Book Extract - Clare: The killing of a gentle activist

Book cover. Supplied image.

Book cover. Supplied image.

Published Jun 12, 2022

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Blurb

Manguzi, KwaZulu-Natal. For two weeks in November 1993, Clare Stewart’s body lay hidden in a shallow ditch until cattle herders discovered her remains. The much-loved ANC activist and rural development worker had moved here five years previously to set up a cattle co-operative. Even as rampant political violence engulfed the region, she had found purpose and a home there.

Yet shortly after her death, local leaders were rumoured to have held a feast to celebrate the “recent demise of certain targets”... The police, claimed they could turn up no leads and made no arrests.

Amid the chaos and euphoria that met the birth of a new South Africa, the details of Clare’s death would remain hidden among the dirty secrets of the transition to democracy.

When journalist Christopher Clark stumbled upon Clare’s story, it would not let him go. This is his account of the search for the truth about Clare’s killing, and his quest to better understand both her bold, intrepid life and her enduring legacy.

About the author

Christopher Clark is a multimedia journalist and documentary film-maker covering under-reported social issues, mainly across southern Africa. His writing, films and photography have been commissioned by leading international outlets including The Atlantic, BBC, The Guardian, Harper’s, Reuters, Vice and The Washington Post. He lives in Cape Town.

Clare: The killing of a gentle activist is published by Tafelberg, an imprint of NB Publishers.

Extract

Herders

By the time darkness fell on 10 November, the day of Clare’s disappearance, her colleagues feared the worst. Jabulani Tembe drove to Thandizwe, where he tried to reassure Clare’s domestic worker, Busisiwe, who was still looking after Puleng and beginning to worry. When he returned the next morning and there was still no sign of Clare, Busisiwe was distraught.

That same evening, Jabulani phoned Clare’s brother Peter in Johannesburg to tell him the worrying news. Peter then told Rachel, who had arrived back in South Africa a few days previously, having finished her Master’s degree in business administration at Oxford Brookes University in the UK. She was staying with Peter and his wife while she considered her next move.

Meanwhile, one of Clare’s friends from Manguzi Hospital, a visiting Irish doctor called Laura Campbell, had driven Puleng down to Jane Quin in Shongweni, about 40km outside Durban.

The rest of the Stewarts converged on Jane’s house on 13 November. Clare’s bakkie had been found in Empangeni but there was no further news. Her brother John and his wife, Kathy, flew in from Harare. Her aunt Anne flew up from Cape Town. Once they were all assembled, Clare’s siblings drove to Nottingham Road to deal with the unenviable task of having Themba summoned to the principal’s office to tell him that his mother was missing and that they were going to pull him out of school.

As the news of Clare’s disappearance spread, a steady stream of journalists descended on Jane’s house to interview the family and take pictures of Clare’s young children. “We want our mom” was the headline above a picture of the two of them in one Sunday paper. In the photo, Themba wore a T-shirt that had the slogan “no news is bad news” written across the front. It had been a gift from his uncle John on a previous visit and the slogan was a reference to the political struggle in Zimbabwe, but it suddenly took on a macabre new meaning with regard to Clare.

On 15 November, the family organised a press conference to further raise awareness, but after five days with no news, their sense of foreboding grew ever deeper.

Themba, meanwhile, became unusually quiet and withdrawn. However, as the older sibling, albeit only eight years old, he also seemed to take it upon himself to console Puleng.

During this time, he was completely inseparable from his baby sister, who was not yet 18 months old. Themba would frequently hold Puleng and whisper secret words of reassurance into her ear, perhaps as much for his own benefit as for hers.

Anne took it upon herself to keep close tabs on the initial police investigation. Clare’s case had been assigned to a warrant officer from the Newcastle Murder and Robbery Unit called Andre van der Westhuizen. He told Anne that it was clear Clare was popular, as he had already received more than a hundred calls enquiring about her. Contrary to all the evidence at his disposal and his own initial conclusions, Van der Westhuizen tried to reassure the family that he was confident Clare might still be found alive.

However, by 20 November, 10 days after Clare had disappeared, with no new leads, the media lost interest in the story, as their attention returned to the ongoing Codesa negotiations and the hopeful prospect of a new South Africa.

Despondent and unsure what to do next, the family went back to their respective homes. There were long discussions about who would take Puleng and Themba, but given the pact she had made with Clare, Rachel was adamant that she should be the one to shoulder that responsibility. The children returned with her to Johannesburg, where a family friend offered to loan her a flat just a few blocks from Peter’s house. Clare’s younger sister, Alice, flew in from the US to stay with Rachel and the children just as John and Kathy flew back to Harare.

Creina Alcock, Kathy’s sister, had also come down to Shongweni from Mdukatshani to see the family, and she had volunteered to drive the children through to Johannesburg as Rachel still didn’t have a car. She ended up staying for a few days to lend a hand, cooking meals and helping with the children as Rachel tried to busy herself with job-hunting.

“There was a terrible emptiness, not knowing,” Creina wrote in a letter to another of Clare’s friends shortly afterwards, “and the Stewarts seemed almost catatonic in their responses, moving slowly, unhearing, as if spellbound.”

***

At about nine on the morning of 24 November 1993, two weeks after Clare went missing, in a valley below the gravel road from Manguzi to Ingwavuma, 14-year-old Mbuso Mngomezulu, his 13-year-old brother, Phiwayinkosi, and a neighbour called Bongani Mofuleka left their family compound and set out in search of their father’s cattle. After about an hour, as they neared a dense clump of bushes where the cattle often grazed, just above the road, they came across a shallow ditch presided over by tall red aloes. Mbuso and Phiwayinkosi noticed a body lying face up with its wrists bound above its head with a leather belt.

Terrified, the boys turned and ran home and told their mother, Ngodomane Mngomezulu, what they had seen. By the early afternoon, she had organised a lift into Ingwavuma with a neighbour, where she took the boys to the police station to report the body and give statements.

“Although they said the body was decomposed, my children suspected that it was a female, since they noticed a dress,” Mngomezulu told the police when she gave her own statement.

Some hours later, a police sergeant by the name of Mphiwa Gina and a constable called Orthinial Nyawo drove the boys and their mother back to the scene, where the boys led them to the body hidden between the bushes. As the police officers made their initial inspection, it was clear that the body had been there for some time. Any remnants of skin that were still left on the mostly exposed skeleton had grown leathery and hard, while animals seemed to have gnawed at the bones, bleached a brilliant white by the sun.

The police officers noticed a small handbag still slung around the deceased’s left arm. Sergeant Gina opened it and found an ID booklet inside. A photo of Clare stared back at him. As the two officers inspected the scene, they also found two spent and corroded AK-47 cartridges a few metres away from Clare’s body.

The next morning, Clare’s remains were retrieved from the scene and sent to Mosveld Hospital in Ingwavuma, where an initial autopsy noted “fractures in facial bones, skull and cervical vertebra consistent with having been caused by a high-velocity bullet”. It was clear that Clare had been shot in the back of the head at close range.

Clare’s skull was then removed and sent to the Durban Medico-Legal Mortuary, where the remains of her teeth and jaw were examined by a forensic odontologist.

Compared with the records of Clare’s private dentist, he concluded that the dental pattern showed a clear match.

The following day, Van der Westhuizen added a curt closing entry to Clare’s SAP investigation diary: “Body is found”.

The Saturday Star