Prescription for Martyrdom : If 6 Hang, South Africa Will Be Ignoring Lessons of Its History

Behind the outcry over Pretoria’s plans to hang the Sharpeville Six lies one of the most emotive issues in South Africa’s troubled history: the execution of people for politically related crimes. It comes to the fore as last-minute appeals are made internationally to save six blacks--five men and a woman--from the gallows this Friday.

In the first half of the century, execution for politically related offenses in South Africa was used sparingly, but as unrest has grown, so have executions. Now, with the court process catching up with more than three years of turmoil in the black townships, the figures are snowballing. At the end of 1987 an estimated 44 prisoners were on Death Row in Pretoria for unrest-related crimes, out of a total of 267 prisoners awaiting execution. In a politically troubled country with an active death-penalty policy, martyrs can abound.

The issue stirs deep emotions--and it is reminiscent of Irish history, in which the use of the death penalty after the Easter uprising of 1916 in Dublin gave Irish nationalism new life. In South Africa, at the outbreak of World War I, there was a rebellion. A serving officer who defected was court-martialed and shot. The event probably contributed greatly to the rise and ultimate triumph of Afrikaner nationalism. It is ironic that when the present government came to power in 1948 one of its first acts was to release from life imprisonment former anti-World War II activists. When political recalcitrants were white, official leniency was more apparent.

The danger for the government of creating martyrs by executing people like the Sharpeville Six is obvious. Blacks have been made very conscious of the plight of the six. Packed church services have been held, and appeals have been made. Publicity in newspapers has highlighted the distress of their families. Execution would stir emotions anew. The issue has also placed South Africa back on the front pages and television screens of the world.

As I write, the six are awaiting last-minute court applications and clemency appeals. The legal issue is exercising the minds of lawyers. The six were convicted by an acting judge of the Transvaal Supreme Court of having had a “common purpose” with others in a crowd that killed Kuzwayo Jacob Dlamini, deputy mayor of a black council at Sharpeville, in September, 1984. When a crowd attacked his house in a rent protest, he fired shots. He was beaten and burned in what the judge termed “a gruesome, medieval and barbaric” act. But none of the accused were proved to have administered the fatal blows. They were convicted under a legal doctrine whereby people can be judged to have had a “common purpose” in a murder--primarily in that they were a willing part of the murderous crowd, as judged by the court. The appeal court agreed with the trial judge that they had an “active association” with the purpose that the mob sought and achieved: the killing of Dlamini. No extenuating circumstances were found by the courts.

Interestingly, when the anti-war activists were released in 1948, the justice minister described it as an attempt to end the unpleasantness and rancor that had flowed from the war years. C. R. Swart spoke optimistically of “cordial cooperation in future between all true citizens.” It could be argued that township unrest in past years amounted to near war, and, with the government professing anxiousness to secure black cooperation in its current constitutional plans, the same accommodating approach should be adopted.

But clemency in such cases is essentially a political act, and the political background has to be taken realistically into account. Since the government is under growing pressure from right-wing groups, and with important elections looming, there will be little disposition to bow to appeals, even from conservative quarters like President Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. For some time the government has spurned foreign pressures, and in effect has told a world bent on sanctions to do its “damnedest.”

The white community has been severely frightened by aspects of black-on-black violence, particularly the gruesome “necklace” deaths in which petrol-filled car tires are hung around the victims’ necks and set on fire. The government is very sensitive to this white fear. But it should be noted that such concern is not confined to whites. The black leadership, including African National Congress leaders and Prime Minister Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, have condemned necklacing in strong terms.

There are precedents for commuting sentences. But in terms of its domestic constituency the government is in a tricky position. It will be accused of being weak-kneed by its right-wing political opponents if it backs down.

Blacks see things differently. Numbers of blacks were swept along in the euphoric wave of protest that dates back to the day Dlamini was killed, and some will be enraged to see the six executed for simply being, like themselves, in the crowd. Seen as a collaborator with Pretoria, Dlamini would command little sympathy in such quarters, whatever the awful circumstances of his death. The incident highlights the awesome problems facing a divided society that relies heavily on capital punishment in dealing with serious offenses. It is the stuff that martyrdom and history are made of.