Shepherds and Butchers

by Chris Marnewick

  For the seven men now waiting the news had been that the State President had decided not to grant them mercy and that they would be hanged in a week’s time.

  When the prisoners elsewhere in the grey complex were not hurried from their cells immediately after the bell, their suspicion that today was a hanging day was confirmed, and they immediately started singing. At first there was only the lone voice of a tenor in A3 Section, then baritones and basses from other parts joined in.

  Kumbaya, my Lord

  Kumbaya

  Kumbaya, my Lord

  Kumbaya

  Kumbaya, my Lord

  Kumbaya

  Oh Lord, Kumbaya

  The chorus engaged the next verse, and the next, in the same melancholic and plaintive tones, verse after verse, reverently yet insistently. In the past week so many men had been called out for their appointment with the Hangman that the singing had been almost continuous. For more than ten days now the prisoners had been singing and the warders had been too exhausted to stop them.

  Someone’s praying, Lord

  Kumbaya

  Someone’s praying, Lord

  Kumbaya

  Someone’s praying, Lord

  Kumbaya

  Oh Lord, Kumbaya

  In A1 the escorts quickly took up their positions, a man at each door, and the Warrant Officer produced a large key on a lanyard. He glanced sideways to make sure that all his men were ready. Then he brusquely opened the cell doors one after the other. As he opened each door, an escort stepped into the eight-by-six-foot cell and faced its sole inhabitant.

  The waiting was over.

  ‘Trek jou dagklere aan! Geen onderbroek of kouse en skoene nie!’

  Each warder spoke with the authority of the Warrant Officer behind him.

  The language of the prison was Afrikaans.

  One of the prisoners was slow to rise from his bed.

  ‘Maak soos ek sê en maak gou!’

  The prisoners complied mechanically, conditioned to do exactly as they were told. Their minds were numb with fear as they undressed sluggishly. Out of habit they neatly folded their blue-and-white-striped pyjamas and placed the fear-filled rags at the head of their bunks. They stepped gingerly into the green prison trousers and pulled their shirts over their heads. When they were dressed they were almost indistinguishable from their escorts, frightened young men in faded prison green.

  The armed guards on the catwalk, sweating already under the heat of the steel roof above their heads, looked down, ready for any eventuality, but there was no resistance, no complaint, nor a plea for mercy from any of the prisoners.

  What little residual hope the prisoners might have entertained when they entered this prison had been abandoned, as had their faith in their Court-appointed lawyers and the appeals system. They had known since the day they were sentenced how they were to die. ‘Hanged by the neck until you are dead,’ their judges had told them. They had also known for a week precisely when they were to die. The Sheriff had told them: ‘Thursday next week, at seven o’clock.’ Their time was near. What good would resistance do?

  One by one the prisoners emerged from their cells. Each escort took his man by the sleeve of the upper arm and the escorts quickly lined up the prisoners in alphabetical order, as on the Warrant Officer’s list.

  Gcaba, Gcabashe, Maarman, Mbambani, Mjuza, Mkumbeni, Njele.

  ‘Dit is tyd om te gaan.’

  The Warrant Officer spoke to the prisoners for the first time. He checked that the formation of escorts and prisoners was ready and then turned on his heel. He walked stiffly to the security grille. The escorts and prisoners followed in pairs and in silence.

  The procession came to a halt at the grille. The Warrant Officer rapped on the door with his clipboard and the door was unlocked and opened just long enough to let them through. Two men were waiting at a table in the passage, directly opposite the Warrant Officer’s office. The prisoners immediately recognised one of them: it was the man they knew as Squala, the Sheriff who a week earlier had brought the news that the State President had decided not to extend mercy to them.

  The other man was a senior police officer, a lieutenant colonel, no less, in full dress uniform.

