This is serious stuff. The one component common to most political trials is the challenging of the accused’s confession. In legal jargon, this is known as ‘the trial within a trial’. In many MK trials, most of the evidence comes from the confession of the accused, usually extracted under torture and duress. The admissibility of the confession then becomes contentious. And so battle is joined.
I approach the prison, feel the eyes of the warders looking at me through the thick glass. I bark my name into the intercom, the sun on my head shooting pain across my thin skull. The immaculate Warder van Rensburg, reassuringly exhibiting the same distance and contempt towards me, ushers me in. The clanging of the massive hydraulic doors jars my delicate senses, makes me wish that I had shown more restraint the previous night.
We go in through one door after the other until the door of the doctor’s surgery closes. I stretch out gratefully on the bed. As I lie there I wonder why the beds in doctors’ surgeries are always uncomfortable. Maybe they don’t want the patients settling in. The frowning eyes of the warder appear at the peephole in the door and I can see that he is irritated by this lazy lawyer stretching out on the starched white sheets of the prison doctor’s bed. It’s just too much! Although it’s good to know that I am irritating him, I realise sadly that a few hours alone on this bed in this prison would be something that I would welcome, perhaps even pay for. Two hours of sleep would see me right. I close my eyes.
Unfortunately, this time my clients are brought in promptly. I greet them and we weigh ourselves. It is becoming a ritual and prison is about rituals. We go through the niceties as if we were meeting for coffee in a café, discussing the surroundings, their daily routine, the gym. I pass on good wishes from the families. There is no passing or keeping of written messages. A friend of mine was barred by the Law Society from visiting clients in prison after he was caught smuggling out a message on a piece of paper. Such a mistake would be pounced on and give Warder van Rensburg more pleasure than his Sunday braai.
To business. ‘This is serious now and I want you to listen closely.’
They pull their chairs closer and go silent, totally absorbed. I give them some options about the type of defence that can be mounted.
‘Each option has serious consequences and needs to be thought through carefully. Don’t make a decision now. Take your time, discuss it among yourselves and in a few days we can discuss it further and I can answer any questions you may have. I also want to take detailed statements from each of you and analyse them at length before advising you of what I think your best defence should be. I’m going to detail all of the options so that you get a precise picture of your legal position. I appreciate that some of them may not be acceptable to you, but you still need to know about them.’
I work through the particulars of each charge and relay the types of sentences that each offence would attract on conviction. They are silent.
I tackle the big issue. ‘What do you say about the murder charges? Have you confessed to them?’
Jabu is slow in replying. ‘Yes, we have confessed to the murders and the other charges. It was part of our mission.’
‘Yussus,’ I respond, having got much more than I expected. ‘Look, we will need to explore the facts and circumstances of each charge. But I must tell you, you can’t get more serious charges. If convicted, you face the death sentence.’
There, I have said it. The death sentence. I needed to do that, to get it onto the table, make them realise the utter gravity of their situation. I tell them that the death sentence is mandatory unless extenuating circumstances are found, explaining that those are factors associated with the case which diminish the moral, if not legal guilt of the accused. I give examples. They look at me steadily. They are not talking, waiting for me to finish, watching me. This is my test. What is this lawyer going to advise?
There is a long silence and then Ting Ting speaks. ‘We know what the penalties are for what we have done. We knew that before we even came back into the country. These are things that must be faced. How we handle it is very important to us. There can be no going back, we are soldiers.’
Strong stuff.
‘That’s fine,’ I say.
As we work through the different types of defence, I realise that they are not being charged with what they did in Bophuthatswana, with the murder of Brigadier Molope. Who would have thought that the ‘independent’ country would be helpful in such circumstances? Anyway, the security police don’t need the Bop charges, the South African ones are enough. Besides, too many accomplishments would turn these men into heroes.
13
The woman, tall and blonde, came out of the large house towards Ting Ting. He saw that she was carrying a book and wondered what it was. She wore an orange floral dress and even though her hair was tied back, there was no escaping her youth. From inside the house, he could hear the radio commentary of a rugby game. Saturday afternoon in the suburb of Gezina in Pretoria. The woman was close now. Lifting his head to look at her, Ting Ting saw that tears rolled down her cheeks. The book she carried was a Bible. Ting Ting knew that he had not done a good job in the garden. He had lost this job. The racing pigeons were really to blame. There were fourteen of them in a mesh cage and every time he passed the cage, he stopped to watch them. He spent long moments gazing and talking softly to them and did not complete the tasks that the woman’s husband had set for him. This family paid well at five rand for a day’s work. The normal rate was two rand. The husband had told him that the family was moving and they would no longer need his services, but he knew this was a lie. The man felt he had not done his work properly and wanted to get rid of him.
The woman had always been kind to him, had given him food and old clothes that he took back to his family. It was a great saving. Desperately wanting to ask for another chance yet too proud to plead, he wished that they would reconsider but he knew that the man had made up his mind. It was over. Looking at her as she stood before him, he too started to cry, overcome with strange emotions. The woman looked him in the eyes, opened the Bible and read out a verse about how Jesus would come and wipe off the tears of all those who were crying. He looked down, embarrassed by his own tears, and tried not to notice hers. She gave him some clothes and money and told him that her husband had said that he could take six of the racing pigeons. It was kind of them. He left taking the pigeons with him in a small wire cage that she gave him.
Ting Ting was the seventh of ten children and he knew that this ‘weekend’ money would be much missed in the household. His mother, NaSindane, worked as a domestic worker at a house in Meyer’s park opposite the suburb of Silverton. Ting Ting went to visit her at the house and was struck by its size. On these visits, he rang the bell at the front gate and waited for his mother to come and let him in. She would give him bread and tea and he’d sit in the sun on the stairs of an outside storeroom to eat. But he had to eat quickly so that he was gone by the time the owners returned.
On one visit, he saw the daughter of the owner, a young white girl who his mother called ‘Nonnatjie’ – little madam. He noticed that his mother, who was always in command at their home and very strict with her own family, behaved differently here. It bothered him that this little girl did not respect his mother and called her by her first name. At home, he would never call an older person by their first name, always by their title, like aunt or uncle.
His own home was one of the tiny matchbox houses in Mamelodi. His father John Thulare Masango, a large, but mild mannered man, rose every morning at half past four to report for work at six. His job at a construction company in Silverton was to open and close the entrance gates. John Masango worked an eleven-hour day and returned exhausted in the evening. Even when his father was very sick, he never missed a day’s work.
His mother ran the household. She was always talking and giving orders, making sure that the little food in the house was meticulously shared. Even an orange was shared out piece by piece.
Ting Ting’s three sisters shared a small room while