Yesterday condemned prisoner David Shongwe, 40, was executed in Pretoria – before he had petitioned either the chief justice for leave to appeal or the state president for clemency. In a policy about-face, Department of Justice officials have in the last fortnight denied Lawyers for Human Rights death penalty worker Shucks Sefanyetso access to condemned prisoners. Officials are refusing to supply Sefanyetso the information which in the last year has enabled him to save the lives of more than a dozen death row prisoners.
Justice officials have suddenly started insisting that unless Sefanyetso can show himself to be the official representative of the particular prisoner, he will get no co-operation- and LHR did not act for any of the death row prisoners during their trials. Two men hanged yesterday – Tembinkosi Booi, 31, and Boy-Boy Booi, 22 – had exhausted legal channels before their execution. But Shongwe had not – and next week, unless Sefanyetso can find a way around the problem, another death row prisoner will be executed before all legal channels have been pursued.
Sefanyetso says he wrote this week to the department, asking for information about the latest group of condemned prisoners who had received their final death notices: whether they had been given leave to appeal; whether the chief justice had been petitioned for leave to appeal or the state president asked for clemency. The department gave Sefanyetso’s letter a two-sentence reply, saying it was ”the policy of the department not to furnish the particulars requested”. This is the first time the department has taken such an attitude since the inception of the UIR death row project in October last year.
Previously, officials had been willing to help. The change of attitude came shortly after death row prisoner and former security policeman Butana Almond Nofomela escaped the gallows by telling Sefanyetso that he was part of a police hit squad which had killed a number of political activists, including human rights lawyer Griffiths Mxenge. The Department of Justice had not replied to a request for comment on its new policy at the time of going to press.
A National Association of Democratic Lawyers representative last night expressed shock at the change in departmental policy, saying it was a callous way of dealing with the lives of prisoners. The authorities, said Tom O’Neill of the Detainees Coordinating Committee, ”have opened the door and we have seen what is behind it: people who have not been able to try every means of having the death sentence commuted. Now they want to close the door again.”
Dave Dalling, Democratic Party spokesman on justice, said last night he was ”very unhappy” with the situation if reports he had been given were correct. He offered to take up the matter with the minister of justice if asked to do so and Sefanyetso said he would be in touch with him today. Regarding next week’s executions, LHR said in a press statement yesterday: ”We believe that every person in this country has a right to legal representation. It will be a violation of such right for death row prisoners to be denied access to legal service organisations such as Lawyers for Human Rights, by having the department refusing to disclose the particulars relating to their case.” – Carmel Rickard and Ivor Powell
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
