‘Twenty-one.’
‘And that week, did you see your pastor or anyone else about your problems with Magda?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t think about it.’
‘Didn’t think about what, your marriage or seeing someone about it?’
‘I was thinking of Magda and Esmè all the time. I mean I did not think about seeing someone about it. I couldn’t see how anyone could help.’
‘So what did you do after work each day?’
‘I went home.’
‘What did you do during the weekend of the fifth and sixth of December?’
He listed his movements like an alibi witness. ‘I was at home the Saturday. I had the second night shift again that night. I went to church on the Sunday but the pastor was still on leave. I got his address. I was going to see him that afternoon but my parents suddenly arrived. They wanted to see Esmè. I told them Magda and Esmè were visiting her parents.’
‘The next day, that would be Monday the seventh of December, what did you do?’
‘I went to work. I saw the Warrant Officer and said I wanted a transfer. He said, Talk to me in the new year. I need you here. Things are going to get a bit rough this week. You are the only one I can rely on. We can talk about it in January.
‘Then he told me to go up and service the gallows. He said the machine was going to work overtime in the next three days and that I should make sure the stopper bags were in tiptop shape.’
‘Did you know what he was talking about when he said things were going to get rough?’
‘He was talking about those twenty-one.’
‘Had you ever had to hang so many in such a short time?’
‘No.’
Next, I deviated from the planned questions slightly and it caught him by surprise. ‘What was the atmosphere in the Pot like on that day?’ I grimaced at the awkwardness of the question.
Labuschagne swayed and I thought he might be about to faint, but he answered, ‘The Pot was a mess that whole week and the week before. We had just taken seven up and we immediately put another seven back in.’
‘That must have been on the Thursday, then,’ I suggested, ‘Thursday the third.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Carry on,’ I said. ‘Describe to the Court the atmosphere in the prison.’
‘It was a mess,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It was a total mess.’
Just when I thought I was going to have to drag the details out of him he spoke again, slowly, as if recalling distant memories.
‘It was bad. They were wailing and singing and praying. The whole place knew.’
He paused and I asked quickly, ‘Knew what?’
‘Everyone knew. They had seen us call them out and they had said goodbye to them as we took them down the passage to see the Sheriff. And everyone could hear the wailing and crying and singing. This went on and on for more than a week, day and night, and we had been tired already at the beginning of that last week. Everyone was tired, finished.’
I stood still, considering what else to explore on this topic when Labuschagne spoke again.
‘Sir,’ he said with emphasis, ‘the whole prison knew, everyone. The whole place went into execution mode, you know? Except this time it was much, much worse. And every day we got more prisoners coming in. So we had the new ones to break in and the old ones to take up.’
They were stretched to the limit, I thought, physically and emotionally. But I saved that point for my closing argument.
‘So what did you do the rest of that day, Monday the seventh?’ I asked.
The answer came quickly. ‘I checked the gallows. I repaired the stopper bags.’
I deliberately delayed my next question. I fussed with my papers, tugged at my robes, turned to whisper to Wierda.
‘Did anything unusual happen while you were doing that?’ I asked.
Labuschagne nearly ruined it. ‘No, sir,’ he said promptly.
The answer took me by surprise. We had been through my questions and the answers I expected more than once. I glanced at Wierda. He shrugged his shoulders. I looked down at my notes and weighed another question seeking the same information. ‘Did you see anybody or anything while working on those stopper bags?’
‘Oh, I see what you mean. No, the ghosts were there, as usual. It didn’t bother me that they were there. I just carried on with my work.’
The Judge intervened. ‘Would it suit counsel if we took the long adjournment now? I still have to complete my notes on the gallows chamber and the pit room and would like to record those inspection details immediately after the adjournment.’
I headed for the robing room leaving Wierda and Roshnee behind; they could have lunch on their own.
When I got to the front entrance it was raining again, so I went back inside and spent the hour in Cell 6 with Labuschagne.
