Cemetery workers dig up human remains

WORKERS hired by the Keetmanshoop Municipality yesterday excavated human remains which appeared to have once been buried in a casket as they were digging up fresh graves at the town’s cemetery.

The site where the human remains were dug up was previously de-proclaimed as a parking lot. Residents knowledgeable about the town’s history yesterday indicated that people were buried at the site in question some 60 years back before it was de-proclaimed as a parking lot. Recently the parking lot was again re-proclaimed as a cemetery, said local councillor Willie Kotze. ‘There is nothing strange in the human remains discovery. History is just repeating itself,’ Kotze remarked. Conflicting accounts were given on the ethnicity of the people that were then buried there. Kotze insisted that ‘whites’ were buried at the site, while another resident Willie Bezuidenhout claimed it was the graveyard of the Nama people. ‘The whites have taken that land from the Namas to establish a parking lot for their cemetery, and had re-buried the human remains of those who were buried there at a new location,’ Bezuidenhout said.