If I have been left in any doubt as to how serious these charges are, there are also charges of contravening the Arms and Ammunition Act, 75 of 1969, by unlawful possession of the following assortment of weapons: two Makarov pistols and their fully loaded magazines, five AK-47 combat rifles and twenty-three fully loaded magazines, two Russian SPM-2 limpet mines and related components, four 158 mini limpet mines with igniters and time fuses, two Russian defensive F-1 hand grenades, eleven RGD offensive hand grenades and a variety of igniters, six military-type mechanical detonators, one TM-57 landmine and its detonator, numerous rounds of ammunition and, just in case things got out of hand, one RPG anti-tank rocket launcher.
I know that if the accused are found guilty on any one of the charges of murder there is a strong likelihood of the death sentence. There are four such charges here, as well as the main count of high treason, which also carries the death penalty. There’s something else: I know that the State justice system is an efficient one and that they would never put up charges of murder in a high-profile political trial unless they had a rock-solid case. Treason is possibly arguable. But a murder trial probably based on confessions, with the type of judges allocated to political trials, makes conviction highly likely. If no extenuating circumstances can be found, it is obligatory for the judge to pass the ultimate sentence. Death by hanging.
9
Jabu Masina had never been in such a big lorry. Climbing over the stacked furniture, he shouted to his brothers and sisters, looking forward to the move to a new house in a different area. The flurry and fuss of the white men added to the excitement although the men were loud and frightening. On the truck his mother cried softly. But to a nine-year-old, the prospect of the big move was thrilling.
The day had started early with the police and the council workers coming in their vans and massive trucks. The night before, his stepfather had told them they’d have to move from the small house in Western Native Township where they’d lived for as long as he could remember. The two-bedroomed house with a kitchen and dining room and an outside toilet was home to the family of thirteen. Jabu’s grandmother and his mother’s younger sister, an uncle and two cousins also shared the house. Jabu slept in the kitchen with his five brothers, head to toe.
Jabu Masina, born on 26 December 1950, was the second-eldest child. The eldest, his brother Nodo, had died, stabbed at the age of fifteen in a fight trying to shield a friend. Jabu had never known his father and his mother never mentioned the man. The boy didn’t know if he was dead or had abandoned them. Nor did he ever raise the topic as it angered his mother. His stepfather, Jumbo, was a good man, and looked after them as his own children.
Jumbo was a domestic worker, a servant for a white family in the Johannesburg suburb of Highlands North. From time to time, Jabu went with his mother to visit the house where his stepfather worked. He never went inside. He waited at the back near the staff quarters, occasionally seeing the white occupants, distant but not unfriendly. A different world. Jumbo gave them leftovers, bread and sometimes vegetables and meat. It was delicious and a change from the pap and wild spinach that was their staple diet.
Once a week, usually a Saturday, his mother cooked meat on a coal stove. It was a great treat. There was no electricity in the house. Jabu helped with the washing up, taking the plates and pots out to the only tap on the property a few metres from the house.
He was close to his mother. A large and enveloping woman, she was strong and always in control. Yet she never seemed to sleep. His grandmother made umqombothi, selling the traditional beer from the front room of the house.
Jabu did not have much contact with white people. He grew up afraid of whites, although he’d never met any whites or talked with them. He thought they hated him. Surely that was why they made black people stay in distant places. He heard stories of black people being arrested and beaten for being in white areas or for being ‘cheeky’. The white police, cruising the township in their vans, dogs snarling in the back, were trouble. They terrified Jabu and he ran whenever he saw them. To Jabu, whites had big houses and cars; all the black people he knew served them or worked for them.
His first encounter with whites occurred when he was about eleven years old while visiting Jumbo at the Highlands North house. Jumbo had given him a packet of leftovers and on the way to the bus stop Jabu ate from the packet. He hadn’t gone far when he noticed a white boy with an Alsatian on a leash, the kind of dog that barked in the back of police vans. The white boy, about his age, looked at him expressionlessly as he passed. Keeping his eyes down, Jabu quickened his pace, but the white boy’s stare made him uneasy. He didn’t want to be thought ‘cheeky’ but he couldn’t resist a backward glance. As he turned, he saw the white boy let go of the leash, just letting it drop from his hand. The dog sprang forward.
Jabu ran, clutching the packet of leftovers. The dog was gaining. He looked back to see the boy standing still, curious but detached, and the dog racing at him. Jabu dropped the packet of food, even as he did so worrying that his mother would be cross with him. On his left was the open gate of a house, it was his only escape. He rushed through and shut the gate. In the street the dog snapped and snarled, bearing its teeth. Jabu stood petrified.
He didn’t hear the white man approaching. The first he knew of him was when a large hand gripped his shoulder. He screamed. Terrified of the dog and the man, he cowered speechless.
‘Are you trying to break into my house?’ the man asked loudly in Afrikaans.
‘No, baas, the dog wanted to bite me,’ said Jabu but the man wasn’t listening, was dragging him to the house, hitting him, kicking him.
The man phoned the police. ‘I caught a small kaffir breaking into my house,’ he told them. Soon two white policemen arrived and Jabu was thrown into the back of their van. The boy and the dog were nowhere to be seen. In the van, the fear gone, Jabu got angry. At the police station he was uncooperative and a black police constable threatened to lock him up for the night if he didn’t make a statement. Jabu spent his first night in prison.
Meanwhile Jabu’s mother was frantically searching for him. Like Jumbo she too was a domestic worker. The next day she explained the situation to her white employer and asked for time off. The woman kindly offered to help her and, after phoning a number of police stations, tracked down Jabu and had him released. On the way home, the boy told his mother what had happened. She said nothing. It was the way of things.
Throughout his school years, Jabu got good marks and sometimes first-class passes. He was among the smartest in the class, although no match for a stocky boy called Cyril Ramaphosa. They became friends. But at the age of sixteen Jabu was taken out of school and the friendship dwindled. Times were hard for the Masinas; they needed Jabu to start earning.
For the next eight years he worked in factories and warehouses until he felt doomed to a life of manual labour and wages that were a pittance.
At the age of twenty-four, Jabu went back to high school where he had to repeat Standard Seven. He passed and went into Standard Eight, determined that he would get his matric. But there were no exams in June that year due to student protests and boycotts. It was 1976. Jabu was not involved in the student movement or in politics, determined to keep his promise to his headmaster who had said that he would only take him back if he stayed away from the girls and did nothing wrong. It wasn’t easy. The events of June drew him in. The primary cause of the protests was the use of Afrikaans as the language of instruction. Jabu had no problem with Afrikaans, having grown up in Western Native Township where the majority of the residents were ‘coloured’ and spoke Afrikaans. But he sympathised with the other students. He also knew that this was not purely about Afrikaans, but also about the youth who would not accept their fate, like their parents and, perhaps, as he did. So he went with the crowd, but he did not lead it.
He joined the rampaging students. Police firing teargas were everywhere. In the chaos of burning buildings, he saw the bodies of those