during a symbolic burial

for her brother at Freedom Park. “My mother says this event today will ensure that she can

account for all of her children. She says when people ask her what happened to Moss, she will

no longer say, ‘I don't know’” (Business Day, 31.10.13).

Searching for the victims of apartheid still missing from decades ago is not the most cost-

effective, as much time and resources go into what often seems a search for a needle in a

haystack. Nor is this effort one necessary for the nation as a whole to transition politically or

heal emotionally, since only a tiny fraction of the population is affected by a finding, and fewer

than 100 bodies have been exhumed since the Missing Persons Task Team started their

investigations. However, this effort is unique in that “transitional justice mechanisms have

tended to be designed primarily to facilitate political transition and enable the rehabilitation of

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existing political and social institutions rather than to ameliorate the suffering of ordinary people

who were directly exposed to daily violence and deprivation during times of conflict” (Aronson,

pg. 262). The Missing Persons Task Team addresses the private grief of ordinary men and

women and does its best to honor and remember the lesser-known heroes of the liberation

movement through their work of investigating disappearances. According to the head of the

MPTT in Pretoria, Madeleine Fullard, “Partly it's trying to say, these people lived and

mattered...It's about recovering memory and gathering information” (Gurney, 2008).

While the Missing Persons Task Team does its best to discover the fates of the

disappeared and to honor their memories, there are some limitations to this work. Primarily, the

MPTT is underfunded and understaffed, which severely constricts its capabilities. The

investigators like Deborah Quin simply do not have the time or the support staff to be able to

investigate all of the cases on file, making the backlog of cases overwhelming and the apparent

progress underwhelming. In addition, many families of the victims have very high expectations

for the Missing Persons Task Team in how they will be personally acknowledged, and the MPTT

just does not have the funds for these expectations to be realized. It can be seen that “while the

MPTT does an excellent job of officially acknowledging the private pain of relatives of the

missing, it does not have the resources to ensure broader public recognition of the sacrifices of

the missing and their families or the mandate to provide special reparations for their suffering”

(Aronson, pg. 268). Further study into the limitations facing the Missing Persons Task Team

was done through the practicum, as this is an area where extensive literature is lacking.

The Missing Persons Task Team, in its attempts to discover the fates of the disappeared

and return the remains to their families, has become more than just a small investigative unit

within the National Prosecuting Authority. Although it is faced with many limitations, it has

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succeeded in honoring those who gave their lives to the liberation movement. It is also unique in

the international arena as it is one of the only transitional justice mechanisms intent on

addressing the pain and suffering of ordinary men and women. In my Independent Study

Project, the Missing Persons Task Team was investigated as an extension of the Truth and

Reconciliation Commission, as a way of furthering the effort to expose past human rights

violations and to create a wealth of knowledge in an attempt to never let such things happen

again. It is a means of tending to individual suffering in order to heal a nation.

Methodology

This research project was conducted as a month-long practicum, and my primary

methodologies for research were participant observation, field visits, informal interviews, and

archival research. I spent November 2013 working as an intern under Deborah Quin, lead

investigator for the KwaZulu-Natal unit of the Missing Persons Task Team. Much of the time

we worked at the office in downtown Durban, where I had access to case files, mortuary

registers, cemetery records, TRC documents, photographic evidence and other archival sources.

I was able to experience the MPTT’s investigative process through participating in it, whether I

was led by Deborah or navigating the process myself.

I was also able to accompany her and Colonel W.S. Mhlongo on a number of field visits.

We travelled to rural police stations to collect mortuary registers, a cemetery to access burial

records, a border post for investigation on a disappeared person’s last known location, and to the

home of a missing person’s wife. These visits gave me a better perspective on how the

investigative team gathers information and builds a case, and it also taught me about all the

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challenges the team runs into as the investigators attempt to carry out their mandate to find the

disappeared.

Finally, I attended several meetings with Deborah and Colonel Mhlongo. In one meeting

with the office of the Mayor of Durban and the Premier’s staff, I saw how the city officials

budget and plan for the handover and reburial of a victim once the case has been solved by the

MPTT. In another meeting, we told the wife of a disappeared person that we had found what we

believe to be the grave of her husband, who had been missing for over 20 years. These meetings

allowed me to see the end stages of a case, how a case is handled by the government once it is

solved, and how a resolution affects a family.

Limitations

My research was limited by several factors, including the methodology I chose for this

project. Because I was working so closely with Deborah, I tended to see issues from her

perspective, and I was thus biased by her views. I saw less of the controversial nature of the

work of the Missing Persons Task Team and instead saw mainly the accomplishments of the

KZN unit as a productive legacy of the TRC.

Another limitation I faced was the time constraints of this project. Had I more time to

spend working at the MPTT, I may have been able to see a case through its various stages to

completion, which would have been extremely helpful for my research. Additional time would

also have allowed me to explore other areas such as the controversial cases, how a family is

affected by a disappearance (both before and after the victim’s case is solved), attitudes towards

the MPTT by South Africans who never had a loved one disappeared, recommendations by the

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MPTT for other countries dealing with forced political disappearances, and the future of this

project. Study in these areas would have given me a much fuller picture of the MPTT and their

impact not only on individual families, but South Africa in its first few decades post-apartheid,

as well as the international discourse on addressing human rights atrocities.

A final limitation of my research was my own bias and expectation coming into the

project. Before starting my practicum, I believed that the Missing Persons Task Team would be

a grand operation with a very official agenda. I expected to attend an exhumation and see bones

in the dirt. None of this turned out to be true. The MPTT unit of KZN is simply Deborah Quin,

who sets her own agenda: attending to the needs of families. She talks on the phone to a victim’s

daughter like they are old friends, and she attends meetings to advocate for families before the

budgetary concerns of fellow bureaucrats. I never saw a dig, but rather I was able to see all the

work that goes into an investigation before any dirt is overturned. I expected to look but not

touch; it turned out that I would become a part of an investigation rather than just watching a

senior investigator solve one. Deborah allowed me to sift through evidence myself, and in the

process, crack a case.

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Findings

The Search for the Disappeared

The cases officially assigned to the Missing Persons Task Team were left over at the end

of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Every case has a file, which includes information

gathered by trained volunteers during the TRC. This includes statements made by family

members of the disappeared. Mothers, wives, siblings and children gave their stories of "gross

human rights violations" which occurred during apartheid, and the information in these

statements is crucial to solving the cases. Most of the statements taken in KwaZulu-Natal are in

either English or Zulu, but most documents, if they are originally in Zulu, have been translated

into English for the investigators. The ideal statement would include the person's name, their age

and date of birth, a recent photo, their place of residence, their relationship to the person giving

the statement, the date and place they were last seen, their occupation and employer, and any

political affiliation, activism, or community involvement they had. Other helpful information

would include recent death threats, involvement in recent protests, political missions, trips out of

the country, who they associated with publicly or privately, or the addresses of extended family

or significant others. Unfortunately, many files are missing much of this information, which

makes searching for people very difficult. For example, it is hard to find someone when their

family did not provide their age or the approximate time and circumstances when they went

missing.

When an investigation begins, the MPTT creates a chart for the disappeared individual.

At the center is the person in question, as well as their name and ID number. Then from the

statements from family members they pull the crucial details of the disappearance, including the

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person's age, place of residence, political affiliation, and date and place they were last seen. This

information would be compressed into a sentence or two and placed in a corner of the chart.

Radiating out from the person's name would be other information the investigator could gather.

This would include their home address, their employer and telephone number, as well as any

living family members and their contact information. This information is crucial to gaining

further details on the person's activities or recent political violence in the area. Thus, files may

come to contain a number of other documents from many sources that could hold clues to their

fates.

In order for these cases to progress, investigators must establish that there was a reason

for the missing to have been disappeared; that is, there must be reason to believe that this crime

was politically motivated. The best way to discern whether a disappearance was politically

motivated is to find out whether or not the victim was politically active. If they were an MK

fighter, for instance, or a member of the ANC underground, then they would be a definite target

for a disappearance. There are, of course, a whole host of reasons why a person may have been

disappeared, but it is the job of the Missing Persons Task Team to investigate this possibility.

Once they have established the possible motive for a forced political disappearance, the

investigation can proceed.

Since most of the disappeared were killed shortly after they went missing, the MPTT

assumes that the disappeared died within the first few days of going missing unless they have

reason to believe that the disappeared were held for a period of time first. Mortuary registers are

a good source for leads, so the MPTT collects mortuary registers and looks at ones from morgues

in the area where the person went missing, and starts searching through the entries starting at the

date the person went missing. Deborah Quin, the lead investigator for the KwaZulu-Natal unit of

24    

the MPTT, looks for people buried as paupers who were unidentified at the time of their burial.

