Twin brother of 'Mamelodi 10' victim relieved that final body has been found

Thabo Geldenhuys, whose twin brother Rooibaard was one of the 10 Mamelodi youth who were lured to their death by the apartheid security police 33 years ago, expressed relief on Thursday that the last of the graves had been discovered.

While nine of the 10 victims — known as the “Mamelodi 10" — were reburied in a special ceremony in Mamelodi in 2009, the last of the group was only exhumed on Thursday.

Geldenhuys, 50, said the discovery and the exhumation of the last victim brought relief to all the families.

“We are happy that this will close the chapter of our search for the Mamelodi 10. Our hope is that the last body will soon be reburied with the other nine comrades in Mamelodi,” Geldenhuys said as the last body was exhumed.

Individual DNA identification of the nine bodies in 2009 had been impossible because of the burnt and degraded conditions of the remains.

However, the bodies were identified as belonging to adolescent males and had all been burnt, which tied in with information about what had happened to them.

“We have been waiting for years for all the Mamelodi 10 to be reunited. We are here to exhume him so that he can be with the rest of the Mamelodi 10,” Geldenhuys said on Thursday.

Geldenhuys said the community had been supportive in the quest to find the bodies of all of the members of the Mamelodi 10.

“They told us to have hope. It was the best thing to happen this year,” Geldenhuys said.

At the exhumation in the Winterveld old cemetery, north of Pretoria, on Thursday, National Prosecuting Authority Missing Persons Task Team member Claudia Bisso showed the family the remains she and her team had dug up.

What could be seen were the pelvis, two legs, some small bones and teeth.

Bisso said there was much to be found because the soil in the graveyard was acidic.

Madeleine Fullard, head of the task team, explained to the families why it took so long to identify the last remains.

She said when the team identified the nine other graves in the graveyard, it did not disturb the grave where the last remains were found because it did not look like a pauper's grave.

This was because it appeared to be tended when they found the graves of the other nine.

Fullard said the team was still looking for other activists who were killed in the 1980s.

“We are still looking. It is part of our programme. However, there is no guarantee we will find them,” Fullard said.

Speaking after the ceremony, Fullard said the remains would be cleaned before the bones were examined for biological markers such as age and sex.

She said once the collection of evidence was completed, the remains would be handed to the family, either by the minister of justice or his deputy.

Fullard said the hope was for the remains to be reburied with the other nine in Mamelodi.

Rooibaard, who was 17 years old in June 1986, left with a group of nine other activists during a joint operation orchestrated by security police agent Joe Mamasela, who collected them in a minibus by pretending to be an MK member.

The teenagers were injected by special force members with an unknown substance, which rendered them unconscious.

They were then placed in another minibus and an accident was faked. The vehicle was set alight and the ten teenagers were burnt to death.

The burnt bodies were found by locals and were subsequently buried as unidentified paupers.

The families of the 10 assumed they had gone into exile, but the teenagers never returned and their fate was unknown.

It was only during the TRC’s amnesty processes in the 1990s that the families learnt the truth of what had happened.

Nine of the 10 bodies were recovered in unmarked graves in Winterveld in the mid 2000s and they were reburied in a special ceremony in Mamelodi in 2009.