Gomolemo Mokae
One of Robert McBride’s am-nesty co- applicants is the man who gave evidence against him when he was sentenced to death three times, Mathew Lecordier.
Lecordier turned state witness to avoid prosecution. He was with McBride when they planted the car bomb which took the lives of three white women at the Why Not and Magoo’s bars.
After McBride’s trial, Lecordier was taken to the Western Cape by the security branch, given R2 000, and instructed to infiltrate trade unions in the area. After two or three years, he returned to Wentworth.
Now McBride is a free man and Lecordier a prisoner serving a 10-year sentence for his role in the armed robbery of a cash- in-transit vehicle.
During his early days of involvement in Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), Lecordier asked McBride for guns to rob a bank. McBride declined. Instead, he got Lecordier more involved in MK’s activities to take his mind off such pursuits.
In 1986, after McBride was recruited into MK by Gordon Webster, Lecordier was on top of his list of potential recruits. They had met at primary school, where Lecordier had been a few classes behind McBride.
Lecordier and other Wentworth activists such as Antonio du Preez, Alan Pearce, Nazeem Cassiem and Zahrah Markedien (formerly known as Greta Apelgren) were part of McBride’s unit.
Of all the members of his unit, McBride says Lecordier was the bravest. ”In terms of combat, I loved to take Mathew,” he says.
McBride says he has forgiven the man who almost got him executed. ”Mathew was more committed than a lot of us. He had a girlfriend and a child to look after – he had to get a job, live a decent, quiet, respectable life. The rest of us didn’t have kids.”
McBride says he explained to Lecordier what risks he was facing when he recruited him into MK. ”He said no, he’s in. That willingness to become part of it was a big sacrifice because he had a child. In a sense, we were free. I was attached to my family, making ends meet. But I never had a kid, never knew what that meant.”
McBride says Lecordier matured in MK, he changed from wanting to be a robber into a political activist. ”Okay, he sold out. But for many years, he never worked. The cops dumped him. He went for robbing banks.”
When Lecordier returned to Wentworth from the Western Cape, some activists wanted to attack him. McBride’s mother, Doris, stopped them despite the fact that at the time her son was on death row because of, among other things, the evidence of his former comrade.
McBride says he understands why Lecordier turned state witness against him. He thinks Lecordier was given a hard time in detention by his captors. ”Mathew was still young then, younger than me. They must have really humiliated him and taken advantage of him. I don’t even ask him about it when I see him. I can imagine it was very brutal.”
But the decisive factor in McBride’s reconciliation with Lecordier was the contrition his former comrade had shown. ”Mathew, even before I came out, had already seen my father and apologised. He visited me at Westville [prison], and I told him not to worry, I am coming out and these things happen.”
After he was released in September 1992, McBride saw Lecordier a number of times. ”I went to sit with him. He used to drink. He still had politics in him, so it would have been unfair to leave him out.”
At the amnesty hearings at Durban’s Christian Centre, McBride, now an official in the Department of Foreign Affairs, moves around freely. Lecordier cuts a sad figure, guarded by two prison warders.
McBride is hurt by his former comrade’s predicament. When he travels from Gauteng to visit his parents in Wentworth, he tries to visit Lecordier in prison. Other former activists visit him as well. ”I think that’s good because the system of apartheid is out to destroy communities, to destroy people,” says McBride.
Gomolemo Mokae is Robert McBride’s biographer