Shepherds and Butchers

by Chris Marnewick

  Judge van Zyl looked at the clock. ‘Is it time already? Yes, we’ll take the adjournment now. I’d like to see senior counsel in chambers.’

  I joined James Murray at the door and we followed the usher to the Judge’s chambers.

  ‘Have you finalised the arrangements for the inspection in loco?’ the Judge asked as soon as we arrived. He was looking at Murray. I wondered why, because the prosecution’s case had been closed and it was the defence’s prerogative to ask for an inspection now. I said nothing, however. I could always argue later that the Court had instigated the inspection. Or the prosecution.

  ‘Yes, Judge,’ said Murray. ‘We are expected at the main entrance at two-fifteen. The Head of Maximum will give us a tour. It should take about two hours.’

  ‘Very well, I’ll go in my own car and take the registrar and my Assessors with me. Does the defendant have to be present?’ Judge van Zyl turned his attention to me.

  ‘We don’t need him to be there,’ I said.

  ‘Do you need him there?’ the Judge asked Murray.

  ‘No, thank you, Judge,’ was the response.

  ‘See you there then.’

  We walked back to the courtroom to collect the materials we would need during the inspection. I found Wierda and we went to the robing room to change into our suits.

  We worked through the next case in the coffee shop near Wierda’s chambers. Roshnee announced that she would not accompany us on the inspection.

  V3680 Jomyt Mbele

  V3681 Case Rabutla

  V3682 Clifton Phaswa

  25

  Mbele, Rabutla and Phaswa were prosecuted on three counts: murder, rape and abduction. They had murdered Mr Joseph Mashiloane, a truck driver, and had abducted and raped Miss Sarah Ngobeni. Each of the charges carried the death sentence.

  The deceased, Mr Joseph Mashiloane, was a forty-eight-year-old truck driver. He was en route to Phalaborwa with a consignment of goods and decided to break his journey at Duiwelskloof. He met Miss Ngobeni at a tearoom on the evening of 21 July 1985. She agreed to spend the night with him in his truck. He parked it next to the road near the Sekgopo Township. At the same time Mbele, Rabutla and Phaswa met at Turfloop, some sixty kilometres away, and started an evening of drinking and driving around. They travelled in Rabutla’s minibus and, after a visit to a beer hall in Kgapane, they drove towards Pietersburg and came across Mashiloane’s truck. Phaswa told Rabutla to stop.

  Rabutla stopped the minibus about forty metres from the truck and the three men approached the truck in the dark. Mashiloane and Ngobeni were sleeping. Phaswa went to the truck and called the other two over. He then broke the window of the truck and he and Mbele climbed into the truck. Phaswa had a knife. Mashiloane asked them, ‘What are you doing?’ One of them said, ‘Don’t talk to us.’ Phaswa or Mbele stabbed Mashiloane repeatedly and virtually cut his throat.

  Rabutla then pulled Miss Ngobeni from the truck and forced her into the back of the minibus. He raped her while Phaswa and Mbele were still engaged at the truck. When they returned from the truck, Mbele drove the minibus away from the scene. The minibus broke down twice on the way to Pietersburg, but each time Rabutla somehow managed to repair it. Rabutla took the wheel after the first breakdown. During the journey Mbele and Phaswa took turns to rape Miss Ngobeni. Eventually they stopped at a petrol filling station on the outskirts of Pietersburg early in the morning. Mbele accompanied Ngobeni to the toilets, but she refused to get back into the minibus. She started complaining to the pump attendants, saying that she had been raped and that the men had killed a truck driver. The three men drove off quickly in the minibus, leaving her there.

  Mr Mashiloane’s body was found in his truck early on 22 July 1985. The cause of death was cerebral hypoxia caused by the perforation of the main arteries to the brain. There were numerous injuries, including seven stab wounds, most having been inflicted to his back and neck. One stab wound had cut through the carotid artery. Another had penetrated the right lung. Two other stab wounds had penetrated the liver. The weapon must have been at least eleven centimetres long. The stab wound cutting through the carotid would have caused Mr Mashiloane to lose consciousness immediately. The stab wounds to the lower back alone would have caused death, had Mr Mashiloane not already received the wound severing the carotid.