Finding an unidentified pauper of the same race, sex, and approximate age of the victim, buried

in the same area they went missing within a few days of that date, and with a cause of death that

could indicate murder, could indicate a potential match, for example, in the second case study of

B.P. Ngwenya. If a match is found, the next step would be to go to the cemetery indicated in the

mortuary register where that body was buried and retrieve the cemetery records. These would be

used to find the specific burial plot where the remains are located.

At this stage, if the burial can be found with the correct information (that is, it matches

with the information in the mortuary register), then the family would be notified that the Missing

Persons Task Team may have found their loved one. The investigative team would ask the

family questions that could help to identify the bones as their loved one. Family members would

be asked whether the missing person had a broad or narrow chest, their height and weight,

whether or not they smoked, the shape of the head and chin, whether they had any birth

deformations, whether they had broken any bones or lost any teeth, or even if they had any

chronic pains or serious diseases. At this meeting, DNA samples may be taken from the children

or other blood relatives of the missing person.

After obtaining permission from the proper authorities, the Missing Persons Task Team

would complete a partial exhumation for the purposes of DNA testing. The MPTT has two

forensic anthropologists, including Claudia Bisso, an Argentinean who frequently works with

Deborah on exhumations. They excavate the grave site, remove enough of the bones to get a

DNA sample, and send this to the lab for testing. Results could be back in about a month, and if

it turned out to be a positive match, the team would conduct a full exhumation. There would be

a handover ceremony, where the officials would give the remains back to the family, and then

25    

there would be a reburial. During my internship with the MPTT, I had the opportunity to attend

a meeting with Deborah, the Mayor’s staff, and the Premier’s office, for the purposes of

negotiating a handover ceremony and reburial for two MK veterans that Deborah had found and

exhumed earlier this year. At the meeting, the city officials discussed a budget, dates, and details

on the ceremony, which they would cover financially, including the purchase of two cattle for

ceremonial slaughter.

In cases where the body of a victim cannot be found, families may still be able to find

peace in the discoveries of the MPTT. According to Deborah, many times when a victim’s body

was blown up with grenades to eliminate the evidence, there may not be anything left for the

team to collect for the families. Times like these, families may have a traditional healer, a

sangoma, perform a ceremony to “collect” the spirit of their deceased loved one at the place

where they are believed to have died, or where their body was destroyed. The sangoma would

then put the spirit in a basket and give this to the family to rebury just as they would bones. This

ceremony is called spiritual repatriation, and can provide families the closure they need to move

on knowing they have appeased the ancestors. This ceremony may be helpful in a case such as

the first case study of this investigation, an MK operative named Ngubo.

Challenges

In my practicum at the Missing Persons Task Team, I noticed several of the challenges it

faces, which the literature I studied at the beginning of this project had previously discussed. In

regards to the MPTT being understaffed and overloaded, this was one of the most apparent issues

that the unit faced which I only began to understand a couple weeks into my practicum. Since

Deborah works in an office with other personnel from the National Prosecuting Authority, I

26    

believed at first that they were all doing the same work as her in investigating the

disappearances. But after hearing several conversations between her colleagues regarding their

work, which had nothing to do with what she was investigating, I asked her where the rest of the

KwaZulu-Natal MPTT unit was. She told me then that she was the unit for KZN, and the police

officer who accompanied us on all of our field visits was mainly concerned with facilitating our

meetings with the police. Most of the Missing Persons cases come from KZN, so I asked why

this province had such a small unit if it had the most cases. Deborah told me that most provinces

don't even have units; the entire investigative staff of the MPTT across the country consists of

herself, a police officer in the Eastern Cape, and Madeleine Fullard in the central office in

Pretoria. This shocked me; I had seen the sheer volume of cases that Deborah had to work

through (her desk was covered in them). At the end of each fiscal year, the federal government

attempts to shut down the unit by not allocating funds or renewing their contracts. To me, what

seemed such an important project from an international perspective with human rights in mind,

the South African state obviously did not consider it of high enough importance to allocate the

necessary resources to solving these cases.

The literature from J.D. Aronson in particular also discussed the MPTT's inability to meet

the high expectations of families during and after the reburial of their loved ones. Technically,

the MPTT's mandate ends after the remains have been delivered to the TRC Unit, but there are

so many bureaucratic hoops that families must jump through in order to see their loved ones

reburied with dignity that the MPTT often takes up the slack in order to help facilitate this

process. Therefore, when the local government does not provide a lavish funeral service or

public recognition for the sacrifice of their fallen loved ones, it may appear to families that

27    

Deborah cannot deliver all that they expect, when in reality she goes above and beyond what is

required of her to help the families.

