Special Hearings — Prison Hearings — 1997-07-21

MS MCBRIDE: As competitor and not as someone who was a victim of death row or capital punishment, but as someone who was more a witness to the effect that being sentenced to death, has on human beings, and not only the human beings who are sentenced to death, but those who look after them while they are waiting to be hanged and really, maybe more importantly I have come here because in my mind the death penalty is a gross human rights' violation and it should be recorded in the record at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as a gross human rights' violation.
 And I hope that if we can give testimony today about the effect that it has had, that it will never, ever, again come back onto our statute books because I think it brutalises not only those who are sentenced, but those who sentence them ie the Judges and also it brutalises our whole country, because then if we allow it to happen, we participate in it.
 So really I am here to just talk about the history of it as it was carried out in the prisons.  The Judges who sentenced will be dealt with in the legal hearing because they were obviously the people who sent them to prison to be looked after by the Department of Prisons.
 So today I am just going to look at really what death row meant from my experience.  I started going there from 1987 until 1990 and I was there every day from 1987 to 1990 except for maybe one or two, so what I saw was the people who were being processed towards the execution chamber.
 I saw the people, sometimes the day before they were due to be hanged and it is that that I want to talk about.  There were in South Africa and I will talk about Pretoria Maximum Security Prison, because in a way that was the head office of hangings.  There were hangings that were carried out in Bophutatswana and Venda and the Transkei and the Ciskei, but I did not have other than Bophutatswana, I didn't have experience of that, so I am going to talk about what Pretoria Maximum Security was like as a visitor and as someone who worked on death row.
 I think that probably the first and probably the most important image of it, is that it is a place that was perfectly designed to kill people.  And it was perfectly designed in the sense of its normality.  It was a prison that had very pretty little gardens around it, there were bambies, little bucks that were playing in the garden, there were rabbits out there, there was a pond and there were ducks and when you entered through that section, you went into the maximum security section, where there were perfectly ordinary people who were employed by the Department of Prisons to feed, to guard, to watch over the people who were under sentence of death.
 They were in the womens' section there were young, middle aged, old women who were there to look after them and in the mens' section, there were young, middle aged and old men who were there to see that the people in their custody didn't kill themselves before the State got a chance to kill them.  So they were there to ensure that they remained healthy until there was an opportunity, until the State President denied clemency, till there was a chance for them to be given their seven days' notice period.
 While people were in prison and Duma will  tell you a lot more about this, they were kept under 24-hour lights like this.  The lights were never, ever, ever switched off.  The only time that people got a chance to close their eyes properly and sleep, was when there was  a power failure in Pretoria, which during the four years that I was visiting there, happened twice.
 And you could tell when it had happened, because the next morning the prisoners looked at least vaguely rested.  Apart from that, there was 24-hour surveillance.  You never had a moment's privacy, there were, the grill bars above the cells where the warders used to stand or walk and be able to look down on the people who were kept in prison beneath them.
 And in visiting time, you had a warder behind you.  For example if I had visited, I had be sitting here, Robert would be there and we would have warders either side of us listening into your conversation, because that was their duty and watching that nothing was said about what happened inside the prison.
 You could actually talk about pretty much anything as long as the prisoner didn't mention anything that was happening inside the prison and more importantly and particularly in the early years, that they didn't mention that anybody was due to be executed because it was not supposed to be known, which is why before there was vigilant visiting, before 1987, many people went to the gallows with nobody knowing about  it other than their families who had been sent a second class rail ticket to come up for their last visit.
 I think that probably that seven day period before execution is the  time that anybody who supports the death penalty should be exposed to and particularly the Judges who passed the sentences, who should have gone and spent the last seven days with the people they sentenced.
 Because what happens is that there is a slight flurry in the prison, maybe on a Tuesday when the Sheriff arrives.  The Sheriff would be sent up to Pretoria Maximum with a bunch of notices in his hand and those notices would be for people who the State President had decided were worthy of his clemency or of his pardon.
