Former members of the ANC’s armed wing, uMkhonto weSizwe, carry a coffin containing the remains of the late Johnny Makhathini its arrival at Durban International Airport. The ANC stalwart died in exile on December 3, 1988, and was buried in Lusaka, Zambia. His remains were exhumed and repatriated to South Africa in 2010. South Africa has launched a new programme to repatriate the remains of freedom fighters who died in exile in Angola.
The South African government has launched a major initiative to repatriate the remains of anti-apartheid freedom fighters who died in exile in Angola, calling on families to come forward as authorities begin the complex task of recovering and identifying more than 400 possible graves.
The programme, unveiled at Freedom Park in Pretoria on Friday, marks the next phase of the government's Exile Repatriation of Human Remains Programme and follows the return of the remains of 42 liberation Struggle veterans from Zambia and Zimbabwe in September 2024.
Angola has become the first focus of the five-year plan because it holds the largest known concentration of South Africans who died during the liberation Struggle.
Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie said the initiative was aimed at giving long-awaited answers to families who had spent decades not knowing where their loved ones were buried.
