Xolani Koyana
ANITA and Jan April lost their nine-year-old daughter, Juaneen, when a bomb exploded at a Shoprite store in Worcester 16 years ago. Their son, then four, was badly injured. For many years they harboured hatred for those responsible.
Until recently, when they decided to forgive those responsible for setting off two bombs at the shopping centre on December 24, 1996. One bomb went off outside the supermarket and another at a nearby pharmacy.
Four people, including two children, were killed while 67 others were injured.
Daniel Stephanus “Stefaans” Coetzee, Nicolaas Clifton Barnard, Abraham Liebrecht Myburgh and Johannes Benjamin van der Westhuizen were arrested and admitted they had targeted the stores as that was where black and coloured people shopped.
Yesterday, the Worcester Hope and Reconciliation Process, hosting an event to mark Reconciliation Day, said the organisation and the Khulumani Support Group planned to take survivors of the bomb blasts to Pretoria Central Prison to meet Coetzee.
A so-called peace train is planned for next month and survivors will get an opportunity to express their feelings to one of the men behind the crime.
“You can’t hold so much anger and hatred in your heart,” Jan April said yesterday. “For a very long time, we were really angry with them.”
At the time of the bomb blasts, Anita April had been doing last-minute Christmas shopping with her children.
Her daughter was killed instantly. It would have been her 25th birthday on Saturday.
Anita April’s son Jennewil was badly injured. ”It was hard to lose your child like that.”
But despite forgiving Coetzee, she said she was not yet ready to face him.
At the event, former Foreign Affairs deputy minister Leon Wessels said: “The first step towards racial reconciliation is to acknowledge the demon (racism) is in our midst.”
As part of the event, a candle was lit and doves released.