In addition to these previously acknowledged challenges, I also observed several other

issues that the MPTT faces in its work. The records they use are not kept in a central location,

which requires Deborah to drive all around the province to collect old mortuary registers and

cemetery records from small poorly-run local police stations. The registers are hardly ever well

organized, kept in piles with other old documents in dusty storage sheds filled with junk, or sent

off to other locations. Pages are often missing, or have been damaged due to exposure to the sun

or flooding; usually they were not properly kept in the first place, and are lacking the necessary

information. An entry in a mortuary register may say nothing besides "Bantu male," which

makes it very difficult to discern whether this death was an old man or a child.

The officials Deborah must work with can be uncooperative or downright hostile. Local

police units either don't know the answers to the questions they are asked, or they don't care

enough to find out. Deborah often drives hours to meet with the head of a police station and

collect records only to get there and have him tell her that the records she needs are no longer

stored there, but have been sent somewhere else. When records are requested, low-level

bureaucrats may tell her that they are not authorized to release them to her, or that they don't trust

her with them, or that they cannot even let her see where they are stored. Sometimes they even

tell her that the records have been destroyed, pretending that this is simple protocol. On one

occasion, when Deborah's partner, Colonel Mhlongo, called a station commander to request a

meeting to gain access to mortuary registers, the commander became very hostile, said there was

nothing they had of interest to the MPTT, and to leave that station alone. To Deborah, this

28    

indicated that this individual may be covering up a past involvement in apartheid crimes, but his

hostility made it very difficult to get to the bottom of the issue.

Deborah is also highly respected by the Mayoral staff and the Premier's office, and is

often invited to meetings to facilitate the reburial of the remains of the victims she finds. The

bureaucrats whose job it is to actually facilitate this process, namely the TRC Unit in the

Department of Justice, are highly uncooperative in this space. They stall the process for months

after an exhumation, which is not only frustrating for Deborah, who sees her work undermined

by the officials who do not care enough to see the process through, but also frustrating for the

families, who just want their loved ones reburied with dignity. One official in particular shows

up late to meetings and then leaves early, and recently sent Deborah (his senior in the civil

service) a highly demeaning, scathing, and rude email telling her that she was not authorized to

make joint decisions with the Premier's office, that she is following improper procedure, and

instructing her to step back and let his office handle matters from this point forward, when his

office was not handling things in the first place which necessitated Deborah to step in and do his

job.

One of the biggest problems the MPTT faces is the incomplete record collection done

during the TRC. The cases have preliminary statements that were taken back in the early days of

the Commission, but were taken by poorly-trained volunteers. Much of the necessary

information on the victims is missing due to misunderstandings of the volunteers or the statement

givers, language barriers, or just lack of knowledge on the circumstances themselves. Many files

do not list the victim's age or date of birth, or do not say when the victim went missing. Others

have conflicting testimonies from various family members, testimonies which have not been

translated into English, or erroneous details in the testimonies.

29    

Perhaps the most concerning challenge facing the MPTT is that of time. As of now, the

disappeared have already been missing for twenty, thirty, sometimes forty years. Since they

went missing, many of the people who gave statements at the TRC in their behalf have died;

many of those responsible for the disappearances have died; records have deteriorated or been

destroyed; families have moved and not sent in updated contact information; people who may be

able to give valuable testimony have aged significantly and no longer remember; and the remains

have completely decomposed, leaving only bones. Deborah said that the longer cases go

unsolved, the harder it is to solve them. This challenge is exacerbated by the other factors at play

here: with only three investigators, fewer cases can be solved at one time, leaving a huge backlog

of cases; further deterioration of records will take place as more time goes by; uncooperative

officials who do not allow Deborah access to records hinder the process, wasting valuable time;

when statements from the TRC are incomplete, they must be retaken, but this is not possible

when the statement giver is elderly or deceased.

30    

The following are two cases which I worked on with Deborah Quin during my internship

with the Missing Persons Task Team. They each illustrate various strategies used by the MPTT

to investigate the disappeared, as well as some of the many challenges the unit faces in this work.

Furthermore, the outcomes of both cases are very different, so they point to a variety of ways in

which families may find closure through the information presented to them by the MPTT.

Case Study 1—Busani Ngubo

Busani Ngubo left South Africa with his brother in 1977 to train with Umkhonto we

Sizwe. He returned a few months later for a mission and was arrested for terrorism in

Pietermaritzburg. His family was told that he would be released from jail after three years, but

when that time came he did not appear. When his family inquired after his whereabouts, they

were told that he had escaped from prison and the authorities did not know what happened to

him.

