Former MK soldier relives ambush at reburial event

MTHETHELENI Mncube recounted how he luckily escaped death when the apartheid police ambushed him and four other Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) comrades nearly 30 years ago.

Of the group, Mncube was the only one to make it out alive.

He said that day would haunt him for the rest of his life, but he was consoled because the remains of his comrade, Mzwakhe Moses Phato, had been handed over to his family.

Yesterday, Mncube told people who attended the reburial ceremony at the Dlamini multipurpose centre in Soweto that the group crossed from Zimbabwe to a farm in Musina in December 1986.

However, police discovered their location and trailed them. “We were resting under a baobab tree when we heard the revving trucks of the security forces. We were stranded on a rocky hill but we were determined to fight until the end,” he said.

Mncube said the security police shot at them from a helicopter.

He said Phato, Richard Boy Nyandeni and Justice Khoza were shot dead on the hill.

Mncube and Edward Mokutu survived.

Mokutu was killed two days later by police while Mncube was captured by police. “I was blindfolded and thrown in the back of a truck and the dead bodies of my comrades were put on top of me. I was suffocated by the smell of death. I managed to free myself and the stupid officer had left his gun in the back. Without waste (of time), I shot dead the two officers so they never rise and torment the people of Vhembe.”

He was rearrested 10 days later, charged with their murders and put on death row.

“I was forced to identify their bodies in the mortuary. I still dream of that day,” Mncube said.

Phato was one of the four MK soldiers who were reburied in Soweto yesterday after their corpses were recovered by the Missing Persons Task Team.

Also reburied was Archie Lethoko, who was one of six MK members killed at Alldays, Limpopo, in July 1986 in an ambush after the group had crossed into South Africa from Botswana.