#RIP: Funeral details of Hillary Gardee announced

Hillary Gardee’s funeral details have been revealed. The daughter of former EFF secretary-general, Godrich Gardee, will be laid to rest on Saturday, 7 May.

Family spokesman, Sinawo Tambo told reporters that confirmations have been made, and preparations are in place to lay to rest Gardee.

“As the family, we would like to extend our appreciation once again to the public, the people of South Africa for the support for their consistent support in consoling the family and launching a campaign to find Hillary, permanently being there and sending condolences. All dignitaries, institutions political parties, and all NGO’s which have sent their condolences, we would like to extend our appreciation of showing that humanity prevails over, we are not primary enemies in the society but opponents.

We will be making those preparations, members of the EFF, family will be present, extended family will be attending the proceedings on a virtual platform,” he said.

Tambo said the funeral will not only be attended South Africans but Africa as whole.

“ It’s a funeral that will be attended not only by the people of South Africa, but Africa as a whole because the father, Godrich Gardee is a former Umkhonto WeSizwe who has been in exile and got links across Africa.

We want to finalise the burial of Hillary with dignity which is linked and of course complementing the kind of person she was, a kind, generous and loving soul. Her burial must be characterized by that,” he said.

Gardee went missing last month, her lifeless body was found dumped in a timber plantation, about 40 kilomteres from Mbombela. She was discovered by community members who were on their way to work near Rhenosterhoek, between Lydenburg and Mbombela. The family revealed that Gardee’s postmortem report indicated that she was shot at the back of her head.

The family accused the police of being incompetent. They said the police’s failure to notice that Gardee was shot, means that police did not conduct a thorough investigation on the crime scene and at this stage it is too late to recreate the crime scene.

Police spokesman, Colonel Donald Mdluli said the investigation on the circumstances of how the victim was murdered is underway to arrest whosoever is involved.

“The police in Mpumalanga are at no stage going to reveal the stages of the investigation to the public but to the relevant family. It is against this backdrop that police request space to investigate this gruesome murder without any disturbances,” he said.