A 60-year-old businessman who fled South Africa after being convicted for public violence and culpable homicide in 2004 has handed himself to the police, the Hawks said on Tuesday.
Louis George Rademeyer was part of a group of Kuruman, Northern Cape, residents who held a march in reaction to a South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) protest in the town in 1995, spokesperson McIntosh Polela said in a statement.
The two groups clashed and a Samwu member was killed.
Convicted
Rademeyer, a respected businessman with extensive interests in Kuruman, was convicted of the crime alongside seven other people. Polela said the group was sentenced to five years in prison for public violence and an additional five years for culpable homicide. They appealed the sentence, but lost.
Rademeyer fled the country six days before he was due to start serving his sentence in 2006.
He was found in Namibia over the festive season and entered into an agreement with Interpol to hand himself over on Monday. Early on Tuesday morning South African police took him to the Kathu Magistrate’s Court and then to correctional services in Kuruman.
“Mr Rademeyer must be regretting the day he decided to run away instead of facing the consequences of his actions. We believe some of the people he was sentenced with have already been released,” Polela said. — Sapa