The South African regime has stepped up its repression of communities involved in mass protest by carrying out five executions. Three of these took place without forewarning or publicity and only became known some months later. At the same time at least, fifteen more death sentences have been passed since July, 11 of them in the Eastern Cape. Faced with increasing support for the condemned prisoners the authorities have resorted to threats against those organising the campaign to save their lives.
Police clashed with mourners on 1 September when Mlamli Wellington MIELIES (22) and Moses Mnyanda JANTJIES (27) were hanged in Pretoria Central Prison, the latest victims of the apartheid legal system. Their execution, which was carried out with only a week's notice to the condemned men and without any official notification to their families, was widely condemned. Mielies and Jantjies, sentenced for the killing of a notorious councillor, Kinikini, and others in 1985, were amongst the thirty-two people on Death Row for whom the South African Youth Congress (SAYCO) launched a campaign in July.
The gravity of the situation became even more evident when it was revealed a week later that three more people believed to be awaiting execution had already been hanged. In 1983 regulations were amended to allow executions to take place unannounced. This change was made in the wake of the executions of ANC combatants Marcus Thabo Motaung, Thelle Simon Mogoerane and Jerry Semano Mosololi which were met with widespread protest inside the country. The executions reported in September - of Solomon MAOWASHA, Alex MATSEPANE and Elili WEBUSHE - are the first known to have been carried out in this way.
News of the impending execution of Mielies and Jantjies was given by Mielies to his mother. Jane, when she visited him on 25 August. Although the men's petition for leave to appeal had been turned down in May, their lawyers had lodged a plea for clemency with the Justice Department the following month and no response to this had been received. Nevertheless, and in spite of widespread protests, the executions went ahead. Amongst those who made urgent appeals for the men were the Northern Transvaal Youth Congress (NOTYCO), the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference (SACBC), the Detainees Parents Support Committee (DPSC) and the Federation of Transvaal Women (Feddraw). Feddraw's Soweto Women's Group telexed the wives of President Botha and Minister of Law and Order Vlok urging them 'to prevent lives being wasted instead of rehabilitating them'.
Three hundred people attended a church service on the eve of the execution at which Frank Chikane, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, called on President Botha to commute the sentences. In his message Archbishop Desmond Tutu reminded the President of how he had helped secure a reprieve for South African mercenaries convicted in the Seychelles. In addition the Foreign Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany made an approach on behalf of all the EEC countries.
The men's mothers, Jane Mielies and Merose Jantjies, gathered with other relatives outside the prison on the morning of the execution. They said their sons were 'happy to die for the struggle against apartheid' and had told them not to worry. They were joined by Winnie Mandela and Pauline Mamike Moloise whose son Benjamin was executed in October 1985.
Later in the day 200 heavily-armed police cordoned off Khotso House in Johannesburg where SAYCO was hosting a memorial meeting attended by some 300 people and addressed by a number of speakers including Mielies' uncle, Ben de Booi. At least twenty people were injured when police forcibly dispersed the crowd afterwards and three people, two of them journalists, were briefly detained. Police also used teargas at Park Station, Johannesburg, and clashed with three thousand students who had raised the ANC flag at the University of the Western Cape. A phone-in poll conducted by The Star, a Johannesburg evening newspaper, showed a majority opposed to the executions.
At the end of August the SACBC issued a statement on behalf of all those facing execution, recommending 'commutation of the death sentences' and urging 'all concerned to take up the issue of capital punishment.' They further pointed out that 'great numbers of people including a powerful youth movement, consider that what these persons stand condemned of are "acts of war" performed in the liberation struggle, in which the South African state is responsible for even greater and more widespread violence.'
In Parliament on 3 September the Minister of Law and Order responded to what he termed the 'outcr' over the executions. In particular he sounded a warning to all those making appeals on behalf of those under sentence of death: 'They are playing with fire and they'll get burned.'
Organisations in a number of countries have responded to SAYCO's call for an international campaign to save the lives of those awaiting execution. In Britain a delegation from the Anti-Apartheid Movement visited the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 9 September to ask for increased government action on their behalf. They were told that the British embassy had discovered that three of those named in SAYCO's list had already been executed. Two of them, Solomon Maowasha (23) and Alex Matsepane (20) were hanged on 5 December 1986 less than six months after they were sentenced to death for the killing of two police informers in the mountains outside Tzaneen. Very little is known of their case. However, police and army repression in the region had been so severe that many young people were driven from their homes and forced to live rough in the mountains.
The third person reported as executed was Elili Webushe, about whom even less is known. His death sentence was reported by the Bureau for Information in June 1986 in connection with a 'necklacing in Jansenville' in the Eastern Cape. The British government did not know exactly when he was executed. However, a newspaper report on 20 August 1987 announced the execution of seven men the previous day. One was named as Raymond Gwebishe 'sentenced to death in June 1986 in Cape Town for a necklace murder.' It is likely that Webushe and Gwebishe are the same person.
These secret hangings and reports of at least eighteen other death sentences passed since May emphasised the great urgency of the SAYCO campaign. Amongst the first signatories to their petition were Albertina Sisulu and Pauline Moloise as well as a number of relatives of those who have been condemned: Regina Sefatsa, wife of Mojalefa Reginald; Reuben Mokhesi, father of Francis, and Leah Mokoena, mother of Reid Malebo (all among the Sharpeville Six). Millicent Ngidi, whose son Bekisizwe Philip has been sentenced, signed alongside Sonnyboy Tsawane, brother of Josiah.