V3747 Stanley Allen Hansen
31
Hansen faced two charges of attempted murder and two of murder. On 13 December 1986 he had tried to kill Dennis Marthinus and Geraldine Sauls by stabbing them with a knife. On 15 December he managed to kill Geraldine Sauls by stabbing her to death. After his arrest and appearance in court he stabbed Emily Patel to death in the back of the police van taking him to the cells, on 19 December 1986.
Hansen pleaded guilty to all four charges and was quickly convicted. The full picture emerged when evidence was being led on the presence or absence of extenuating circumstances.
In mid-1985 Hansen was released from prison after serving a sentence for theft from a motor vehicle. He moved to Bredasdorp where he met Miss Geraldine Sauls. Her boyfriend was Mr Dennis Marthinus, who was in prison at the time. Hansen and Miss Sauls struck up a relationship after she told him about Marthinus, saying that the affair was over. Hansen warned her that if he ever caught her and Marthinus together he would kill both of them. Hansen moved in with Miss Sauls and her parents and by all accounts their relationship was a fairly steady one until the end of November 1986, shortly after Hansen was convicted of possession of cannabis and given a suspended sentence. Sauls’ parents asked Hansen to leave their house just as word arrived that Marthinus had been released from prison and was back in town. Miss Sauls left with Hansen and they moved to another house down the street.
Hansen started hearing rumours that Sauls was seeing Marthinus again. He threatened Marthinus and argued with Sauls about this. On 13 December he sent Sauls to the grocery store, but she did not arrive back home at the time he expected. He took a knife, went in search of her and found her with Marthinus at the side of the road. He tried to stab Marthinus in the heart, but Marthinus turned at the last moment and received a wound in the back and ran off. Hansen could not catch him. Then he turned on Sauls and stabbed her once in the chest and once near the collarbone. After this his senses seem to have returned to him, because he carried Sauls to a doctor’s rooms for treatment.
The police arrived at the doctor’s with Marthinus. The police sergeant inexplicably told Hansen to close his knife and go home, ordering him to report to the police the next morning. The police took Sauls to the hospital, but her injuries were not serious enough to warrant her admission and she was sent home. She returned to her parents’ home.
The next day, Sunday, Hansen went looking for her and, when he saw her at her parents’ home, shouted that he was going to kill her. Then he went looking for Marthinus, but could not find him as the police were keeping Marthinus in protective custody. Hansen later told the Court that he had made the decision to kill Sauls so that he could be arrested, reasoning that he would then also have the opportunity to kill Marthinus in the police cells.
On Monday 15 December Hansen hid in a bush across the street from the house where Sauls was staying. He called out to Sauls and she came out of the house, but went back in immediately when her sister Lorna cautioned her. Hansen climbed through a window and went after Sauls, but she had escaped through the back do
or and had run to a neighbour’s house. There Hansen caught up with her and stabbed her several times before dragging her outside where he continued stabbing her. He then picked her up and threw her over a fence into the next property. There he stabbed her yet again. As he was finally walking away from her she called to him. He went back, kicked her and sat down astride her as he stabbed her until she was dead. The police arrived and he handed the knife over to them.
The post-mortem by the District Surgeon of Bredasdorp showed that Sauls, who was one and a half metres tall and weighed only about forty-five kilograms, had died of haemorrhagic shock caused by loss of blood and respiratory failure caused by a collapsed left lung. She had eighteen stab wounds altogether.
On Thursday 18 December Hansen made a full confession to the Bredasdorp Magistrate, admitting guilt on the murder charge and the two charges of attempted murder. In court the next day he gave a detailed explanation. Later in the day he was put in a police van with other prisoners to be taken to the Caledon prison. For some reason the police allowed a female prisoner, the sixteen-year-old Emily Patel, to be transported in the back of the van with the male prisoners. During the journey she asked Hansen to sit next to her. She asked him for money, a paltry twenty rand, to pay her fine for trespassing. He gave her two earrings, but when she asked him if he had really killed Sauls he decided to kill her.
