BENJAMIN MOLOISE – AN ANC ACTIVIST FROM ALEXANDRIA TOWNSHIP IN JOHANNESBURG WHO WAS EXECUTED AT THE YOUNG AGE OF 30 IN OCTOBER 1985 AFTER BEING FOUND GUILTY OF THE MURDER OF AN APARTHEID SECURITY POLICEMAN IN NOVEMBER 1982

 

                                  

                                  Benjamin Moloise

                                       

On October 18 (2020) it will be exactly 35 years since the Pretoria regime executed a 30-year-old activist for allegedly being involved in the murder of a security policeman.
Benjamin Moloise, also a poet and factory worker, was hanged on October 18 1985 at the Pretoria Central Prison after being found guilty of the  murder of the security policeman in November 1982.
He was on death row for just over two years after being found guilty in September 1983.
The execution took place under the reign of P W Botha despite representations by the international community that the death sentence should be commuted. The African National Congress had informed the United Nations and the British, United States and other countries that Moloise was not involved in the murder of the security policeman.
Three-and-half-months before his execution in October 1985, the Press Trust of SA Independent Third World News Agency published an article about Moloise’s plight on death row while his lawyers made representations for the commutation of his death sentence.
This article, “Guerilla waits in death row”, was published on July 1 1985 and distributed around the world.
Two years earlier, the Press Trust of SA News Agency also covered the execution of three other ANC cadres on June 9 1983. They were Marcus Motaung, Jerry Mosololi and Simon Mogoerane. They were part of a group of six ANC military cadres who had been found guilty of undergoing military training outside the country and returning in the early 1980s.
They were Anthony Tsotsobe, Johannes Shabangu and David Moise. They survived the gallows after local and international organisations campaigned for the commutation of the death sentences of the six ANC cadres.
The Press Trust compiled articles about the campaigns surrounding these six ANC cadres as well. The articles titled: “Mrs Mary Mosololi – mother of condemned ANC man wins hearts”, and “Clemency Campaigns” were written on March 23 1983 and submitted to news outlets around the world.

 

                “GUERILLA WAITS IN DEATH ROW”

 

A 30-year-old poet and actor, Benjamin Moloise, has been lingering on death row at the Pretoria Central Prison in South Africa for the past two years.
Moloise is one of three guerrillas who are presently waiting in death row.
The others are Clarence Lucky Payi, 20, and Sipho Bridget Xulu, 25, who were sentenced to death in May last year (1984) for the alleged murder of a black student, Ben Langa.
Moloise’s lawyers have appealed for clemency to State President, Mr P W Botha, but if this fails, he will join the list of more than 20 black South African activists who have been executed since 1963, when six members of the military wing of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) were hanged for a political murder.
Two previous attempts by Moloise’s legal representatives to have the sentence commuted have failed.
Mr Justice H P van Dyk, who sentenced Moloise to death for the murder of a policeman who had testified against three members of the African National Congress (ANC), refused him leave to appeal against the sentence. A subsequent petition to the Chief Justice was also dismissed.
Despite the magnitude of his crime, the grounds on which his appeal for clemency are based are a stark revelation of the situation which thousands of young blacks have faced since the black township of Soweto in Johannesburg erupted in 1976 in an unprecedent demonstration against South Africa’s exploitation and humiliation of blacks.
The application for clemency very simply says he was born in Alexander township, near Johannesburg, in 1954 and became part of an evolving township culture in which a new language of anger and bitterness was the order of the day.
Old relationships had crumbled and those who could were fleeing the country to continue the fight against apartheid from across the borders.
When his close friend Marcus Motaung, a member of the ANC, was sentenced to death for treason what little coherence was left in his world, disappeared.

                      MARCUS MOTAUNG         

He killed the policeman who had given evidence against Marcus Motaung.
It was not wickedness which precipitated his crime. His social circumstances had set him on a destination of doom.
A campaign to have his sentence commuted has been launched by the Release Mandela Campaign.
A spokesperson for the RMC, Mr Paul David, said: “It all depends on the mercy of the State President. Considering the fact that in 1979 four of the eight political prisoners who were sentenced to death were reprieved, we believe that there is at least a 50-50 chance that the State will review Moloise’s sentence.”
However, looking at the trend towards harsher treatment of ANC sympathisers since then this appears to be an overly optimistic view.
There has been an ominous hardening of attitudes towards political crimes in the last 18 months. These include:
·       Actions previously regarded as offences under the Terrorism and Internal Security Acts are increasingly being regarded as acts of high treason, carrying the death sentence;
·       Symbolic support of the ANC by wearing badges and t-shirts in the organisation’s colours or chanting slogans and singing protest songs now elicit particularly harsh sentences – up to eight years in prison;
·       For the first time people are being charged with even indirectly supporting the aim or aims similar to that of a banned organisation. Given the latitude of interpretation under South African security legislation, this will only help to make almost every accusation stick;
·       Potential accused are held in detention, charged and then detained as awaiting trial prisoners; and
·       Parts of many security trials are being held in camera and it is an almost regular feature of these trials that the accused claim that statements have been obtained by torture.

