Three members of the armed wing of the African National Congress, Umkhonto we Sizwe, were executed in Pretoria Central Prison on 9 September in spite of national and international protests. Sipho Bridget XULU (26), Clarence 'Lucky' PAYI (22) and Andrew Sibusiso ZONDO (20) went defiantly to their deaths, singing freedom songs, after refusing to beg State President Botha for their lives.
The three had all been convicted of the common law charge of murder in an attempt by the regime to deny the political motivation behind their actions.
Xulu and Payi had been on 'Death Row' since February 1985 after being convicted of killing Benjamin Langa whom they suspected of being a police informer. (FOCUS 58 p.8)
The three condemned men shared similar backgrounds. All were politicised at an early age by personal experience of apartheid violence. Xulu was expelled from school for participation in the school boycott of 1977. Later he was arrested during the funeral of a school pupil shot dead by police in Sobantu village, Pietermaritzburg, during a rents protest in 1982. The 1980 school boycott was the occasion which led Payi, at the age of 15 years, to join the ANC.
Zondo was sentenced to death in April 1986 for his part in a limpet mine explosion at a shopping arcade in Amanzimtoti, near Durban, in December 1985 which killed five people. He stated in court that he had attempted to give a warning before the bomb exploded. All attempts to appeal were refused. His trial, conviction and execution were of unprecedented haste in recent legal history. Legal procedure in South Africa is heavily weighted against the accused. In Zondo's case the State's determination to reach a swift conclusion led to blatant examples of prejudice. His crucial first court appearances and initial statement of admission were made without benefit of legal advice or representation, even though the State's interests were being represented by a senior public prosecutor. The trial date was advanced and the venue moved out of Durban before he had acquired a lawyer. Defence requests for psychiatric examination were turned down. Zondo was assaulted by prison warders and on one occasion even punched in the courtroom.
When news of the impending executions became public the United Democratic Front, the Azanian People's Organisation, the Democratic Lawyers' Congress and Diakonia, an economic grouping of Durban churches, were amongst those who protested inside the country.
On 8 September lawyers and relatives of Zondo, Payi and Xulu announced there would be no last-minute appeal for clemency. A court action calling for a stay of execution was dropped because 'they were not fighting a legal battle but a political one'.
Zondo's lawyer stated that had his client wished to escape execution he could have accepted an offer from the state to testify against other detainees.
Protests at the executions were strongest in KwaMashu, Durban and Sobantu, Pietermaritzburg, homes of the three combatants. A week of mourning was declared with a stayaway supported by 80 per cent of workers. In KwaMashu every school was affected after a local meeting of student representative councils called for protests. Hundreds of people attended a night vigil at Zondo's home while a police vehicle was stoned in Sobantu a few hours before the execution.
Xulu's mother rejected a Prisons Service offer of a third class ticket for the 400 mile journey to Pretoria and accommodation at the Central Prison. She stated: 'These people had no sympathy for me ...[or] they would have pardoned my son ...how can they expect me to sleep at the place [he] was going to be hanged?'
A lunch-time memorial service at the Johannesburgburg headquarters of the South African Council of Churches saluted 'three more casualties struggling for liberation'.
The ANC condemned 'the execution of prisoners of war' and said the murders would be 'avenged in struggle'.
Three other men were executed alongside Xulu, Payi and Zondo bringing the total number of executions during 1986 to 82. At least 14 other people remain under sentence of death for political offences - Mojalefa Reginald SEFATSA, Oupa Moses DINISO, Duma Joshua KHUMALO, Theresa RAMASHAMOLA, Reid Malebo MOKOENA and Francis Don MOKHESI (FOCUS 63 p.1); Solomon MAO-WASHA, Alex Matshepa MATSEPANE and Elili WEBUSHE (FOCUS 66 p.5); Patrick MAN-GINDA, Desmond MAJOLA and Dickson MADIKANE (see MURDER TRIALS p.7); Josiah TSWANE and Daniel MALEKE.
