Sangoma's vision leads KZN premier to ask Zuma for 'mass grave' probe

KwaZulu-Natal premier Senzo Mchunu relied only on a sangoma's "vision" for his shock announcement about the existence of a "mass grave" on the South Coast.

Now the premier, armed with Bongekile "Mshanyelo" Nkomo's tale of "restless spirits", has asked President Jacob Zuma to authorise an investigation into the "mass grave", where hundreds of prison labourers are believed to have been buried.

Provincial government spokesman Thami Ngwenya confirmed on Friday that Mchunu had formally written to Zuma asking for his guidance on the level and extent of the inquiry into the grim "discovery" at Glenroy Farm in Dududu on the South Coast.

"This is what will inform the next steps that need to be taken," said Ngwenya.

But he would not say whether there were other efforts by the premier to verify the sangoma's "vision" - which suggests that Mchunu took it as fact.

All Ngwenya would say was that Nkomo's "vision" had been presented before the provincial cabinet by the arts and culture department, and action had been recommended.

"As a process, issues that get to the executive council would have to be thoroughly processed by the line department that brings the issue for consideration and its recommended action," he said.

Presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj on Friday confirmed that Zuma had received a request for an inquiry into the graves, but said the president would respond directly to Mchunu once he had applied his mind to the request.

Nkomo, 66, of Msinga in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, declined to be interviewed about her "vision".

She also failed to respond to e-mailed questions after she had agreed to do so.

Questions have been raised how Zuma could be asked to set up an inquiry based on a sangoma's "vision" only and without any excavation to ascertain whether there are bodies buried on the farm.

Forensic experts from Pretoria are understood to have been working around the clock in the area to establish the veracity of the claims about the graves.

The site of the purported graves has been cordoned off, but there is still no indication when it would be excavated.

Mchunu said that once Zuma had given the nod for a full investigation, forensic scientists will examine the gravesite, where prisoners arrested for petty crimes between 1960 and 1980 are believed to have been buried.

The inquiry is expected to lift the lid on how they died and possibly reveal their identities.

Nkomo told the media this week that her "vision" of unidentified men pleading for her help had appeared in a dream just before the general elections in May last year.

"They were strangers. Some of them were burnt - I assume from where they were harvesting the canefields - and others were bleeding. They asked me: 'Please, release our spirits like you did with the others,'" said Nkomo.

She did not give further details.

The 1700ha farm is now owned by Illovo Sugar, which bought it in 1989 from the previous owners, relatives of farmer Walter William Lindsay, who died in 1985, aged 81.

Former workers claimed that most prison labourers had died as a result of injuries sustained after being sjambokked by foremen on Lindsay's orders.