Digging Up the Dirt
A forensics team is tracking down South Africa's disappeared—and reopening some very cold cases.
One June day in 1986, security agents from South Africa's apartheid regime abducted 10 black teenagers from Mamelodi township, 40 miles from Johannesburg, injected them with a coma-inducing drug, and left them to burn to death in a staged vehicle explosion. The grisly fate of the "Mamelodi 10" became a poignant symbol of apartheid-era abuses, and then of South Africa's brave attempt to deal with them in a nonpunitive way: in 1999, some of the killers confessed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and were granted amnesty.
But the story didn't end there. More than a decade later, following the TRC's recommendation, the bones of those teenagers are being dug up in a thorny Winterveld cemetery north of Pretoria. "These are the unsung heroes of the struggle," says Madeleine Fullard, who is directing the team looking for the bodies. "They were not guerrillas. They were abducted, held and tortured. They died the worst kind of deaths."
Fullard is the head of South Africa's Missing Persons Task Team, set up three years ago to complete the unfinished business of the TRC: to find and exhume the hundreds of people "disappeared" at the hands of the apartheid government and whose cases were heard by the TRC. The task team aims to offer mourners the truth about their loved ones' final resting places. It has located dozens of graves over the past couple of years. And its advanced forensic work is attracting attention from elsewhere in Africa, where decades of conflict have left legions of unidentified bodies.
Within South Africa, however, the team's work is raising uncomfortable questions. After the restoration of majority rule in 1994, when the country opted to set up the TRC to deal with apartheid-era crimes, it resolved to forgo mass Nuremberg-style prosecutions. Officials and their henchmen would be granted amnesty on two key conditions: that their crimes proved politically motivated, and that they came clean about the deeds. Those who lied or failed to fully disclose their criminal involvement could still be prosecuted.
Now some of what Fullard and her team are digging up is clashing with the official TRC histories and could undermine the amnesties granted a decade ago, setting in motion new prosecutions. That's what happened when the task team took a closer look at the case of the "Pebco Three": slain Eastern Cape activists whose ashes were supposedly washed down the Fish River in 1985. When investigators scoured the murder site last year, they found the severely burned skeletal remains—some of them in a septic tank. This proved that the victims had not in fact been dumped in the river as their killers had claimed.
Sifting through 6,600 gallons of raw sewage proved daunting for even the most hardened investigators. Claudia Bisso, one of several visiting forensic experts from Argentina, has worked in killing fields around the world, but the thought of Pebco still elicits a grimace: "I would rather pick Bosnia," she says.
Distasteful as their work can be, Fullard's team is persevering. So far they've successfully exhumed about 50 burial sites; about half that number of skeletal remains have been positively identified and returned to their relatives for reburial. This has some hoping for new prosecutions, though they've yet to commence. Meanwhile, the government is now building a major DNA lab to advance this work and its legacy. The $57 million research center will offer affordable world-class forensic expertise to other African countries and human-rights investigators. "There are probably far more individuals dying in conflicts in Africa [than elsewhere], yet there's absolutely no infrastructure in place at all for human-rights work at a regional level," says Neal Leat, a forensic scientist at the University of the Western Cape. Officials from Kenya, Burundi and Namibia—where mass graves were discovered last year—have already expressed interest in getting assistance from the new facility, in the hopes it will offer a much more accurate means of addressing their own murky pasts.
For now, however, the task team's focus remains firmly on South Africa's own disappeared. "Partly it's trying to say, these people lived and mattered," says Fullard. "Really, it's about recurring racism even in the field of death—particularly in political conflict. It's about recovering memory and gathering information." Grisly work indeed. But necessary if this country is ever to fully account for the lingering traumas of apartheid.
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Scott Johnson was named Africa Bureau Chief in April 2007, after serving two years as Baghdad Bureau Chief since the spring of 2004. In the summer of 2007, Johnson co-authored, with Sharon Begley, Newsweek's July cover story "Slaughter in the Jungle," about a spate of rare mountain gorilla killings in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has also been covering, for the magazine and Newsweek's Web site, the economic collapse of Zimbabwe, health initiatives across the continent and the rise of China in Africa.
Prior to coming to Africa, Johnson worked on assignment in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. He was on assignment in Iraq during the invasion and returned several times during 2002 and 2003 to report on the post-invasion occupation. During his two years as Baghdad bureau chief, Johnson covered the rise of Iraq's sectarian war, the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein and the American military's attempt to quell the insurgency in places like Ramadi and Baghdad. He contributed exclusive reporting on the growth of death squads in Baghdad, Iran's growing influence in Iraq and American military and political developments in Baghdad.
Before coming to Iraq, Johnson covered the war in Afghanistan from October 2001 to April 2002, reporting on the fall of the Taliban from the front lines of Kunduz and Taloqan. Later on, Johnson traveled across Afghanistan reporting on the hunt for Al Qaeda and the resurgence of the Taliban as American forces drew down its presence. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, Johnson has done exclusive war reporting, often under fire and in the most dangerous situations. In Iraq, he covered the hunt for Saddam Hussein with exclusive access to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 4th Infantry Division. He also contributed extensive exclusive reporting early in 2003 on the nascent Iraqi insurgency from Fallujah.
In between posts to Baghdad, Johnson was provisionally based in Mexico City from 2002 to 2006. When not covering the war, Johnson reported on political and economic developments across Latin America. In 2002 he authored a Newsweek International cover story on the rise of China in Mexico. In 2004 he received an Overseas Press Club Honorable Mention for "Best Reporting in any Medium on Latin America" for "Latin America Lags Behind," about economic trends across the hemisphere. In Latin America, Johnson also covered violence along the U.S-Mexico border, the creation of Mexico's freedom of information act and an experimental drug treatment center in Peru.
Previously, Johnson reported for Newsweek out of Paris, France, since October 1998. During that time, he has reported on many of the biggest stories to come out of the continent, including Europe's mad cow scare, the backlash against globalization, and Newsweek's military coverage of the Kosovo war out of southern Italy. He has also developed in-depth investigative pieces from Europe, and he contributed heavily to Newsweek's worldwide report on pedophilia and the Internet. He has also covered North Africa, covering terrorism pre-and-post 9/11.
Johnson is a frequent contributor to radio, most recently from Iraq where he has interviewed on NPR, The World and other national stations, and he has been seen on MSNBC, Fox and CNN. In addition to Newsweek, his writing has appeared in Le Courrier International and Letras Libres. Johnson was also part of the Iraq team that contributed to Newsweek's 2003 National Magazine Award.
Johnson is a 1996 graduate of the University of Washington, where he received double degrees in Comparative Literature and Comparative History of Ideas. Postgraduate work included Arabic language and Middle Eastern Studies in Fes, Morocco. He is a member of the Anglo-American Press Association in Paris.
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