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South Africa Hangs 3 Black Guerrillas for Murder, Fatal Bombing

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Times Staff Writer

Three black African National Congress guerrillas, one convicted of murder in a terrorist bombing that killed five white shoppers two days before Christmas last year, were hanged in Pretoria on Tuesday.

Andrew Sibusio Zondo, 20, went to the gallows at Pretoria Central Prison convinced that the bomb he planted at a shopping center south of Durban would hasten black liberation in South Africa, according to his lawyer, Bheka Shezi.

“If I must die for the liberation of our people, let it be so--others have done the same,” Shezi quoted Zondo as telling him in a final conversation on Death Row on Monday. “I hope other comrades will take up where we left off.”

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Zondo, a minister’s son and a committed Christian himself, had said at his trial that he planted the bomb in retaliation for a South African army raid on neighboring Lesotho in which nine people, most of them ANC members or other South African exiles, were gunned down earlier in December.

5 Were Killed

Three children and two women were killed in the shopping center bombing; 48 other people were injured.

Hanged with Zondo were two other members of Spear of the Nation, the African National Congress’ military wing. The two were convicted in early 1985 of murdering an ANC aide, Benjamin Langa, who they said was suspected of having become a government informer and betraying other ANC members to the police.

Sipho Xulu, 26, and Clarence Payi, 21, had confessed to killing Langa, secretary general in the 1970s of the now outlawed South African Students Organization. Langa had also been a close friend of black consciousness leader Steve Biko and one of the country’s most promising poets. The defendants told the court that they had acted on ANC orders because Langa “betrayed the revolution.”

The African National Congress never accepted direct responsibility for the bomb Zondo planted, although its president, Oliver Tambo, said he understood Zondo’s motivation. The organization strongly denied ordering Langa’s execution, blaming the government for his murder.

The three men went to their deaths singing liberation songs, according to the Rev. Sol Jacobs, assistant general secretary of the South African Council of Churches. Jacobs came from Pretoria to tell a small memorial service at the council’s chapel here, “These three men have given their lives fighting for freedom in this country.”

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“Zondo, Payi and Xulu are three more casualties in the struggle for the freedom of this country, three more deaths too many,” Jacobs said. “Many more will make sacrifices, and many more will have to die. . . . The deaths of these men challenge us to take the first steps toward reconciliation, peace and justice.”

The United Democratic Front, a coalition of 650 anti-apartheid groups, had appealed for clemency for the three, arguing that they were not “ordinary bloodthirsty criminals” but instead were “freedom fighters” who should be treated as prisoners of war.

“Going on with the hangings can only be seen as immoral and unjust,” the front said. “There is nothing in this act that promotes reconciliation. Rather than hanging those fighting for freedom, the government should be meeting the demands of the people.”

‘Horrendous Murders’

But the South African Justice Ministry said on Tuesday that each had been convicted of “horrendous murders” and that, even taking into account pleas here and abroad for clemency, there was no justification for commuting the death sentences to life imprisonment.

The three hangings, which brought to eight the number of ANC guerrillas executed in the past decade, underscored Pretoria’s determination to continue its campaign against the African National Congress, the main guerrilla group fighting continued white rule here, and resist all pressure to negotiate with it.

None of the three had asked for a reprieve, according to Shezi. “I am not prepared to beg for my life,” Shezi quoted Zondo as telling him. “A revolutionary loves life, but knows that life is not an end in itself.”

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Zondo had been offered a reprieve, according to Shezi, if he testified against 10 other alleged ANC supporters who are to be tried in Durban shortly, but he refused. “They might have given me life imprisonment then,” he told Shezi, “but I am not prepared to do that. A man without principle is like an empty shell.”

Times researcher Michael Cadman in Pretoria contributed to this story.

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