Memorial to black first world war soldiers opens in South Africa
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Commonwealth War Graves Commission begins project to honour casualties who were not commemorated like their white counterparts. Elliot Malunga Delihlazo’s grandmother would say that her brother Bhesengile went to war and never came back. The family knew he had died in the first world war, but they never had a body to bury, only a memorial stone in the rural family homestead in Nkondlo in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province.
![[A memorial plaque at the memorial]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/73b4cf62419545c57c908e8f1e620d96291edd6c/23_357_3730_2238/master/3730.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Now the Delihlazos know that Bhesengile died on 21 January 1917 of malaria in Kilwa, Tanzania, more than 2,000 miles from home. He was a driver in the British empire’s military labour corps, but was never given a war grave. Bhesengile Delihlazo was one of 1,700 mainly black South Africans named on a memorial unveiled in Cape Town on Wednesday, as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) begins to honour hundreds of thousands of black and Asian service personnel who died fighting for Britain, but were not commemorated like their white counterparts.
![[Two men perform in the memorial]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d86732e6d867f1e27e21af715cba89990cc5d585/0_24_3072_1843/master/3072.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“It pained us that … we can’t find the remains,” Elliot Malunga Delihlazo, a retired history teacher, said after the ceremony to open the memorial to his great uncle. “But we are happy that at last we know exactly that he died in 1917.”. The CWGC was founded in 1917 as the Imperial War Graves Commission, to commemorate those from the British empire who lost their lives in the first world war. It was meant to treat people equally in death, with names engraved on a gravestone or on a memorial.
![[Princess Anne walks around the memorial]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/0e5243dfd30a169a162b1909d981fb913299bccc/0_0_5500_3300/master/5500.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
