South Africa to Execute ‘Sharpeville Six’ : Botha Denies Clemency in 1984 Murder of Black Deputy Mayor

The “Sharpeville Six,” five men and a woman condemned to death for the murder of a black local official at the start of South Africa’s civil unrest in 1984, are scheduled to be executed Friday despite worldwide pleas for clemency.

President Pieter W. Botha has refused to commute the death sentences, attorneys for the six were informed Monday, and all six are to be hanged just after dawn Friday at Pretoria Central Prison.

Prakash Diar, one of the defense lawyers, said he will ask the Supreme Court today for a stay of execution in order to present new evidence that he believes might lead to reconsideration of the death sentences, if not of the convictions.

Little Hope for Appeal

However, Diar acknowledged that he has little hope of saving the six, all of whom are in their 20s or early 30s and most of whom have young children.

“I am afraid to say this is the end of the road,” he said, “but the authorities have confirmed the execution for Friday.”

Although impassioned appeals for presidential clemency have come from the United Nations, the European Communities, the United States and dozens of other countries over the last four months, the tough law-and-order mood of the Botha government makes such action politically unlikely.

Neither the Justice Ministry nor the Prisons Department would comment on the case Monday. However, defense lawyers and leading liberal politicians and anti-apartheid activists decried the planned executions and warned that they could bring renewed violence, particularly in the volatile Sharpeville area south of Johannesburg.

“This government is evidently so determined to show that world opinion means nothing that it also seems to ignore the reaction of South Africa’s own population,” said Helen Suzman, a Progressive Federal Party member of Parliament and a longtime opponent of the death penalty. “These people are well known in Sharpeville and in South Africa, and this action will have a terrible, enraging effect.”

The Rev C. F. Beyers Naude, former general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, warned that the executions would “only create more anger, more bitterness. . . . It portends very badly for our future.”

The six condemned to hang are Mojalefa Sefatsa, 32, a fruit vendor; Oupa Deniso, 32, a quality-control inspector at a steel plant; Reid Mokoena, 24, unemployed; Theresa Ramashamole, 26, a waitress; Duma Khumalo, 28, a college student, and Francis Mokhesi, 30, a window dresser and professional soccer player.

Two other defendants were acquitted of the murder charges. They were found guilty of “public violence” and sentenced to eight years in prison.

What has made the case particularly controversial is the lack of direct links between the murder more than three years ago of Jacob Dlamini, deputy mayor of Sharpeville, and most of the six who were convicted of complicity and sentenced to death.

“If there were ever a case for the state president to exercise his discretion and grant clemency, this is it,” lawyer Diar said. “The appeals court accepted as a matter of fact that they did not actually do the killing--they got caught up in the crowd.”

South Africa’s highest court acknowledged, in reviewing the case on appeal, that state prosecutors failed to show that most of the defendants were directly involved--several contended that they were not even present--in Dlamini’s murder in Sharpeville, in the Vaal industrial region about 45 miles south of Johannesburg, on Sept. 3, 1984.

‘Common Purpose’ Cited

However, the court, following the country’s legal system based on Roman and Dutch law, confirmed the convictions and the sentences. It held that the six defendants, as members of the mob outside the Dlamini house, had a “common purpose”--protesting municipal rent increases--with those who actually killed him and that therefore they were equally guilty.

Judge W. J. Human, in sentencing the six two years ago, described the crime as “a gruesome, medieval and barbaric murder.”

Dlamini was forced from his home by a barrage of stones and firebomb attacks, according to court testimony, as thousands of angry township residents attacked the homes of black community officials. Dlamini was then stoned, dragged into the street, doused with gasoline and set on fire, the witnesses said.