/ 25 September 2000

GRAVE ROBBERS DIG UP EX-MINISTER’S BONES

GRAVE robbers have dug up the bones of a former deputy minister of the apartheid regime to create a powerful “cure” for Aids, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. “All that is left of Hannes Rall, a deputy minister of transport in the apartheid government, are a few bones in a plastic bag at a police station in northern KwaZulu-Natal,” the newspaper said. The Sunday Times said that Rall’s 75-year-old former farm manager had put the word around that Aids sufferers who brewed the crushed bones of well-known whites into tea would be cured of the killer disease. The robbers removed a thick slab of marble to get into the grave and remove Rall’s skull, ribs and backbone, police said. – AFP