  The policeman rose and with the informality born of years of experience quickly took the first prisoner’s right thumb, rolled it across an inkpad and placed a sheet of paper at the edge of the table. The form had already been completed by the admin staff, who had inserted the policeman’s details, the date, and the name and v-number of the prisoner.

  The policeman rolled the prisoner’s right thumb over the marked spot on the sheet. Next he took a small but powerful magnifying glass from his top pocket and quickly compared the print he had taken with the right thumb print on the death warrant. When he had satisfied himself that the prints were identical, the policeman signed the form. The prisoner looked on mutely, not making eye contact with anyone, as he had been taught.

  PRISON REF. NO. V3664

  I, No. W39520T Rank LIEUTENANT COLONEL Name WILLEM JACOBUS DU PLESSIS, a fingerprint expert in the SA Police, stationed at the South African Criminal Bureau, Pretoria, confirm that on 1987/12/10 at 06h00 at Central Prison, Pretoria, I physically took the right thumb print of MNUXA JEROME GCABA Prison Ref. No. V3664 and compared it with the right thumb print of MNUXA JEROME GCABA appearing on the death warrant J 221A and found the two to be identical.

  PRETORIA W J du Plessis

  DATE: 10.12.87 SIGNATURE

  Right thumb print

  One of the prisoners moaned and started sobbing. The Warrant Officer fixed him with a stern look.

  ‘Staan stil en staan regop!’

  He spoke as if to all of them. He cast his eye over the escorts, surreptitiously; he knew that they had been performing beyond the call of duty during the last week, mere boys doing the work of men.

  ‘Ruk jou reg, man! Staan stil!’

  The prisoner perked up slightly but his whole body was caught in an uncontrollable shudder that ebbed and flowed like the tide. Each time the shivering reached its highest point, the prisoner allowed a primitive groan to escape his contorted lips; it seemed to come from the very core of him. He caught the Warrant Officer’s penetrating stare and wilted under it, but his fear of the Warrant Officer paled against his fear of his own imminent death.

  The escorts stood next to their prisoners, in two’s, stiff and ashen-faced. Each held his prisoner by the right sleeve. They were entitled to ask why they should do this job, why they could not withdraw or walk away, but they did not. They faced their duty stoically, masking their own fear under military poses, standing almost to attention, in a column, every man looking straight ahead, a well-drilled unit whose individual members were able to hide their fears and shortcomings in collective action. The shivering and fear in the column was contagious and sympathetically transferred from prisoner to escort, and apprehension passed from escort to prisoner. Each pair had become a pitiful symbiosis, shaking and breathing in unison, at the very edge of self-control as the line snaked towards the table.

  Thus they stood, the seven prisoners and their escorts, each having been trained and indoctrinated by the prison culture to perform their respective tasks for the morning, to obey without question, to react immediately and without thinking to every command, to go where they were sent, to march in unison, every man in step. Like a robber and his victim, they shared the fear of the moment.

  When the policeman had completed the first certificate he handed it to the Warrant Officer, who in turn slipped it into the folds of the death warrant on the clipboard. Then he motioned to the escort to take the prisoner further into the corridor and with his index finger beckoned to the second prisoner to approach. The policeman did his job with practised ease while the escorts looked on.

  The process of identification, fingerprinting and certification in respect of all seven prisoners was completed in half an hour.

  The policeman had no further duties to perform at the prison
and left immediately through the main guardhouse as the Executioner, a nondescript, elderly man, a retired policeman, arrived. They exchanged a perfunctory greeting in passing each other, each knowing full well the purpose of the other’s presence at the prison. The Warrant Officer and the Sheriff checked their records a second time. They had to be sure that they were hanging the right people.

  At exactly six-thirty the prisoners were herded down the passage to the chapel. At least two further security doors had to be unlocked before they could enter. Unseen by them the Hangman joined the back of the procession and slipped through the door leading to the gallows building.

  Fifteen minutes was allowed for a short service. The prisoners and escorts sat paired in the pews.

