For Truth and Reconciliation Commission chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu, sitting at a podium nearby, Ngewu's account was just a foretaste of the stories the commission can expect to hear over the next 18 months.
As Ngewu told her story, a friend sitting next to her wept openly.
The setting for Tuesday's unofficial commission hearing was a Gugulethu community hall where about 80 residents, including human rights abuse victims, had gathered to listen to Tutu speak about the aims of the commission.
The meeting, part of the commission's Western Cape outreach programme, was organised to hear accounts of the 1986 shootings of seven men who later became known as the “Gugulethu Seven”.
Ngewu's son Christopher, a 25-year-old bakery worker, was one of them.
Tutu, with his hands clasped in front of him, sat listening as Ngewu told how a group of “comrades” had arrived at her house on March 3, 1986 looking for her son.
“I told them he was not at home. They said some youths had been shot nearby and wanted to know whether he was one of them,” she said.
After they had left, she went to the police station, but they had no record of her son and suggested she go to the mortuary. There, she found him lying on a trolley with a bullet wound to his left temple and blood leaking from his nose.
Later that night she watched television news for details of the shooting.
“I saw them (police) putting ropes on his arms and legs and dragging his body into a van.
“I want to forgive my son's killers but I cannot forget. I want to know who killed him and why they had to drag his body into the van when he was dead.”
After Ngewu had finished speaking, Tutu walked up to her and hugged her.