 The other bunch of notices would be for those that he decided really weren't fit any more to live.  So the Sheriff would take both sets of notices up and prisoners would be called.  Prisoners would first of all, all be locked up because there was a Sheriff arriving.
 The warder would then walk down the passages in between cells, with prisoners waiting inside wondering whether it was their turn today, whether they were going to get handed a notice of release or a notice of death.
 And as it was described to me, there was complete and utter silence during those periods.  There was complete silence, while the footsteps went down, everyone waiting to see where the footsteps would stop.
 When they stopped outside a door, they would tell the prisoner in a - and I don't speak Afrikaans - but they would say to them "pak", pack your things because you are leaving.  Either you are leaving for your date with death or you are leaving to go and serve a prison term.
 At that stage they were still not told, all they were told was to pack their things.  They would then, all those who had been told to pack, would be taken out of their cells, and they would wait in a line outside the office where the Sheriff was waiting.
 The only time they would know which decision had been made about their lives, was when they went into that office and they were told the State President has decided that you will be granted clemency or the State President has decided that in seven days from today, you would be hanged by the neck until you are dead.
 They would then be shifted into the various places.  Those who were given a sentence of death, were moved into what was known as the pot and it was known as the pot in my understanding because that is where you boiled because of levels of stress before your death.
 And in that week, that week was set aside for things like measurement.  Measurement of your neck to make sure that the hangman got it right.  Measurement of your weight to make sure that they are guaranteed that the drop would be correct when you were hanged.   Measurement maybe for your coffin, who knows, but it was a time set aside and seven days, let me tell you, is a very long time and Duma will tell you, a very long time in the life of a human being, when you know the exact time at which you will be killed.
 And you know the exact way in which you will be killed because everybody in death row knew what would happen to you.  In that seven days you had even tighter security just to make sure that you wouldn't take away from the hangman and from the State, the duty of death.
 No one, no one, no one would be allowed to kill themselves during that time.  It didn't matter that they were scheduled to die in seven days time, they couldn't have that right to do it to themselves, so they would be under very, very strict surveillance.
 They would be as most death row prisoners were after a suicide in 1987, where someone killed themselves by gauging out their wrists with a shoe nail in desperation, all death row prisoners were in soft shoes.  Even those they had to leave outside when they went into the pot.
 They were clothed in minimal clothing so that they could not hang themselves.  And it was in this state that they were allowed to see their families for the last time, but still as with all death row visits, they were not allowed physical contact with their families.
 So the last view that families had of people who were going to die the next morning, was through glass and through bars and through a funny megaphone where you heard a disembodied voice speaking to you.
 And on the last night, before they were going to be hanged, what was left of them, was given a very, very - what would you call it - bang up meal.  They were given a whole deboned chicken to eat as was the tradition inherited from Britain where you were given the last supper.
 You were given food that you hadn't eaten the whole time while you were on death row.  And you were given initially I think, it was R6-00 to be able to buy something from the tuck shop on the night before you were to be killed.
 The stories that people tell and you will hear it from someone who experienced it, is that the whole night through before the hanging, in fact in the whole seven days, the only thing that the Prisons' Department were less strict about, was noise because people would sing other people to their death.
 In a way as a comfort, I suppose for the people who were to be hanged and for those who were going to be hanged themselves.   And so the singing, and you could hear it even when you went to visit in those last days, you would hear singing in the background of people waiting to die and of people waiting for others to be led out to their death.
 And just for a scale of it, I know in the four years that my husband spent there, there were over 300 people hanged in that time.  That is the scale on which we were hanging people in South Africa and in one of the years, which was, I can't, I think it was 1988, or 1987, in December there was 28 people hanged in the space of a week.
 There were seven people hanged on a Tuesday, a Wednesday and a Thursday, seven people each and on the next Tuesday there were seven.  So the people who were visiting to see their people for the last time, had a view of the black taxi's coming out of the prison, stacked high with coffins in the taxi.  So you would have the (indistinct) kombi come out of the gate, you would be sitting in a bus stop waiting to go into prison and there you would see that morning's pickings, seven people in coffins, stacked into the (indistinct) ready to go to the no-name burial site that they were buried in.
