In the wake of yet another political execution in late 1989, the campaign against the death penalty gathered strength with a number of new initiatives and increasing evidence of organisation by the prisoners themselves. The regime responded with more repression — new restrictions were imposed on information about those threatened with execution and regulations governing visits to the condemned cells in Pretoria Central Prison were tightened. In early January political prisoners on Death Row held a hunger strike in protest at their worsening conditions.
Events were held around the country to commemorate October 11, United Nations' Day of Solidarity with South African Political Prisoners. At a rally in Johannesburg organised by the Save the Patriots Campaign Committee (SPCC) a letter from political prisoners facing execution was read and later circulated internationally. The SPCC also co-ordinated a memorandum which members of the prisoners' families attempted to deliver to the Minister of Justice. However, he declined to receive it.
In early November the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADEL) organised an Anti-Death Penalty Campaign Awareness Week. The week included 6 November, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the execution of Vuyisile MINI, a leader of the South African Congress of Trade Unions, and two other ANC activists, Wilson KHAYINGA and Zinakile MKABA. Like many of those facing execution today, the three were not found to have been directly involved in the killings for which they were hanged.
The authorities marked the week by further restricting access to information about prisoners. Since October 1988, Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) have operated a monitoring and legal aid scheme designed to ensure that no prisoners die without exhausting every legal opportunity open to them. For this they have used information made available to them by the Department of Justice in the form of a legal profile of each prisoner who has been given notice of execution. This includes information on whether leave to appeal has been granted, and whether the Chief Justice and the State President have been petitioned. Last minute legal moves by LHR during 1989 contributed significantly to the reduction in executions over the year, obtaining some 22 stays of execution. However, a standard request submitted to the Department of Justice by LHR about prisoners due to be executed on 9 November received the response that it was 'the policy of the Department not to furnish the particulars requested' except to the legal representative of the prisoner concerned.
This new policy will act to the particular disadvantage of those prisoners who, in the absence of a lawyer of their own, were defended at their original trials by pro deo advocates. They thus have no instructing attorney to request such information and are the very people the LHR programme was designed to reach. At least one prisoner was subsequently executed without having exercised his right to petition the Chief Justice or the State President. Later in November it was reported that LHR hoped to see the Minister of Justice to discuss the change in policy.
Protests against the death penalty continued throughout November and December. A resolution on the subject was adopted at the Conference for a Democratic Future, stating that 'a moratorium on all executions until the death penalty is abolished in its entirety' is one of the preconditions for negotiations. It also declared Christmas 1989 a Christmas against the Death Penalty. Two Eastern Cape events organised in furtherance of this — a meeting in Ginsburg addressed by Wilton Mkwayi and a prayer service in Stutterheim — came under police attack. Youth dispersing from the Ginsberg meeting were teargassed while in Stutterheim at least 20 people were injured, one a 73-year-old woman.
Speeches by Mkwayi and Kathrada were among the ways in which the released ANC leaders demonstrated their support for those on Death Row. However, they were refused entry to Pretoria Central to visit them. In early January the authorities introduced tough new regulations governing all visits. The harshest of these means that any visitor arriving late for a visit will have it cancelled. Most visitors rely on public transport and find it impossible to ensure punctuality. The initial procedure for being accepted as a visitor was also made more difficult, requiring an approach by telephone. Visitors reported finding it difficult to get a response from the number they had been given. The SPCC noted that the new regulations increased the possibility that there might be selection of potential visitors. On 13 January a protest by SPCC and family members was held outside Pretoria Central Prison while prisoners inside began a hunger strike in protest against the new restrictions. Prisoners also demanded they be allowed visits by their children, contact visits and study permits. Themba Xulu, whose brother Sipho was executed in 1986 and who visits other prisoners stated: 'We want our people on Death Row to be reprieved, not for their lives to be made more miserable.'
The South African Prisons Service regulation barring visits from children under the age of 16 years is especially harsh for parents on Death Row who may not see their children between the time of sentence and execution. For the two youngest children of Gideon Madlongwane and Evelina de Bruin, Mbulelo (aged 14) and Adelaide (12), their position is even more serious in that both of their parents have been sentenced to death. In September, after a petition to the Chief Justice, all the Upington residents sentenced to death in May were granted leave to appeal against sentence. The following month lawyers applied for bail for de Bruin as well as for the five people sentenced to prison terms. Four applications were successful, in respect of Abel KUTU, Ronnie MASIZA, Jeffrey SEKIYA and Sarel JACOBS.
The application on behalf of 60-year-old de Bruin highlighted the medical reasons which made bail imperative. She suffers from high blood pressure, a heart condition and chronic rheumatoid arthritis. As the only women presently on Death Row in Pretoria she has no companions and being illiterate can neither read nor write to pass the time. Since her sentence she has been unable to sleep or eat and doctors prescribed tablets to stimulate her appetite. Worry about her ten children and the injustice of being convicted though innocent reportedly concern her more than fear of execution. On 23 October in the Kimberley Supreme Court Justice Basson, who had sentenced Evelina de Bruin to death five months earlier, refused her application for bail. A number of organisations immediately pledged new efforts to reverse this decision.