                 TWO YEARS ON DEATH ROW

Against this background of intensifying recrimination against political dissidents it is unlikely that Moloise will be treated sympathetically.
But given the fact that more and more of the people appearing on charges under the Internal Security Act are former students and pupils who left South Africa in the wake of the Soweto uprisings in June 1976, it can only be hoped that Mr Botha will be merciful.Two years on death row after a life of hardships, resentment and smouldering anger is in itself a heavy price to pay, even for an act of murder committed in a situation of passion.

Mr Botha surely cannot afford to stretch the rapidly increasing divide between black and white any further. Ends – Press Trust of SA Independent Third World News Agency July 1 1985

 

                   SAVE THE ANC SIX

 

Two years earlier South African religious and political leaders and organisations had embarked on a campaign to save the lives of six ANC cadres who had been sentenced to death for their involvement in the military struggles against the apartheid regime.
We published this article under the headline: “Clemency Campaign” and another, “Mrs Mary Mosololi – mother of condemned ANC cadre wins hearts” to highlight the situation of the freedom fighters on death row.

 

 

                       CLEMENCY CAMPAIGN

March 23 1983

A nation-wide campaign has been launched in South Africa for the repeal of the death sentences imposed on six members of the banned African National Congress (ANC).
The six men are Anthony Tsotsobe, Johannes Shabangu, David Moise, Simon Mogoerane, Jerry Mosololi and Marcus Motaung.
The clemency campaign is being undertaken by the Diakonia Council of Churches in Durban; South African Catholic Bishops Conference; South African Council of Churches; and organisations such as the Black Sash pressure groups.
All the organisations are jointly circulating a petition throughout South Africa calling on people to plead for clemency for the six ANC freedom fighters.
A spokesperson for the Committee circulating the petition throughout South Africa, Mr Paddy Kearney, told the Press Trust News Agency that the use of capital punishment in South Africa was generally excessive.
“South Africa has commuted death sentences in the past when last year it repealed the death sentences against three other ANC members. Also when it came to power in 1948, the National Party freed a condemned man who sided with the Nazis against the British in World War 2,” he said.
Mr Kearney called on the world community to also pressurise the Pretoria regime to commute the death sentences of the six condemned men. – ends  (Press Trust of SA March 23 1983)
 

MRS MARY MOSOLOLI – MOTHER OF CONDEMNED ANC CADRE WINS HEARTS

March 23 1983

 

Mrs Mary Mosololi, the mother of Jerry Mosololi – the banned ANC cadre who has been sentenced to death - , reduced those attending a protest meeting in Durban recently to tears when she said that her son and his fellow five condemned colleagues instilled courage in her and assured her that freedom was certain.
Mrs Mosololi, a middle-aged Johannesburg domestic servant, evoked this emotion when she addressed a Sharpeville commemoration service in Durban on Sunday, March 20.
She was among several top leaders who recalled the shooting of more than 55 Africans by the South African police in 1960.

                     ARCHIE GUMEDE AND PAUL DAVID

The others were Mr Archie Gumede, president of the Release Mandela Committee; Mr Paul David, secretary of the RMC; Ms Jenny Noel, a local activist and community leader; and the Rev. Christian Xundu of Durban.
In her address, Mrs Mosololi told the more than 500 people that she was very upset and depressed when her son and his colleagues were condemned to death by the Pretoria regime.
“The thought of losing my son to the gallows overwhelmed me. But when I went to visit the boys on death row in Pretoria they only gave me courage. One look at my son and his colleagues made me wonder as to what I was grieving for.
“They made me wonder whether I should grieving or whether I should be kneeling in gratitude to God for having mothered such a child.
“The looks of pride, courage, self-assurance and the knowledge that they were dying for a just cause in the name of all oppressed people in South Africa made me marvel at them and re-affirm in my own life that our cause is certain of victory.
“I too, if need be, am prepared to die for our struggle.”

                     ARCHIE GUMEDE IN TEARS

When she had finished, Mr Gumede, who was the chairman of the protest meeting, broke down in tears and he was followed by the rest of the people on stage and in the audience.
It was one of the rare meetings that ever drew emotional response from reporters covering the meeting.

This incident, however, has not been reported in the white-controlled mass media in the country. – ends PTSA News Agency (March 23 1983)