 And the next morning it would be the same.  So if you had managed to come up to see your family for four days before they died, you would have seen 14 people go out dead, knowing that the next day it would be your son or your husband or your daughter or whoever had been selected.
 And so the hangman in those days was a very, very busy man.  And it became known in prison as the Christmas rush.  It was because there was a leave period over Christmas where there was no hanging that that December we had a Christmas rush, where cut down the numbers in prison quickly, get as many people hanged as possible so that there is space in the prison for the next intake from January, when the sentencing would start again.
 I think for families who were there, and who went to see their sons or family members for the last time, they had their last visit, they then slept outside the prison walls for the last night knowing that their son or whoever was inside, being prepared for his execution to be led out at 05.30 in the morning, to be led up the steps by the warders, to have the hood put over his head, to make his feet place on the black footprints that were in the gallows, chambers so that he stood in the right position to have the noose put over and for the hangman to bless his soul before he pulled the lever, because that is what he did.
 He always said Chris Barnard was the hangman who probably had the longest tenure and he said in an interview that he always said a prayer for the people he hanged so that their souls would go to heaven.
 And then the lever to be pulled and then depending how efficient the measuring had been, it would take five, ten, twelve, seventeen minutes before the person finally died.  The longest recorded in South Africa was seventeen minutes of someone who the hangman described as a very strong man, who just wouldn't give up on life and so his body hung twitching for seventeen minutes, before the Doctor who was on duty, would pronounce him dead.
 The families would then be informed, normally at about half past seven that their son was dead and that they could come to a little church service.  The church in my memory and Johan who is going to give testimony, may correct me, was beneath where the gallows chamber was.
 Because you must remember we had a very Christian State and so churches were everywhere and this one was placed very close to the gallows chamber and the families were allowed to come in and have a church service with the coffins in front of them.
 They were not allowed to touch the coffins which is one of the reasons why I am sure a lot of you heard of the myth that was in death row that no one was actually hanged because you could never see the body, you were not allowed to see the body of the person who was hanged, because that body was State property.
 It was no longer your flesh and blood, it was State property.  So the myth that developed was that people were not hanged, they were sent to work in the Mint and they were sent to make money and people would ask you, family members asked me have you ever met anyone who made money, you could never meet anyone who made money because if you did, then everyone would know how to make money and then we would all be able to get very rich.
 So in fact condemned people were the people sent to make money and they were sent into the hill behind Maximum Security Prison and it was there that they lived out their days.
 You would never see them again because otherwise they would pass on the secret of how to make money, and it was that myth I think, arose out of protection of yourself because you don't want to believe that someone actually was hanged, but more than that, because you were never allowed to see the body.
 Andrew Masondo's father after he was executed, was asked that he wanted to come to the church service but he can see the coffin, but he can't see the body and he said if he wants to see coffins, he would go to a funeral home.
 He wants to see his son so he didn't attend the church service after his death.  He left before his son was hanged because he said he doesn't want to come and look at a coffin.
 And I think family members would very often after the church service, they would have their second class rail ticket, they would get the last possessions of their child or their relative, and they would go home with a grave number that would be sent to them.
 Somewhere in either Mamelodi cemetery, Eersterus, wherever, Pretoria cemetery, that was an unmarked grave which is a section reserved for people who were State property - sentenced to death.
 And I think and I won't say any more because there are lots of people who are going to say from their own experience, I just think that people who call or put out the call hang them, hang the bastards, you know, put them away, bring back the death penalty, do not have any understanding of what that does, not just to the people who are hanged, but to our society.  I think it is a brutal, barbarous, uncivilised, grotesque part of our society and I think that South Africa should be prouder, more than anything, that we have done, prouder that we have been one of the countries in the world to completely take it off our statute books.
 And I for one, would put everything I had, into fighting anybody who tried to bring it back, because I think that we have done well as a country to take that away from our lives.  Thank you.