It was hot and cicadas were screeching mercilessly in the trees on both sides of the track. Gnats swarmed around us and got trapped in sweaty folds. