Special Report Transcript Episode 3, Section 4, Time 28:32

The names of some policemen keep coming up during the Commission hearings. This is warrant officer Joe Mamasela. He’s already confessed to being part of the murders of three Port Elizabeth community leaders and Durban lawyer, Griffiths Mxenge. He was mentioned again by the relatives of three Mamelodi men who died in 1987. Jocob Maake, Andrew Makope and Harold Sefolo’s bodies were packed with explosives and blown up by members of the hit squads. This week, the widows of Sefolo and Makope, and the widow of Maake told of how the disappearance of their loved ones changed their lives. Mrs Sefolo first heard about her husband’s death when she read the newspaper City Press in January this year. // I’d like to tell the Truth Commission there’s a man that arrived, called Mamasela. I’ve also read that on the 28th January newspaper Mamasela said he took him at Witbank. They took him to some place which I can’t remember ‘cause I don’t have the paper with me, and he said they tortured him and cut off his hands. They shot him and blow him up. // For Shokie Maake, sister of James Maake, knowing her brother’s killer is not enough. She wants to meet Mamasela face to face. // We’d like the Commission to help us of showing us Mamasela to come here and explain to us where did he kill this property and the little property that they are still keeping of him, they must bring to us. We would also like to rebury him so we can also be able to go to a cemetery to grief for our loved one like other people. We don’t know if its really true that they killed him. We don’t know if he is alive or dead. // Andrew Makope regularly visited his brother in exile in Botswana. A friend of Andrew, Queen Skosana was with him when he was abducted. To date, no one has been able to trace her.

Notes: Joe Mamasela; Newspaper clipping: ‘Missing friends were tortured, shot, blown up’; TRC testimony: Lizzie Sefolo (widow); TRC testimony: Shokie Maake (sister)