Families’ pain after loved ones paid supreme price for freedom

Journalist Lukhanyo Calata has made it his life’s duty to pursue justice for his father and the others. | African News Agency archives

Journalist Lukhanyo Calata has made it his life’s duty to pursue justice for his father and the others. | African News Agency archives

Published Aug 31, 2021

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Koert Meyer

Cape Town - No parent can bear to become aware, day after day, of the ordeals other parents' children have gone through, and are still going through, at the hands of heartless folks who believe it is right to kill and abduct them, and so little is done to stop them.

From the beginning of time this misfortune that befell them has gripped humanity.

When Christ died on the cross, his mother was there, not able to help him.

The day that unknown South American freedom fighter was executed he had written that world-famous poem, Mother was there.

And he ended it off by comparing his ordeal with that of Christ's mother who was also there up to that last minute when their sons died.

We talk a lot about closure.

Many think when justifying their misguided belief in the death penalty, that people will find closure once their child's killer is meted out the same punishment, and that only then will they be freed of their burden knowing "justice was served".

Too many die not knowing how their children died, what they did to deserve such cruel deaths, and why their perpetrators were not brought to book.

Mrs Fatima Haffajee's son, the 26-year-old Pietermaritzburg dentist Dr Hoosen Haffajee, who weighed only 49kg, died a painful death in police custody in 1977.

Mrs Haffajee, Mrs Molly Lubowski, mother of Anton, and many other mothers, died with broken hearts after relentless quests to know by whom, and why, their sons were killed.

It is striking how one of the newspaper reports about Dr Haffajee's murder concludes: "We strongly believe in Islam that life is sacred; that life comes from Allah and it is only He that takes away life; and if we were to take our life prematurely, then it is a grave sin, an unforgivable sin".

Can we then still scream that judicial killing is right?

In my birthplace Cradock in the Eastern Cape where the "Cradock Four" were first brutally stabbed, then burnt to death in their car, Fort Calata's son has made it his life's duty to pursue justice for his father and the others.

He was only three when they perished on their way from Port Elizabeth (today Gqeberha).

He even wrote a book about his and his family's vain struggle for justice.

Near Cradock is a police outpost called Post Chalmers on the R61 to Graaff-Reinet.

In the 1980s the notorious apartheid security police brought three Struggle heroes all the way from Gqeberha, a distance of about 300km, to be killed there while their captors were having a braai.

A memorial should be erected there.

We remember the mothers whose sons, after being executed in Pretoria, were buried in unmarked graves; others just searching for their children's bones to be given dignified burials.

There are so many unanswered questions, yet some folks want us to carry on with our lives as if nothing happened.

There are so many others, too many to mention, but when thinking about these brutal atrocities of our ugly past, we can just empathise with these families for the supreme price their loved ones had to pay for our freedom. Yet today some of us are trampling on that freedom as if it was cheap, not worthy of commemorating.

The moving story "Nigerians sell homes to free children" in another paper, tells how parents sell not only their property, but also their cars, their land, and even clean out their lifetime savings to try to get their abducted children back.

This happens too often.

The worst story is that of Mr Abubakar Adam's – seven of their 11 children were abducted. Their kidnappers demanded so much money but still their cash was not enough, they wanted more.

The kidnappers seized the man that brought te ransom to them, demanding more and more.

The poor father and their family are devastated.

Where must they get more money? The Nigerian government warned parents not to pay ransom as it will never stop this scourge, but which parent will not do what is asked for their kids' freedom?

The question arises why Nigeria, the continent's most populous nation, one of the three largest economies and armies, and able to send peace-keeping forces to strife-torn ones, cannot contain and eradicate the terrorism plaguing it for decades.

In another heart-rending story, Mexican mother Maria Herrera, is still searching for four of her sons who disappeared. They are feared to have been killed, in one of the country's states plagued by cartel turf wars.

She will never give up; not even now that her own life is also in danger.

How many parents in Muslim-majority countries, and even countries to which they emigrated, kill their own daughters after they had been raped, or they had flouted parents' arranged marriages, so as to "preserve" their families' honour?

These are ironically known as "honour killings".

How many parents' daughters here in our midst have been killed or seized by ruthless gangsters to be used as sex slaves, their sons forced to join – devilish practices continuing unabated.

How many parents of missing children are dying of broken hearts?

In the month of August known as "Women's Month", we think of all of them who lost their lives, or who had been brutally slaughtered as we have seen these shocking stories dominating the news.

Shouldn't children bury parents, not the other way round?

It is heart-warming to see memorials going up for some of them, books written to celebrate their lives, and foundations started in their names, so that we can remember them forever and ever, and keep on praying that one day our country, and indeed the world, will be the place that God had intended it to be.

* Meyer is an anti-death penalty, anti-apartheid activist, former history educator and scholar

Cape Times

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