Durban - A Durban woman has renewed hope that she will finally find out what happened to her husband after he and three fellow South Africans were abducted in Baghdad eight years ago.
Advocate Marie Enslin has appealed to the Department of International Relations and Co-operation (Dirco), and received an assurance that everything possible would be done to help find the men’s remains.
Enslin will never forget December 10, 2006.
On that day her husband Johan, 48, Andre Durant, 38, Hardus Greeff, 43, and Callie Scheepers, 48, were kidnapped at a police roadblock in Baghdad.
They had been working as guards for South African firm Safenet Security Services, under contract to the US military.
The men were providing an armed escort for a convoy of trucks carrying food and supplies for the Americans.
While there were rumours that a ransom demand had been made, and spurned, the men have not been seen again.
Enslin and the other wives repeatedly begged the South African government to find their missing husbands.
They even went as far as speaking at an international conference of the UN, but to no avail.
Now Enslin is making one final bid to get the Dirco to have the remains of her husband and his friends brought home.
At the time of Johan’s abduction, Enslin lived in Durban but she is now an advocate at the Cape Bar.
She devoted four years to the single-minded hunt for information on her husband’s whereabouts, hiring an investigator to visit Iraq and pursue rumours he had been sighted and was being kept prisoner.
Finally, though, she was forced to accept her husband was never coming home.
In 2011, she applied for, and was granted a Presumption of Death certificate from the Durban High Court.
Now all Enslin hopes for is that because of the media furore caused by the death of South African Pierre Korkie during an abortive US rescue mission of another hostage in southern Yemen last month, the South African government will find out what became of the men.
All she and the other wives pray for, is to be able to bury their dead.
She said: “We do not want any vengeance; only to be able to lay our loved ones to rest in a Christian burial and finally get closure.
“When Korkie was killed I thought to myself: ‘Yolandi is lucky. At least she can bury her husband.’
“We have begged the South African government so many times to help us, but it seems our pleas fell on deaf ears. Apart from one courtesy call three years after our husbands’ disappearances – seemingly to update the Dirco files – we have heard nothing. We don’t know if any attempts were even made to find them during all those years.
“As with African culture, in my culture burial is a sacred ceremony. I beg the department to do everything possible to find their bodies so that we can end this nightmare.”
Clayson Monyela, spokesman for Dirco, said that if the women made a fresh appeal to the director general of Dirco, Jerry Matjila, “everything humanly possible will be done to help locate the remains.”
He said a formal request was needed to begin the process. “In no way would we delay or ignore such a request.”
Monyela said he had no knowledge of what attempts had been made by the government prior to his appointment in 2011, but “it is certain this would have been a matter of priority.
The department is bound to assist any South African with a serious matter of this nature”.
He said that enquiries like this “are very complex and delicate. The situation that prevailed in Iraq at the time (the men disappeared) was difficult because there were a number of forces to contend with rather than a single government.”
On hearing the news, a jubilant Enslin said: “We are delighted at the news that something might finally happen, after all these years. We will draft the appeal immediately and send it to the minister.
“Maybe finally, with the spotlight of the world trained on what happened to Korkie, Dirco will be able to help us get the closure we have prayed for.” - Sunday Tribune