  The Hangman went upstairs to wait for them. The Warrant Officer and the Sheriff had time for a cup of coffee in the Warrant Officer’s office.

  While the chaplain was engaged in the business of salvation, the Hangman went about his final preparations upstairs in the gallows chamber. He started by examining his equipment. Seven well-used hemp ropes had been laid out for him on the table under the window. He checked each rope for wear or defects that could interfere with his task. Some of the ropes showed signs of wear, but the steel rings and rubber washers appeared to be in good condition. He nodded in approval. The ropes were fine; he preferred the old ropes, made supple by frequent use. A stiff new rope took more time to adjust to the right tightness and position anyway.

  The Hangman stood with one of the ropes in his hands, turning the noose inside out for a detailed inspection. He knew this would be the last hanging day of the year. The Department of Justice had advised him that he could take a break for a few weeks. He could not remember how many he had hanged during the year, he would have to check his records, but he had had a busy year and a hectic fortnight and, although his part of the job was easier than that of the escorts and the Warrant Officer, he still felt the tension in his back muscles before every hanging. Things could go wrong so easily, and then the blame would fall on him.

  He had work to do. He started by inspecting the rope in his hands more carefully. The rope was standard hemp, an inch thick. The one end was tidied by a string, wound tight to ensure that the rope did not fray. The other end of the rope ended in a fist-sized knot where the rope had been spliced back onto itself, encasing a steel washer. The rope ran through the steel washer, forming the noose, and in the Hangman’s hands the hemp moved smoothly through the steel washer. A heavy-duty black rubber grommet had been set in position to create a noose matching the thickness of the prisoner’s neck. The Hangman slid the steel washer to the grommet and pushed hard against the resistance. The rubber grommet did its work and held the steel washer firmly. The Hangman nodded absently as he picked up the Warrant Officer’s list of prisoners with the relevant measurements against each name. He decided to do a spot check of the first prisoner’s details and calculations.

  The list gave the prisoner’s neck size in inches, to the quarter-inch, and his weight in pounds. The Hangman carefully measured the inner circumference of the noose with the steel washer flush against the rubber grommet. The noose was fine and its calculations correct. The Hangman next checked the prisoner’s weight against the Table of Drops and nodded again when he found the calculation of the drop to be correct to the last inch.

  With the calculations in order, the Hangman started attaching the ropes to the beam overhead. He used the articulated measuring stick, eight feet long, to mark the precise length of the drop. By means of a special knot he fastened the rope to a shackle attached to the beam overhead. Then he meticulously checked that the length of the drop was exactly in accordance with the calculations. When he was sure that he had everything right, he tightened the knot securely with a special wooden mallet so that the ropes could not slip under the weight of the prisoner. He repeated the process until all seven hanging ropes were securely attached to the beam.

  The preparations by the Warrant Officer and his staff had been meticulous and there was little else for the Hangman to do. When he had finished fixing the ropes to the beam he lifted each noose to head height and tied it with a rubber band to the rope. He stood back and looked down the line of nooses. They were out of the way and ready to be attached to the prisoners.

  In the parking lot outside Maximum, the first relatives were arriving in small groups. Only two members of each family would be allowed to attend a funeral service in the chapel. They stood around in silence looking at each other, suspecting that they were sharing a similar fate, to be witnesses, but not eyewitnesses, to the destruction of their sons. They would not be allowed to enter the prison until ten to nine but had come early. They could not hear the singing inside the walls, nor could they know that the words reflected their mood exactly.

  Someone’s waiting, Lord

  Kumbaya

  The Hangman waited and studied his surroundings with a knowing eye.

  There were four items of furniture in the gallows chamber: a mahogany cupboard in the corner next to the door and a table with two straight-backed wooden chairs against another wall under a row of small windows. Natural light streamed through the windows onto the Warrant Officer’s list of prisoners with the drop calculations on the table.

