Cape Town - A Worcester anti-apartheid activist and one of the first responders to the 1996 Christmas Eve Worcester bombing has called on President Jacob Zuma to launch a fund for the surviving victims.
Harris Sibeko, husband of the town’s then deputy mayor, Linda Sibeko, spoke on Thursday at the launch of a book on the reconciliation process following the blast which left four people dead - two of them nine-year-old children - and nearly 70 injured.
Sibeko said the families of those killed and injured were still struggling to come to terms with the trauma of the blast nearly 17 years ago. He said while some had forgiven one of the bombers, Stefaans Coetzee, a “deep sense of hurt” remained. “Some of the victims are still paying off doctors’ bills,” Sibeko said.
“Shortly after the bombing, there were promises of a R4 million fund. We never heard about it again. All we want from the government and the president is a fund from which victims can be refunded for medical costs. It won’t heal the mental scars, but it will make the healing process a bit easier.”
Sibeko recalled how pieces of flesh were scattered across the floor in Worcester’s Shoprite centre after the blast.
“I went in there to look for my wife, but she had already left. I was one of the first on the scene. It was a bad sight.”
The coffee table book A Journey of Hope, which includes a collage of photographs, was compiled by the Reverend Jan Ungerer and Paul Briers of the Worcester Hope and Reconciliation Process, a partnership between residents, the Restitution Foundation and the Khulumani Support Group.
Ungerer said they had chosen to launch the book on Nelson Mandela’s birthday because “reconciliation is what he stood for”.
Cape Argus