Pretoria – Negotiations to repatriate the bodies of South African anti-apartheid activists Moses Kotane and JB Marks from Russia are continuing, says government.
According to the chairperson of the Social Protection, Community and Human Development Cluster and Basic Education Minister, Angie Motshekga, Kotane and Marks are to be reburied in Rustenburg and Ventersdorp in December this year.
Kotane went to the Soviet Union to study at the Lenin School in Moscow. He later suffered a stroke and died in 1978. Marks had served as chairman of the South African Communist Party and treasurer-general of the African National Congress.
Both leaders are buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
Minister Motshekga said government wanted to return the remains of all struggle heroes who died on foreign soil.
President Jacob Zuma, during a week-long working visit to Russia in August, discussed the repatriation of South Africa’s fallen heroes with counterpart Vladimir Putin.
President Zuma also laid wreaths at the graves of Kotane and Marks in the Russian capital.
Government successfully repatriated the remains of Nat Nakasa from New York earlier this year. He was reburied at Heroes Acre in Chesterville in Durban last month.
Nakasa left the country in 1964 on a one-way exit permit after he was awarded a prestigious Nieman Fellowship to study at Harvard University in the USA.
He committed suicide in July 1965 by jumping from a window of a high-rise building. This was out of frustration of the thought not being able to come back home. He was buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in upstate New York.
At the time of his death, the late Nakasa was a student and also working as a journalist in the UK. – SAnews.gov.za
