A struggle to give adequate meaning to apartheid barbarity

The Cradock Four memorial overlooking Lingelihle township has fallen into disrepair

- NKOSIKHULULE NYEMBEZI

THE fate of Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkhonto and Sicelo Mhlauli, known as the Cradock Four, and that of the communities they led in the fight against the apartheid government seems far more vivid to me now than it did since they were abducted and murdered by the apartheid-era police on June 27, 1985.

I credit a wide range of books, films, oral history, and the Cradock Four Garden of Remembrance built on a hill overlooking Lingelihle township cemetery where they are buried in iNxuba (formerly Cradock). Regarding survivor testimony and educational outreach, the site already fulfils part of the envisaged remembrance function, while its installations display the events and their historical context.

Their brutal killing became emblematic in South Africa's struggle for liberation. Four young men - teachers and community activists in the prime of their lives with so much to offer, people who would have gone on to play leading roles in a democratic South Africa - had been lured, ambushed, trapped, tortured and executed. The murders laid bare the hatred and callousness of apartheid, and the cruelty of those who gave the instructions and those who discharged them.

Prominent United Democratic Front (UDF) patrons spoke at the funeral, also delivering a message from exiled ANC president Oliver Tambo to the over 60 000 mourners, who came from all over the country in defiance of a travel ban. They unfurled ANC and SACP flags - the first time the colours of the banned liberation movement had flown at a public gathering in years.