TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 3

Subsection 3

■ JUDICIAL EXECUTIONS

21 The former state was reputed to have one of the highest rates of judicial execution in the world. In the period covered by the Commission’s mandate, over 2 500 people were hanged, 1 154 between 1976 and 1985. Some 95 per cent of all people executed were African. Studies have noted that the death penalty was far more likely to be imposed if the victim of a capital offence was white and the perpetrator black.

22 While the vast majority of executions were for criminal offences, capital punishment was also used against those found guilty of political offences, in defiance of the Geneva Convention. South Africa was a signatory to the 1949 convention, but declined to sign the 1977 addenda extending the definition of prisoner of war to captured guerrillas.

23 The death penalty could be imposed under the General Laws Amendment Act (1962), the Terrorism Act (1967) and the Internal Security Act (1976) (which replaced the Suppression of Communism Act).

24 The first ‘political hangings’ took place in 1959, a year before the beginning of the Commission’s mandate period. In 1961, approximately twenty people were sentenced to death after the Pondoland revolt.1

25 In the 1960s, almost one hundred Poqo activists were hanged for involvement in acts of violence in Paarl, Mbashe (Bashee Bridge), Ntlonze Hill, Queenstown, Cofimvaba, Krugersdorp, Pretoria, Umtata, Langa and other areas.2

26 On 6 May 1964, three ANC members in the eastern Cape – Mr Vuyisile Mini [EC2097/97PLZ], Mr Wilson Khayinga and Mr Zinakile Mkaba – were hanged after having been found guilty for killing a person suspected of informing on the ANC.

The case of Mpumelelo Bongco

27 On 1 April 1965, Mr John Harris, a member of the African Resistance Movement (ARM), was executed for placing a bomb at the Johannesburg main railway station, resulting in one death and several injuries. Harris was the first and only white person in the mandate period to be hanged for a political offence. His widow, Ms Anne Wolfe, told the Commission: