Witness, Charging He Was Forced to Lie, Pleads for Clemency for Sharpeville Six

A prosecution witness has written President Pieter W. Botha to seek clemency for six blacks whose death sentences have sparked international outrage, a newspaper reported Friday.

Joseph Manete, who said that police tortured him so he would give false testimony, reportedly described his police interrogation and pleaded for the release of the so-called Sharpeville Six.

“I am writing this letter in order to tell you the truth. . . . What I have told the court was not my words,” according to a letter published by City Press, the largest circulation newspaper for blacks.

Botha refused to intervene in the case, despite appeals from many foreign governments to halt the hanging of the five men and one woman convicted of the mob killing of a black town councilor.

A day before they were due to hang in March, attorneys obtained a stay of execution from the trial judge, Willem Human, on the basis of a statement that Manete had given his lawyer.

The lawyers said Manete wrote an affidavit saying police coerced him into falsely identifying two of the defendants as being part of the crowd that stoned and burned councilor Jacob Dlamini in 1984.

In the letter printed Friday, Manete described his interrogation, saying that from the outset he told police he did not know the names of Dlamini’s killers.

“They threatened and pressurized me,” he wrote. “One of the white policemen pushed my head against the wall and I was clapped several times on the face.”

He said a policeman read him the names of the six defendants and told him he would be imprisoned “and tortured daily” if he did not name two of them as having been present at the killing. Finally, Manete said, “I agreed with them.”

The six defendants are Mohalefa Sefatsa, Reid Mokoena, Oupa Diniso, Theresa Ramashomola, Duma Khumalo and Francis Mokgesi. Manete said he was told to identify Khumalo and Mokgesi.