  The Court found that Mbele, Rabutla and Phaswa had decided in advance to find a woman with whom they could have sexual intercourse. When Phaswa found that there was a woman in the truck, he called Rabutla and Mbele over and they decided to get rid of Mr Mashiloane. So they killed him and abducted Miss Ngobeni with the intention of raping her. The Court found that they had acted with a common purpose in respect of all three counts and convicted them.

  The Judge passed a double death sentence on the murder and rape counts and sentenced each of them to three years imprisonment on the kidnapping charge.

  On 27 November 1987 Mbele, Rabutla and Phaswa were informed that they were to be hanged the next week. On Friday 3 December they were hanged.

  They had spent ten months in the death cells. Rabutla was twenty-one years old, Phaswa thirty-two and Mbele thirty-five.

  Again I looked for common features.

  Klassop was a loner, as Mokwena had been, and was after material gain.

  Mpipi and Mohapi had killed in a gang, and so had Mbele, Rabutla and Phaswa, and, of course, Moatche, Scheepers and Wessels.

  Delport was in a category of his own, defying reliable analysis other than that he was a paedophile.

  Rabutla was a young man, hardly an adult. The extreme youth of these men was beginning to show a pattern.

  And Leon Labuschagne fitted the pattern.

  But there were some older men too, like Delport, Mpipi, Mohapi and Klassop.

  Delport had killed to avoid detection. This was also beginning to emerge as a pattern. For the others the killings were done almost matter of factly, with no obvious motive except the pursuit of their crimes.

  Maximum Security Prison

  26

  I watched from the passenger seat as Wierda drove us to Maximum.

  Maximum Security Prison was part of Pretoria Central Prison. We entered the complex from Potgieter Street. A high fence surrounded the whole complex. The road ended abruptly in a jacaranda-lined parking lot in front of a gate in a concrete wall. In front of us were two heavy steel gates on rollers. The entrance consisted of a small building with the usual security apparatus: a metal detector through which visitors had to pass and an x-ray machine for their belongings. I stood at the gate looking at the aerial photograph Wierda had obtained from the municipal offices. Wierda offered me a sketch plan he had prepared from it, with some of the detail filled in during his sessions with our client.

  ‘We might be able to hand this in as an exhibit,’ he suggested. I could not see the Judge agreeing to that, but took it from him nevertheless.

  Wierda’s sketch was line perfect. He must have used drawing instruments – yet another expression of the architect’s genes in his blood line. My instincts told me that it might be an offence to make or publish a sketch of the prison and I quickly hid Wierda’s effort in among the sheets of my writing pad.

  It took a while for us to be signed in at the front guardhouse. A warder told us to stay together and ushered us towards an officer in a drab olive-green uniform waiting for us. A grey concrete wall, easily six metres high, came into view. The buildings were well away from the wall. I turned to take a good look at the surroundings.

  Above the checkpoint was a guard tower. I counted five of them altogether, each consisting of an eight-metre-high red-brick structure, about four metres square at the base, with a sheltered guardhouse on top. The guards on the towers had their rifles pointed at us. I realised that their job was to prevent escape, not an invasion. They were all facing inwards. There were security lights on thirty-metre steel posts near each tower. I remembered from Wierda’s sketch that the complex was laid out in a pentagon of uneven angles and sides. />
  The warder introduced us to the Major. The Major would not let the women in and the Judge’s registrar and Sanet Niemand left in one of the cars. Niemand was fuming, but she left without looking back after James Murray had whispered something to her behind his hand.

  ‘This is the most secure prison in South Africa,’ the Major began after the women had left. ‘We intend to keep it so. So we will not allow any photographs to be taken, and you will not be allowed to speak to any of the prisoners or staff once we are inside. Is that clearly understood?’

  We stood squinting at the Major in the blazing sun. I wondered how Judge van Zyl felt taking orders from the Major, but the Judge stood in anonymity amongst us. In his suit he looked like any other lawyer.

  The Major insisted on an audible answer. ‘Is that clearly understood?’ he asked a second time, in a firmer tone.

  ‘Yes,’ some muttered.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Wierda. He stopped just short of saluting.

  ‘May we take notes, sir?’ Wierda asked with some cheek.

  ‘Yes, but you are not allowed to make any drawings of the prison. That would compromise our security arrangements and it is a crime in any event.’

  Wierda stole a glance at me and I glared at him. What would happen if we were searched on the way out? I could claim professional privilege, but it would be embarrassing if the Judge did not agree.

  ‘Stay in this group, with these warders,’ said the Major. ‘If you stray off on your own the men on the towers will shoot you. Be careful.’

  Half a dozen warders had quietly joined our little mission.

  The Major spoke about the prison and its history but I quickly lost concentration. I heard the rustle of running water and birdsong behind us. There was a park-like garden between the wall and the first buildings and I turned to look at it. I don’t know why I was afraid of the Major.

  The garden consisted of rocky ponds surrounded by indigenous trees, shrubs and plants. There were some goldfish in the ponds. Birds fluttered in the branches overhead. I saw a number of different species of birds. I recognised at least five, a lilac-breasted roller, marico sunbirds, blue waxbills, a pair of red-eyed ring-necked doves and some red-faced mousebirds. On the ground I saw a tortoise, a steenbok, a pair of rabbits and some common ground lizards. A blue-headed tree agama scratched its way up the rough bark of a tree. I gazed in amazement. In this place of death there was also an abundance of butterflies, dragonflies and wasps. I knew that steenbok were nocturnal animals. This one stood in the shade, as if in a daze, looking at us with large unseeing eyes. Even this lush artificial paradise without predators was a prison, trapping this daintiest of all the antelope and buck of the bush in a foreign time zone.

  I felt uneasy, and when I looked up, I saw a rifle pointed at me from the tower above the main gate. I realised that I had been left behind. The others were already near the steps leading up to wooden doors at the main entrance to the buildings and I rushed to join them at the door. From what I could remember of Wierda’s sketch we were now at the main door. I resisted the impulse to check the sketch as I went up the steps; I would have to confirm the details later when we got back to Wierda’s chambers.

  At the top of the steps was a heavy wooden door with steel reinforcing and a peephole at eye level. The Major knocked, prompting a warder to look at us through the peephole. Even the Major had to be checked in, it seemed. They let us in one by one, subjecting each of us to a cold silent scrutiny that raised the level of my unease sharply.

  The warder slammed the door shut and locked it behind us when we were all inside. We were in a foyer of sorts now and were quickly taken through to the next section, which I remembered from Wierda’s useful sketch. There were no windows and it was difficult to maintain my orientation. Straight ahead were three steel grille gates leading from the foyer to A, B and C sections respectively, the Major said. The gate to A Section was on the right. We were to visit that section first.

  The place smelled just like Leeuwkop as I remembered it, only worse, with the unmistakable odour of fear added to the mix of tobacco, unwashed bodies, steel and concrete.

  The prison had been placed in lock-down mode for our visit. The mood was sombre and heavy. The place was very quiet; our footsteps and the clanging of keys in locks were the only sounds. The Major spoke softly, as if we were in a hospital for the terminally ill, the parade-ground voice he had used outside at the gate subdued inside. The place did, in a way, feel like a hospital with its muted colours and uniform fittings and furniture. Instead of general wards, single rooms and beds, the prison had sections, cells and bunks. I thought, grimly, that I knew the operating theatre was elsewhere on Wierda’s sketch.

  Without prior orientation from the sketch I would have been quickly lost in the maze of passages and doors. The outside world had ceased to exist; there was no natural light and the colours were all shades of grey under harsh electric lights. There was a humming noise that I imagined was the outside world held at bay, but it could have been the prison’s generator. We never heard a prisoner speak and, apart from the Major, none of the prison staff uttered a word. It struck me that no one even coughed; it was as if the whole place was holding its breath.

  In all my life I had never felt so completely lost.

  Wierda tried to take notes, but the Major reminded him gruffly that he was not to make any sketches. Wierda elbowed me in the ribs and whispered that he would do so afterwards. And indeed, he and I were subsequently able to reconstruct precisely where we had been and what we had seen simply by using his updated sketch.

  We were taken from the foyer into a passage separating A and B sections from each other. The passage ran north-south, and was perhaps thirty-five to forty paces long. Three steel grille doors on the right opened into A1, A2 and A3 sections respectively. Some doors on the left side of the passage led into administration offices in B Section. Our attention was drawn to a small table in the passage.

  ‘This is where the prisoners’ fingerprints are taken on the morning of an execution,’ the Major said.

  The table was more or less opposite the Warrant Officer’s office.

  We had heard a good deal about the Warrant Officer from Labuschagne. I looked into the office but its occupant was absent. From what Labuschagne had told us this man held a special position, namely that of Warrant Officer in Charge of Security. This was a misnomer, according to Labuschagne. The Warrant Officer was really the man in charge of executions.

  The Major continued with his tour. We would only be shown A1, he said, because A2 and A3 were virtually the same.

  Inside A1 there was a long central passage ahead of us, at least sixty paces long, with steel doors on either side of the passage and a catwalk above it. The first room on the left was arranged and furnished as a chapel. Directly opposite the chapel was an office. There was a steel door to the bathroom. The rest of the section consisted of cells.

  There were communal cells, an isolation cell and ordinary single cells. The single cells were about two metres wide by three metres long. The Major asked the warder with the keys to unlock the cell. He showed us that the isolation cell had been equipped with sound-muting materials and a window of soundproof glass. The cell had claustrophobia written all over every feature.

  On leaving the section through a steel door at the end of the passage we found ourselves in a small exercise yard, about ten metres by twenty, enclosed by its own wall.

  I breathed easier outside, relishing the smell of a solitary orange tree in the exercise yard mixed with the smell of dust; relief, such as it was, from the nauseating smell we’d left behind. The outer concrete walls of the complex were too high for me to see anything beyond their grey confines but I was able to work out where we were by reference to the sun and the guard towers which, according to Wierda’s sketch, were at the south-western and north-western corners. I looked up to see if the hillside from which Wierda and I had looked down on the prison months earlier was visible but the walls were too hig
h. Even outside the cell-blocks the free world was obliterated. I remembered the vagrant who had scared me senseless and wondered if he was back on the hill, looking down at the complex but unable to see anything inside. What would he think of the place if he knew what the function of these buildings was? How much would he appreciate his miserable existence, his freedom, if he knew? Was he the one who had left tracks around the bodies and left without touching them?

  Back inside I felt eyes on me and when I looked up there was a warder in shorts on the catwalk. He was barefoot and without a shirt. His chest glistened with sweat. He held a rifle in his hands, at the ready, pointing it straight at me. I followed the Major to the end of the passage without looking back. There was an itch between my shoulder blades, but I resisted the impulse to scratch.

  We trooped past the chapel; it was cold and formal like the rest of the prison. Behind the Major we climbed up the steps to the gallows chamber. I could smell the hemp of the ropes hanging on hooks attached to the wall of the gallows chamber, but they were not hanging ropes. Everyone was suddenly in a hurry. Wierda stepped onto the trapdoors and placed his feet in the painted footmarks. The Major gave him a hard stare, but Wierda was oblivious to that. He inspected the mechanism of the lever and its clutch in the greatest detail. I noticed Judge van Zyl taking his time to do the same. He held a whispered conversation with Wierda, who nodded from time to time. I stood to one side, watching. The two Assessors stood side by side, their hands clasped in front of them like funeral directors.

  The pit room below was stark and smelled damp. It looked as if it had recently been rinsed with water and detergent. From underneath the mechanism of the trapdoors could be seen more clearly. Wierda again inspected every component, prodding the stopper bags with his fist. Here, I noticed, was the only colour other than grey or brown in the building. The steel parts of the gallows machine had been painted a bright blue. Wierda pointed at the sliding mechanism that would release the trapdoors, Judge van Zyl taking in every detail, as thick as thieves with Wierda in this pursuit. The artificial lighting in the windowless room made us all look sick, a yellowish hue on every face and on every surface.