Africa-Press – Botswana. The bodies of six victims of the Limpopo bus crash that have been identified through DNA testing have been moved to a private mortuary in South Africa.
They will remain there until the other 39 bodies are identified. Once the identification process is concluded, the bodies will then be repatriated to Botswana. Police Commissioner, Ms Dinah Marathe made the announcement when briefing the bereaved families on April 16 in Molepolole. Ms Marathe explained that when Botswana police first received a report of the tragic bus accident from their South African counterparts, it prompted an immediate investigation.
“We contacted St Engenas ZCC pastors to verify the information and gathered a passenger list,” Police Commissioner Marathe explained, acknowledging the list’s importance to the process. Ms Marathe also disclosed that it was discovered at some point some passengers from the bus had left it to board other Moria-bound vehicles.
The church however managed to verify all those pieces of information and helped with the final list of people who rode the bus. She further explained that the list was then taken to the Department of National Registration (Omang) to match with the names in the database with their fingerprints. After concluding the process, she said the list was shared with the police in South Africa, who also did their own verification, which involved matching the fingerprints with the bodies.
At the end of that process she revealed that only eight bodies were identifiable by their finger prints. Unfortunately, she said, the number reduced to six since the other two were badly charred. She went on to explain that after the identification process for the six bodies was concluded, the families were notified officially of the death of their loved ones.
The official death notification, she said, was then followed by a visit by families to South Africa to identify the bodies on April 9, hence the government of Botswana decided to move the six bodies to a private mortuary in South Africa. She further emphasised that once the identification process was concluded, the rest of the 39 bodies would join the other six in the private mortuary since it was already paid for by Botswana government.
Thereafter the repatriation process will begin. Ms Marathe also explained that government decided to repatriate all the bodies at once in order to curb costs and also to be sensitive to grieving families. Furthermore, she disclosed that the police had agreed with their South African counterparts that grieving families would be sent to South Africa in three batches to identify the remaining 39 bodies, adding that body identification by family members was a procedure that needed to be followed, according to South African laws.
Also, she revealed that representatives of each family would be required to sign for each of their corpses for repatriation. Furthermore, she explained that the victims’ belongings would be transported back to Botswana. At the moment, Ms Marathe said the authorities were still waiting for death certificates for the six identified bodies since they were required in the repatriation process. However, she said the South African police had pledged to speed up the process for the remaining bodies and to work with the South African home affairs department to produce death certificates for the remaining 39 bodies on spot once their identification process was completed.
Meanwhile, grieving families thanked the government and the police for working tirelessly to support them at this difficult moment. They said they were prepared to receive bodies of their loved ones in whatever state they were in, in order to find closure.
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