Phikeleni Masilela died without fulfilling her dream to repatriate the remains and spirits of her four sons who were among the 22 Bergville residents hanged by the apartheid government in the 1950s.
Her daughter, Zibuyisile Hlongwane, who was only two-years-old when the brothers were hanged, has been troubled by a recurring nightmare of her father pinned down on a floor covered by people whose faces she can’t see.
“In the dream, he cried helplessly. She told us that signalled that the spirits of the dead were restless,” Hlongwane’s son Simphiwe Maduna told Sunday World.
Recently family members of some of the 22 men who were hanged in the historic Bergville Dagga Wars in 1956, travelled to Pretoria in a bid to recover their remains and repatriate their spirits.
A week before the trip organised by the Okhahlamba Local Municipality, the Hlongwane elders underwent a ritual known as ukubuyisa (collecting the spirits of the departed). It entailed burning impepho (incense) in the umsamo (shrine) located in a sacred hut called kwagogo (the place of the ancestors) and reciting their clan names to ask for guidance on the journey.
The ritual also involved the brewing of beer and sacrificing of a cow and a goat to cleanse the spirits of the dead.
Unfortunately for the families, the long trip to Pretoria failed to yield any results.
“The families were just told to go back home because the graves couldn’t be found. And that we will be informed if there are any major developments,” said a disappointed Maduna.
Andrew Hartley, who led a team of forensic pathologists tasked with finding the remains, has pleaded with the families to be patient.
“This is an ongoing work, which will take time. We are not talking about people who were buried 20 or 30 years ago. This thing happened in 1956.”
The story of Bergville goes to the heart of cannabis prohibition in South Africa.
Hlongwane’s brothers were among residents who eked a living through the cultivating cannabis on their ancestral land. That put the villagers in conflict with the law for planting and trading in the prohibited herb.
Things came to a head on March 21 1956 when in what was defined as The Bergville Dagga War, police sought to round off cannabis growers through an ambush deep in the valleys of the Drakensberg mountains where the plantations were located.
Police torched the crops, leading to a bloody skirmish in which the growers retaliated by killing five police officers.
“My mother has been yearning for years to bring back the spirits of my grandfather. She has no recollection of him because when they were taken away, she was a toddler. So she always speaks of my grandfather’s restless spirit,” Maduna lamented.
The Mnyandu family who have since relocated from Bergville to Weenen, a Dutch word for wept, also spoke of their anguish.
“We lost two family members, my grandfather and his elder son. We had attempted for years to do it (repatriate the remains) on our own. But the exercise proved costly. We were pinning our hopes on this government-headed programme. All we wanted was for them to be reburied on their ancestral land,” lamented Nkazimulo Nkala, a family member.
Okhahlamba mayor Vikizitha Mlotshwa explained that although they couldn’t find the remains, they have not abandoned their mission.
“The stories of the Bergville 22 are the same as that of Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu who before he was hanged said: “My blood will nourish the tree that will bear the fruits of freedom. These brave men are the ones who started the long battle to have dagga legalised. It was feeding their families.”
The story of the Bergville Dagga Wars was immortalised in a play by celebrated playwright Duma kaNdlovu in a play titled Bergville Stories, which premiered at Durban’s Playhouse in 1995 and was also staged in various festivals and theatres, including the Lincoln Centre Theatre in New York as part of Woza Afrika Festival.
