The Lesotho and South African governments and the Freedom Park Trust of South Africa will hold commemoration services in Maseru on Friday and Saturday for freedom fighters who lost their lives during South African Defence Force raids into Lesotho in the 1980s.
A 1982 raid on Maseru by the SADF left 40 people dead, including five women and two children. They were killed during the cross-border raid described by the then SADF chief, General Constand Viljoen, as a pre-emptive strike aimed at 12 African
National Congress targets in Upper Thamae on the outskirts of Maseru on December 9, 1982.
Another raid in 1985 left nine people dead.
The executive chairperson of the Freedom Park Trust, Dr Wally Serote, said: ”The Freedom Park Trust’s role is to facilitate the symbolic cleansing and healing of the wounds inflicted by the injustices of the past.
”As with other cleansing and healing ceremonies that took place in South Africa and in other neighbouring states such as Botswana, soil from the graves of people who fell during conflict in Lesotho will be collected, together with Lesotho boulders and a specimen of the national tree and will be brought to the Freedom Park site in Salvokop Hill, Pretoria, to form part of a memorial to those who died in the conflict events that mark South Africa’s history.”
On Friday, a cleansing and healing ceremony in Maseru will start with the slaughtering of sacrificial animals, intercession and their presentation to the ancestors by Lesotho and South African traditional healers.
On Saturday, the ceremony will be religious, led by representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church and the Lesotho Evangelical Church.
Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota and Mohlabi Tsekoa will represent governments of South Africa and Lesotho respectively. – Sapa