At the beginning of my internship with the Missing Persons Task Team, Deborah was

already investigating this case and had gained considerable ground. She had looked into prison

records and found out that he was arrested in September 1977 and held in Boston in the KZN

Midlands. In October, he “laid a charge of assault with the magistrate at Himeville,” most likely

to complain that he was being beaten or tortured in prison (Case file (MP 320)). After being

questioned, he was transferred to Sani Pass police cells, a tiny border post in the mountains near

Lesotho, in December 1977. In February 1978, his release was authorized, and all traces of him

disappear there.

We drove up to Sani Pass to see if we could find any records there from the time period

when Ngubo would have been held. The station commander at Sani Pass told us that they don’t

31    

have a lot of the old records, and showed us to a shed where they keep all their records. When

we opened the door, we saw stacks of files pushed against the back wall, inaccessible due to the

rusty lawn equipment and hundreds of toilet paper rolls blocking our way. When we fought our

way through to the records, we found mostly receipts for mundane purchases and other unhelpful

bits of information. There was nothing on prisoners from that period, only a payroll sheet listing

the officers working there at the time. The station commander told us a few other stations where

we might find documents. When we called one station, that commander was very hostile, and

told us that there were no records of interest to us at his post, and then told us to stop snooping

around in his business. When we visited another station, that commander told us that the records

from long ago had been destroyed.

The drive back down the mountain from Sani Pass made me consider Ngubo’s fate. The

area was completely isolated, accessible only by a single dirt road winding up the side of the

mountain in impossible switchbacks. The closest inhabitant was miles away, and it could be

hours before you passed another human being on the road. The vast sheer cliffs and deep clefts

in the mountains made it easy to imagine how simple it could be to dump a body, and how

unlikely it was that anyone should find it for days or weeks. With no reason at all for Ngubo to

be transferred up there besides to dispose of him, Deborah and I agreed that on the drive up the

mountain, he had to know that he was being brought there to die.

We have since been unable to find any potential matches for him in the mortuary

registers that were available to us. Since it is unlikely that we will obtain any more from that

area and the right time period, the MPTT may never find out what happened to his body. The

best guess we have is that after he was released, he was abducted by the police, shot, and the

body was left in the mountains. It was either never found or discovered much later and was too

32    

decomposed to be identified. Unless, upon further investigation of this case, more information is

discovered, Ngubo’s family may choose to have a spiritual repatriation to collect his spirit from

Sani Pass and have a symbolic reburial service in his honor. Although his family may never get

back the body of their loved one, they may find closure in knowing what happened to him and

being able to perform the traditional burial rituals.

Case Study 2—B.P. Ngwenya

Buswabuphele Phillip Ngwenya left home on December 26, 1991, telling his wife that he

would be home soon. That was the last time she ever saw him. When he had not returned home

by the next morning, she became concerned and contacted family members in the area to inquire

after his whereabouts. Ngwenya’s sister reportedly saw him going to visit his girlfriend, who,

when contacted, said he spent the night at her house and left for home the next morning. A

neighbor allegedly told Ngwenya’s wife that he saw Ngwenya’s car, a Toyota Hilux, at the

police station at Pietermaritzburg, and that he had seen Ngwenya being led into the police station

by Security Branch members. The family reported him missing to the police, but they were

unsuccessful in tracing him after inquiring at several mortuaries in the area.

The family submitted their statements as testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission years later, but all they received was a letter, signed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu,

the TRC chair, telling them that “there is insufficient evidence to enable us [the Commission] to

make a decision on your story” (Case file (MP 323)). Nothing further was done for Ngwenya’s

family until the Missing Persons Task Team was created in 2005 and the case landed on Deborah

Quin’s desk. On my second day at the MPTT office, Deborah gave me a stack of case files from

33    

the Pietermaritzburg area and told me to see if I could find anything in a pile of mortuary

registers from the same area. So I read through all the files, including the case file for Ngwenya.

According to his wife, Ngwenya was 46 years old when he went missing, and was an

active ANC member who worked at Hebox Textiles in Hammarsdale. He may have been a

member of the trade union SACTWU, South African Clothing Textile Workers Union. Months

before his disappearance, he had told his wife that he had driven some ANC members to

Swayimane, and Inkatha fighters had killed everyone in the truck. He said the only reason they

didn’t kill him too was because someone said that he was just the driver and was not politically

involved, but he later told his wife that he still feared Inkatha would try to kill him.

