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Gallery: Memorial for slain policemen
By Graeme Hosken and Hanti Otto
Pain etched on her face, Marlize Henning, reached out a hand to tenderly touch the face of her dead husband Kobus in a photograph.
Tok Gouws held onto his wife Doris as she reached out to touch their son Tinus one last time in another photograph.
Sergeant Kobus Henning of the National Intervention Unit (NIU) and Warrant Officer Tinus Gouws, a Pretoria Air Wing pilot, were two of the seven men killed in a helicopter crash on Friday.
The men were all described at a memorial service in Pretoria on Thursday as heroes.
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Marlize, herself a warrant officer, hopes the memories of her wonderful husband and the joy of their seven-week-old son, Johann, will give her the strength to deal with her loss. "It is going to be hard. It will be lonely," she said, but she said of her baby. "I will never let him forget his father."
Despite her own grief, she had words of comfort for the families of the other victims of the accident, including the loved ones of her husband's two best friends, Sergeant Daniel de Bruin and Warrant Officer Dirk van Aswegen.
They died with him when the BK117 helicopter they were travelling in to a crime scene in Witbank on Friday exploded in mid-air and crashed to the ground.
The other victims were decorated pilot Captain Wikus Zaayman, NIU commander Colonel Percy Maduna and warrant officer Colin Davids. The men, Henning said, had died together, doing what they loved.
During his sermon, Warrant Officer Reverend Steven Tsingsting said Maduna had been a special friend to him.
When he accompanied the commander's family to the accident scene, Maduna's mother had asked: "Why God, why?"
This, he said was the question in the minds of all seven families, but he told the congregation: "God's plan was not ours."
Men and women in blue sobbed and tried to offer solace to one another in the emotional service in the packed Hatfield Christian Church.
Afterwards, as the congregation filed out to sign condolence books, those closest to the men lingered, heartbroken, by the photographs of their loved ones on display.
The service had been attended by South African police chief, General Bheki Cele and Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa, as well as his deputy Fikile Mbalula, and other senior police and government officials.
Cele lauded the policemen calling them true heroes. He told mourners the men had been extraordinary policemen who did extraordinary work and that their loss had left a vacuum in their unit.
"These young, fit and healthy policemen died a painful death.
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