  The gallows machine with its appurtenances dominated the room and, as befitted its status, occupied the centre of the room.

  The machine consisted of a number of integrated pieces. A rust-brown steel I-beam was attached to the roof immediately above the trapdoors with steel bolts. It ran the length of the trapdoors with a bit to spare at either end. Suspended from the beam, at various points, were the shackles to which the hanging ropes were attached. There was also a moveable block and tackle attached to the beam. It was used for the heavy lifting, to raise the heavy trapdoors into position and to haul the dead bodies back up into the gallows chamber.

  The trapdoors fit into an eight-by-two-yard opening in the floor. The opening was lined on all sides by metal framing of angular steel tubing. The steel frame was part of an elaborate mechanism designed to keep the trapdoors in place and to allow them to open when their release mechanism was sprung. Each of the doors was made of six two-inch-thick hardwood planks glued side by side with epoxy. The undersides of the trapdoors were reinforced with steel straps. At the end of each reinforcing strap was a heavy-duty hinge where the door was attached to the frame.

  On either side of the trapdoors was a waist-high handrail running the length of the trapdoors. At the end of the left handrail was the lever. It stood about four feet high and had two safety devices built into it. One was a simple pin that was inserted into the lever mechanism just above the floor and prevented the lever from being pushed forward accidentally. The other was a clutch on the handle of the lever itself.

  The Hangman methodically checked each item in the gallows chamber before he removed the safety pin from the lever. He was ready. He looked at his watch. It was twelve minutes to seven. Even though he had used the same equipment without mishap twice already earlier in the week, he decided to take the stairs to the pit room below in order to inspect the main mechanism in the undercarriage of the trapdoors. He descended slowly into the windowless room below the gallows.

  The Hangman stood directly under the trapdoors, in a square pit in the floor of the room. The pit gave the room its name and was approximately a foot deep, with a drain in one corner.

  The singing in the chapel slowly increased in intensity and could now be heard clearly throughout the complex. When the hymn reached its chorus the escorts joined in and the call for salvation rose to a crescendo.

  The singing stopped abruptly as the sermon ended.

  When the singing stopped the Hangman knew that it would be no more than ten minutes before the prisoners would be on the trapdoors. He looked up and with his eyes followed the metal tubing to the points where the frame was braced against the ceiling of the pit room. A set of pins on a steel rod supported elbow extensions under the trapdoors, holding them in
position. The release mechanism ran the length of the left-side trapdoor and consisted of a steel rod with pins at points opposite the elbow extensions. When the lever was activated, the rod moved backwards and the pins slid out from under the elbow extensions. The trapdoors, devoid of support, then dropped down.

  The Hangman took special care in his examination of this crude contraption. Satisfied with the state of the main mechanism he looked cursorily at the rest of the equipment.

  More metal tubing and strips cradled six stopper bags on each side below the trapdoors. The stopper bags were suspended from the ceiling by metal cradles. Their function was to catch the trapdoors when they opened and to mute the noise of the trapdoors slamming against the sides of the frame. The stopper bags were made of heavy-duty canvas and were filled with straw.

  Footsteps in the room above alerted the Hangman to the fact that the senior officers who had to attend every execution had arrived. He went back into the gallows chamber and shook hands with them. They made small talk, the Head of Central Prison, the Head of Maximum, the Medical Officer and the Hangman. Four warders on standby duty stood to one side.

  It was ten to seven. In the chapel the escorts produced standard police issue handcuffs, prodded the prisoners into line and cuffed their hands behind their backs. There was an unexpected though undemonstrative gentleness in their actions. But for the brief moment when the Hangman would slip the nooses over their heads and tighten the ropes around their necks, for these prisoners this would be the last skin contact with another human being. The escorts wasted no time. They gently tugged at the sleeves of their prisoners and led them to the first door. A warder stood at the ready with a key and as the column of prisoners and escorts approached he put the key in the lock and turned it in the same motion.