After going through the mortuary registers page by page, one handwritten entry at a time,

I stumbled across something. An unidentified black male, found dead on the road in

Mpumalanga on December 27th, 1991. His cause of death was entered in the register as “fracture

base of skull in apparent MVA,” suggesting that he may have died in a motor vehicle accident

(Case file (MP 323)). If Ngwenya was killed in the same area that he went missing from, then

Camperdown is where his body would have gone to morgue, and this register was from

Camperdown. The body in this register went unclaimed and unidentified for a few weeks, and it

was buried in a pauper’s grave in Azalea cemetery on January 15th, 1992. Even though we didn’t

know the name or age of this person, we suspected that it was Ngwenya since he was killed the

day after he went missing, and was found dead of a car accident but without his car. It looked

like someone had killed him, and furthermore it may have been politically motivated. He was a

potential witness to the killings in Swayimane, and someone may have wanted him dead so he

could not testify against them.

34    

Upon further inspection of his file, I found an undated death certificate for Ngwenya,

probably obtained through the courts years after he went missing. His wife had worked to have

him legally declared dead, which would have helped her financially at the time raising six

children alone. This alone was not unusual. What was unusual, however, was that there was a

cause of death listed on this death certificate, and it was “fractured base of skull,” consistent with

the cause of death of the unidentified black male in the Camperdown mortuary register. It is

unclear to us how this cause of death was obtained when Mrs. Ngwenya never saw her husband’s

body or even knew what happened to him, but it lead me to believe with even more surety that

this was his body.

At this point, Deborah decided that we would go to the cemetery where this body was

buried to see if we could find anything more. When we asked the woman at the police station

there for the burial records of Azalea from the early 1990s, she pulled out two massive old

volumes, each filled with thousands of tiny handwritten entries. Unfortunately, the entries were

in no particular order. Instead of being organized chronologically, it was organized by blocks in

the cemetery, which were seemingly filled randomly. Therefore, there was no good way to

search for the entry we needed besides to go through every single entry. A few days later, as I

was reading through hundreds of these entries, I found one that stuck out. Buried in Block I,

Row C, grave 9, was an “unknown male” transferred from the Camperdown mortuary. He was

black, had died on December 27th, 1991, and his cause of death was under investigation. He was

buried on January 15th, 1992. Only one detail was inconsistent, his age, which was listed as

approximately 37 years of age. But then we took a look at the very next entry, another pauper

burial which took place the same day, also transferred from the Camperdown mortuary, a black

male whose cause of death was also under investigation. This person was listed as

35    

approximately 46 years old. We were almost positive that this was an entry error, and that this

was a match. We had found our man.

We called Ngwenya’s wife Hleziphi and invited her to come to the office. We told her

about our findings and that we believed her husband’s remains were buried in Azalea cemetery.

She took the news very calmly, with dignity and poise. She thanked us for our work and seemed

at peace when she told us that her four late children were also buried in Azalea cemetery. We

then asked her a series of questions which would help us to identify the bones as her husband:

she told us that he didn’t smoke, he was missing a top front tooth, and he wore a size medium

shirt. We told her that in a few months we would be able to conduct an exhumation for DNA

testing, so we could tell with certainty that this was her husband. She told us that this would be a

good day for her family, because ever since her husband disappeared, things have gone wrong in

the family, as if a dark cloud were following them. This feeling, Deborah told me, is common of

the families of the disappeared, because traditionally it is believed that after someone dies,

certain practices must be observed, including a sacrifice to the ancestors. If the family cannot

properly bury the dead, the ancestors will be displeased and misfortune will befall the family

until everything is made right. Hleziphi Ngwenya told us how she had waited a long time, over

20 years, to find out what happened to her husband, and after searching for so long it could feel

at times a pointless task. But after all this time, here she was, hearing what had happened. She

said she never stopped hoping because “it is better when you can see the bones of the one you

love.”

36    

Broader Implications

For the families of the disappeared, the work of the Missing Persons Task Team allows

them to find closure and put their pain behind them. Many of the mothers and wives and siblings

of the disappeared were for years silenced by the apartheid regime, either too afraid to demand

answers or outright denied them. Deborah and the others at the MPTT honor these individuals

by pouring energy and resources into discovering the fates of their loved ones. They are finally

treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve as human beings and as victims of human

rights violations. After informing families that the remains of their loved ones have been found,

Deborah has been told by many that it means the world to them just that she has put months of

work into finding their missing loved ones. In this respect, the MPTT may be one of the greatest

investments the new government of South Africa can make as a way of atoning for the sins of the

apartheid regime.

