Bid to rename airport after Pebco Three leader
Rochelle de Kock
MAYOR Ben Fihla wants the Port Elizabeth Airport to be renamed after one of the slain Pebco Three members, Sipho Hashe, who was abducted at the airport in 1985 by apartheid-era security police.
Fihla has asked the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality to formally apply to the South African Geographical Names Council to consider the name change. This came after he received a letter from a city resident who suggested the name change.
At a special council meeting on Friday, Fihla said: "I received a letter from a member of the public on January 27, suggesting that we rename the airport after Sipho Hashe, the stalwart who was captured at the airport and burnt beyond recognition near Cradock.
"I feel that it's a good plan and I want councillors to support this and the municipality to make a formal application to the Geographical Names [Council]". Yesterday Hashe's son, Lawrence Jomo Charles-Hashe, said the family welcomed the proposal. Hashe, who was a member of the ANC, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) and general secretary of the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation (Pebco), was a political activist who spent 10 years on Robben Island.
"This is something we have been pushing for since the funeral in 2012. As the Pebco Three Foundation we actually made a proposal to the president for the airport's name to be changed. We would love some engagement with the mayor regarding this," he said.
Charles-Hashe, who is chairman of the Pebco Three Foundation and regional chairman of the Aluta Missing Persons Group, said there were a lot of families who lost members during apartheid who never learnt the truth about what happened to them, even at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
"I do not only represent the Pebco Three but I represent all the families out there who are searching for answers and searching for closure," he said. In May 1985, Hashe – along with Qaqawuli Godolozi and Champion Galela – were kidnapped and taken to Fort Chalmers, an abandoned police post near Cradock, where they were shot, their bodies burnt and the ashes dumped in the Fish River. In 2008, their remains were found. – Additional reporting by Lee-Anne Butler
