Shucks had done better and he'd done worse. But to save two lives in one week is something worth doing in anyone's book. "Shucks" is South Africa's "execution monitor". Every week he goes out to bat for those miserable people on death row and uses every trick and talent he's got to save them. It's a terrible job: terrible having to go and talk to those guys, knowing that the next morning they're going to be corpses; terrible having to tell the families that the next morning their sons are going to be corpses; and above all terrible because to the world they are already, nothing but corpses … "another three hanged in Pretoria yesterday … 43 have died so far this year on the gallows…"
Shucks is not his real name. If you want to be formal it's Huggins Sefanyetso, but everyone knows him as Shucks. He's not sure where it came from, but it suits him — it's sort of township beat and so is he. "Cool, man, cool," he's always saying, half listening to the telephone clutched to his ear, his other hand frantically scribbling instructions for an advocate or an announcement to the press. He looks a bit like Sammy Davis jnr, with those quick, nervous and yet graceful movements. But the gravelly voice is all Satchmo. Every now and then his eyes go into a sort of spasm of white flickering and you realise there's a lot of tension in Shucks. He landed in this terrible job of his by chance.
Shucks had always wanted to be a lawyer and he did study law, at the University of the North. But his studies were disrupted by political unrest on the campus. Instead he became an articled clerk and then he was taken on by Lawyers for Human Rights. The Lawyers for Human Rights was set up in 1979 by some of South Africa's top advocates. It's a noble organisation that tries to push black lawyers with training and scholarship schemes and campaigns on issues ranging from child abuse to economic rights for the aged, from military conscription to glaringly inadequate inquest laws. They became closely involved in capital punishment last October, when they heard there was a man on death row who was about to be hanged although his lawyers had not got around to filing a petition for clemency to the state president. They decided to try for a stay of execution, on the grounds that the prisoner had not explored all legal remedies open to him.
And the director, Brian Currin, asked Shucks to handle the application to the supreme court. He did and won the case and then another one and so the process snow-balled until Shucks found himself working full time on the job. The great scandal of South Africa's legal system is the inadequacy of legal representation. The vast majority of people who appear in court – who are black and poor – get sent to jail without the privilege of a professional defence. In capital cases, however, pro deo lawyers are provided. But the fees for such work are so pathetic that the briefs are usually picked up by newly qualified youngsters, or old hacks. Which makes for a fairly lethal combination and results in people being hanged without exhausting the appeals procedure. Shucks must have saved more than 50 lives.
The way he does it is to hang around Pretoria Central Prison – or families of the condemned hang around his office (he's pretty famous on death row by now) – waiting to hear when notices of execution have been issued, giving a prisoner seven days until his death. Then he bangs off a request to the Department of Justice for the dates when the prisoners' various appeals were dismissed, particularly their petition to the state president for clemency. If the reply shows any of these lines of appeal have not been tried Shucks hares off to the supreme court with an advocate in tow to stop the execution on the October precedent.
Sometimes he uses other strategies, as he did last week in the case of file policeman, Almond Nofomela. The story of Nofomela was told in last Friday's Weekly Mail. He was a security branch officer who had murdered a white farmer. Two weeks ago, he received his notice and despairing his fellow police officers saving him from the hangman, he sent word to Shucks that he had a story to, tell about political assassinations.
On Wednesday Shucks sent a young advocate in to hear the story. The advocate came back and said Nofomela had a long story about how he had not killed the farmer. Which made Shucks impatient – almost everyone on death row says they didn't do it – and he sent the advocate back to get the other story. The advocate returned from Nofomela looking shaken. The policeman had confessed to nine murders as a police "hit man", including that of the civil rights lawyer, Griffiths Mxenge.
The two men argued strategy. Shucks wanted to go for the jugular – a court application and full blown press conference; the state couldn't afford to be seen to be covering up on the Mxenge killing. The advocate wanted to negotiate; the precedents for a stay on these grounds were dubious. Shucks conceded and the advocate raced off to see the attorney general at home … It's all a lottery anyway, in Pretoria, where men play God in the name of justice, and life and death turns on chance remarks. It suffices just to wish Shucks goodluck. He's already got six to bat for this week. – The Guardian, London
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