Burying the remains of their loved ones as they wish to gives the families the peace of

mind that they had been seeking for decades. Many family members of the disappeared express

the belief that things have gone wrong for their families because they have been unable to bury

their dead properly, and that things will be right when they have done the funeral rituals. The

South African government covers financially the funerals of the people found by the MPTT,

including purchasing the cattle for slaughter (a bull for a male victim, a cow for a female) in

traditional funeral rites. This recognition of the importance of cultural practices of the suffering

victims is crucial: it honors the fallen and their families, and returns the right to make these

important burial decisions to the families. Many victims were buried in secret or in unmarked

pauper graves, and were not afforded any of the most basic rituals of a funeral. In the reburial

service, they are recognized for their sacrifice for the cause of liberation, granted attendance by

37    

their family, friends, and fellow comrades in the struggle, and honored with the traditional

funeral rituals, including the slaughter of a head of cattle. In addition, the families can feel a

weight lifted off their shoulders as they make the proper amends with their ancestors after

burying their dead.

In the cases of most political killings, the crime committed is the act of murder; the

confines of the crime are typically centered on the abduction, unlawful confinement, torture, and

murder of the person. Thus, the crime affects the families of the victims because of the loss, but

the crime itself ends at the murder. I would argue that this is different in the case of

disappearances. Because their bodies are missing and their fates remain a mystery, the families

usually never discover what happened to their loved ones, and so they go on suffering, often

times unable to move past the crime. Therefore, I would argue that families are by extension

victims of the crime of disappearance, and the confines of the crime extend well after the murder.

The crime is the disappearance, so it continues until the fate of the disappeared is found out. For

many families, this day never comes, and so they suffer indefinitely. The Missing Persons Task

Team attempts to end the crime by giving families answers. This may be the most noteworthy

aspect of their work, the fact that they can and have ended the crime of disappearance for many

families by delivering answers, and in many cases, the remains of their loved ones.

After apartheid, there were many different strategies put forth on how to move on and

start over in the new South Africa. The strategy eventually employed by the Truth and

Reconciliation Commission was meant to expose the truth that had been hidden for so long. It

allowed people to tell their stories, and it created a national narrative on the apartheid years that

was contradictory to that which had been the official apartheid narrative of a happy and

prosperous South Africa built on ‘separate development.’ It exposed all the ugliness and pain

38    

that ordinary men and women had suffered for so long. The stories that could not be told,

though, were the stories of the disappeared. The Missing Persons Task Team carries out the

mission of the TRC by telling these untold stories after so many years. The MPTT contributes to

the national narrative of the new South Africa by making the fates of the disappeared known

publicly rather than allowing them to remain buried under a cloud of secrecy for the rest of time.

Exposing the truth of those years has helped South Africa to be frank and open about its painful

past, to learn from the sins of the previous regime and to learn to forgive not through forgetting,

but by remembering. Thus, the MPTT honors not only the memory of the disappeared, but also

the cultural memory of South Africa. It uncovers secrets long buried in order to put the past to

bed and move into the future, to a present marked not by pain that is silenced, but by learning

from the memories and cherishing the legacies of those who sacrificed everything.

39    

Conclusions

Disappeared persons tend to stay disappeared, leaving emotional scars on their families

and on their societies, with which they have to grapple for decades. The Missing Persons Task

Team works to uncover the fates of South Africa’s many disappeared, as a way of tending to the

victims of these crimes and as a contribution to healing post-apartheid South Africa. In this

study, I sought to investigate the ways in which the Missing Persons Task Team searches for the

disappeared of so many years ago, as well as how the uncovering of their remains affects the

families of the victims. Furthermore, I intended to study the implications of these findings for

South Africa, more specifically, how the Missing Persons Task Team contributes to the goal of

reconciliation through uncovering truths of the past.

Through my practicum at with the KwaZulu-Natal unit of the Missing Persons Task

Team, I participated in the investigations of two cases, MP 320 Busani Ngubo and MP 323 B.P.

Ngwenya. In the first case, the investigation led to a dead end due to a lack of the necessary

records from the period. The remains of this individual may never be found, however his family

should be encouraged to conduct a spiritual repatriation to reclaim him from the probable scene

of the crime. In the second case, we followed a paper trail of TRC statements, mortuary

registers, and cemetery records to find our victim’s unmarked pauper’s grave, and informed

Ngwenya’s widow of our findings so that she may finally have a grave to visit. In both cases,

the families may be able to find closure in the discoveries of the Missing Persons Task Team,

and may perform a ceremony to maintain right relationship with the ancestors.