He told her so after asking the other prisoners to close their eyes, but she apparently did not believe him. He stabbed her in the neck with the leg of a broken pair of scissors he had hidden under his clothes. Next he ordered Miss Patel to undress completely and, when she had done so, he stabbed her in the back. He ordered her to dress again, which she did. Then he stabbed her repeatedly until she was dead. The other prisoners in the van did nothing to stop him, to protect Patel or to alert the policeman driving the van.
When the police stopped at Caledon with their load of prisoners they found Emily Patel dead. Hansen immediately admitted that he had killed her and handed over the weapon he had used. Patel died as a result of acute shock caused by a blockage of the heart and loss of blood. She had been stabbed altogether forty-five times.
Hansen repeatedly admitted in open court and also prior to the trial that he had intended to kill each of his victims. Geraldine Sauls’ killing had been premeditated and had occurred in plain view of a number of witnesses. He had pursued her over a period of days, had lain in wait for her, and had then stabbed her repeatedly. He killed Emily Patel for no discernible reason at all, and almost defiantly in a police van in the presence of a number of witnesses. It was as if Hansen was thumbing his nose at the law.
A panel of psychiatrists reported to the Court that Hansen was fit to stand trial and that he had the capacity at the time of the offences to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions and to act accordingly. The Court could see no remorse in Hansen for what he had done and could find no extenuating circumstances. On 8 May 1987 he was sentenced to death on each of the murder charges.
On 1 December 1987 Hansen was called out of his cell and informed that the State President had decided not to grant him mercy. He was hanged on 8 December 1987 after spending seven months in the death cells. He was about thirty years old.
I didn’t know what to think of Hansen. He was asking to be arrested and sentenced to death. His behaviour was similar to that of the cell murderers, who killed with a single-mindedness that took no account of the fact that there would be a number of eye witnesses. Did Hansen kill Emily Patel as a substitute for Dennis Marthinus?
The behaviour of the police was astonishing. Instead of locking Hansen up they put his intended victim in protective custody. And, by any reasonable standard, the police were responsible for Emily Patel’s cruel death. They put her in the van with male prisoners, and that in the company of a man who had not been searched properly.
Palace of Justice
32
I spent the lunch hour with Labuschagne in Cell 6. I knew we had another heavy session ahead. We both needed a break from the prepared line-up of topics and in any event I could not speak to Labuschagne about the evidence he had already given. The Bar’s rules of ethics prohibited that.
I had to make peace first. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘Don’t get anxious about my questions. I have to ask them, and we are doing alright. Just don’t give up. We are doing alright.’
Labuschagne nodded, but did not make eye contact.
I moved to change the subject altogether. ‘Tell me about Tsafendas,’ I said. Dimitri Tsafendas had been a mystery to all of South Africa since that day in September many years before when he had stabbed the Prime Minister in the heart in front of a packed House of Parliament. Very little was known about him.
I was sitting on the bench facing Labuschagne.
‘There isn’t much to tell,’ he said.
‘Tell me what you know,’ I suggested.
He did not speak for a while and appeared to be oblivious to his surroundings. He ignored me even when I looked straight at him. I took the time to study more of the graffiti:
THE FIGHT AGAINST RACISM, EVIL AND OPPRESSION
IS CONTINUING. THIS YEAR 1975 IS NO EXCEPTION
Next I was looking at a crude drawing of a handgun and a penis below it pointing in the same direction. Suddenly he spoke behind me.
‘There was nothing wrong with Mr Tsafendas.’
It was unusual to hear anyone refer to Tsafendas as mister.
‘That’s not what I heard,’ I said quickly, to draw him out of his shell.
I was standing in front of another incomplete message trying to decipher the last word, but the damp had obliterated its tail.
‘You can’t know,’ he said. I turned around to find Labuschagne studying me. ‘How could you know unless you’d met him and spent some time with him?’
