The wife of Malan Moyo, one of the South Africans among the 70 suspected mercenaries being detained in Zimbabwe, died in Phalaborwa on Wednesday, a KwaZulu-Natal radio station reported on Friday.
Her daughter, Nomsa Moyo, told East Coast Radio that her mother, identified by the radio as Spiwe Moyo, had died on Wednesday afternoon suffering from high blood pressure.
”Before she passed away we were talking about going to Pretoria. We were making arrangements and suddenly they called me and said she had collapsed,” Nomsa said.
She added her mother had been trying to get to Pretoria to gain more information about the fate of her husband since his arrest more than three months ago.
She also said that they have been battling to get word of her mother’s death to her father, who is in the Chikurubi Maximum Security prison, east of Harare.
”He doesn’t know a thing at all. Somebody called me because they heard what happened. So I said to him, please tell someone to tell my father that my mum has passed away,” she said.
Moyo added that she does not know what has been happening with her father’s trial because they have no money to fly to Zimbabwe for the court hearings. The family has been relying on media coverage.
Moyo and her sister, Bonny (18), are now living with their grandmother in Phalaborwa.
On July 19 the Constitutional Court will hear an application by the suspects to have them brought to South Africa to stand trial.
The men were arrested at Harare International airport on March 7 during a stop-over — reportedly en route to Equatorial Guinea. — Sapa