The work of the Missing Persons Task Team could be made more efficient with some

administrative changes. One of the main challenges is the lack of an updated and consolidated

40    

record database. Going through ancient, crumbling, water-damaged mortuary records is

incredibly tedious, and many of these volumes are still scattered around the province at police

stations far from the office. Cemetery records are in a similar condition, making them difficult to

access without driving hours to collect a few to use for less than a week at a time. If funds were

made available, scans could be made of each page and then compiled into electronic copies, and

they would be better preserved and easier to skim through to find a specific entry.

Another serious challenge for the Missing Persons Task Team is that they are severely

understaffed. Because cases become more difficult to solve as the years pass, a support staff

would help with various tasks to alleviate the pressure of time constraints. A support staff could,

for example, drive to the various police stations to collect mortuary registers, create electronic

copies of records, synthesize information from TRC statements into summaries for each case,

translate statements and other documents into English where this has not yet been done, arrange

meetings with families or officials, or create maps of cemeteries where they are lacking. These

functions would ease the process of investigations and free up the investigators for the more

important tasks.

If there had been time for further study, it would have been interesting to investigate the

impact this strategy has had on international human rights discourse and on other countries

grappling with the effects of past forced political disappearances. While this may not be the

most practical study to undertake here in South Africa, it may be an interesting topic of research

for students in, for example, Switzerland, or in a country which, like South Africa, has had a

history of disappearances, perhaps Guatemala or Argentina.

41    

Through my research, it became apparent that those most directly affected by the findings

of the Missing Persons Task Team are the families of the disappeared. Having been ignored or

denied answers for years under the apartheid regime, the MPTT tends to the families by

returning to them their human dignity along with the stories and remains of their lost loved ones

by honoring them with the answers they seek. Families find closure in knowing what happened

to their loved ones, and make peace with their ancestors when they can rebury their relative

using traditional ceremonial practices. Victims are also recognized as heroes in the liberation

struggle by government officials, and families are thanked for their contribution to South African

democracy by their fallen relative.

Another matter I considered at the close of my study was the theoretical framework of the

crime against humanity which we call a forced political disappearance. Before my field study,

my understanding of this term had come from other literature, which acknowledged the victim as

the individual which has been disappeared, and which defined the crime as secret arrest,

unlawful detention, often torture, and extrajudicial execution. However, my study led me to a

different conclusion. Since the suffering from the crime extends well after the event, and the

families bear the brunt of this pain, I submit two alterations to the understanding of

disappearances: firstly, that the confines of the crime extend beyond the death, and include the

entire period of disappearance, bounded only by a discovery of the fate of the individual in the

event of an investigation concluding in answers; secondly, that the victims of a disappearance

include not only the disappeared individual, but also the extended family of that individual, who

suffer indefinitely in the absence of closure following the crime. The work of the Missing

Persons Task Team attends primarily to the private pain of the families of the disappeared, and

seeks to end the crime of disappearance by delivering answers and remains. Thus, this unit

42    

recognizes these families as victims and provides them with the support they need to handle the

effects of the disappearances.

Furthermore, the Missing Persons Task Team contributes to the national narrative by

uncovering the untold stories of the disappeared. This creates a more complete picture of the

transgressions suffered by ordinary South Africans under the apartheid regime, which was a

main prerogative of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. With this more complete

narrative, South Africa attempts to reconcile with the painful past, heal in the present, and

prepare to build a more thoughtful future. The Missing Persons Task Team, therefore, honors

not only the individuals persecuted for their commitment to the liberation struggle, but also

honors the cultural memory of South Africa and the possibility of the future they fought for.

43    

Bibliography

Primary

Ngwenya, H. Informal interview. November 21, 2013.

Quin, D. Case file (MP 320) Ngubo, Accadius Busani Cedric. Accessed 2013. MPTT.

Quin, D. Case file (MP 323) Ngwenya, Buswabuphele Phillip. Accessed 2013. MPTT.

Secondary

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Aronson, J. D. (2011). The strengths and limitations of South Africa's search for apartheid-era

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Gutman, R. & Rieff, D. (1999). Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know. New York: W.

W. Norton & Company, Inc.

44    

Jeffery, A. (1997). The Natal Story: Sixteen Years in Conflict. Johannesburg: South African

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