Cleansing ceremony to honour freedom fighters

A traditional cleansing ceremony to honour the memory of 50 South African freedom fighters, killed by forces of the apartheid regime in collaboration with Swazi security forces, concluded at the weekend in Swaziland's central commercial town, Manzini. The 50 were members of the then banned African National Congress (ANC), now the ruling party in South Africa, which used Manzini as its base of operations in the 1980s. "May you know that those who died on Swazi soil were Swaziland's guests during the struggle against apartheid," Deputy Prime Minister Albert Shabangu told South African Professor Mongane Serote, chief executive officer of the Freedom Park Trust, which has conducted similar cleansing ceremonies in South Africa's nine provinces and other neighbouring countries. Swaziland's government has never apologised for the use of Swazi security forces against exiled ANC members who were hunted by special military forces, assisted by the Swazi police and military. King Mswati III donated two cows for slaughter during the cleansing ceremony in honour of the souls of the deceased. Swaziland's involvement in the deaths of ANC members was not forgotten when the liberation movement became a political party and assumed power in South Africa in 1994, an African diplomat told Reuters. South African President Thabo Mbeki spent part of his exile from South Africa during the 1970s in Manzini, where he was a primary school teacher. A senior diplomat told IRIN that when Mbeki left Swaziland for Zambia, the headquarters of the ANC in Southern Africa, Swazi authorities conspired with the apartheid government to route Mbeki's flight to Pretoria, where he would have been arrested. "It was King Sobhuza [Mswati's father] who intervened and ordered the direct flight. It saved Mbeki. But when Sobhuza died [in 1982], the corrupt officials who were apartheid collaborators had a free hand, and led South African soldiers to houses and flats where ANC members were staying," the diplomat said. Former Swazi Senator Walter Bennett, who also donated two cows for slaughter at the ceremony, recalled that as a young landlord he was ordered by Swazi police to open the flats of suspected ANC members. The message of the two-day cleansing ceremony was reconciliation. Manzini's Catholic Cathedral hosted an ecumenical prayer service after traditional African healers and diviners conducted a nightlong vigil at the graves of the ANC fighters. The services were attended by South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, Swazi Prime Minister Themba Dlamini, the foreign ministers of both countries, the Swazi Senate and House of Assembly, and the families of the deceased.