It was a good point. I thought of a response as I studied another entry on the wall, one of many on the same theme.
ANC. 2/6/81
SASOL – BOOYSEN
TREASON TRIO
1. —RY TSONTSOBE
2. JOHANNES SHABANGU
3. DAVID MOISE
DISCHARGE OR IMPRISONMENT
LIFE OR DEATH
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES
VICTORY IS CERTAIN
THERE IS NO MIDDLE ROAD
THE STRUGGLE IS OUR LIVES
NO EASY WALK TO FREEDOM
LET THE JUST COU
The message was incomplete. I wished I had the conviction of the anonymous scribe that victory was certain in my young client’s case.
‘What makes you think there was nothing wrong with him?’
‘He was the only sane man there,’ he said.
I decided to change the angle slightly.
‘Did you get to know him?’
‘We were not allowed to speak to him, but he wasn’t afraid to speak to us. After Wessels was hanged I stopped paying attention to the Warrant Officer’s rules.’
Labuschagne did not say any more, but I had the impression that he was looking for an opportunity to unburden himself.
‘What happened between you and Tsafendas?’ I could not bring myself to call him Mr Tsafendas yet.
He sighed but did not answer.
‘I can’t help you if I don’t know what happened to you,’ I said. ‘Talk to me, Leon.’
It was the only time I ever called him by his first name.
He did not answer immediately, but when he did he spoke for a long time:
After we had buried Wessels and Scheepers, we came back to Maximum. The two escorts who had gone off to bury Moatche and Mokwena arrived back at the same time. They were laughing and joking, and I suddenly couldn’t stand being in their company any longer. There was no place where I could be alone except in the chapel.
As I was walking towards the chapel, there was a noise behind me. It was Mr Tsafendas. He was making a racket. He called me over. He was very angry. He said someone had taken his newspaper clippings. He was the only prisoner who was allowed to rec
eive newspapers and we all knew that he studied all the political news and took cuttings from the papers. He kept everything in a box under his bunk. I said I would get them later. He said, ‘No, I want them now.’ I said, ‘No, later,’ and started walking again. Then he said, ‘I know what you are doing there.’ He was pointing in the direction of the chapel and the gallows building.
I was surprised, because he was supposed to be mad and he usually didn’t talk much. You’d get punished for talking to him, but I asked, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘You kill people. That’s your job.’ I shook my head, but he said, ‘I know, I can hear the voices in your head. You kill people and they talk to you. And now you are going to the chapel to pray that they should leave you alone.’ I said it was nonsense and that he was crazy, but he said that he could see more than other people because he had a special gift.
I decided to walk away, but he then said, ‘You don’t like killing, that’s why you pray and sing with them in the morning and that’s why you have come here now, to pray some more.’
I felt like he was seeing right through me when even I did not understand what I was thinking. I also became angry with him because I didn’t want to talk about what I was doing. So I told him to shut up and went into the chapel. I tried to pray. I waited for the tension and the guilt, perhaps it was sorrow too, to go away, but it wasn’t working. I could feel something building up and building up inside me until I felt as if I was going to burst open. All this time Mr Tsafendas was making such a racket next door that I couldn’t concentrate. I told him to keep quiet and went to look for his clippings.
I saw the Warrant Officer in his office and asked him if he knew anything about the clippings. He asked me how I knew and I said Mr Tsafendas had told me. Then he said I had no right to be in that section and that I should have known better than to speak to Mr Tsafendas. He threw a shoebox at me and a heap of newspaper clippings fell out. ‘You can take his precious clippings to him!’ he shouted, ‘and for talking to a prisoner you can do catwalk duty tonight when your shift ends.’ While I was on the floor picking up the clippings he stomped around swearing at me, saying that I had betrayed his trust. ‘That man killed the Prime Minister,’ he shouted, ‘and you feel sorry for him.’ I then got very angry with him.
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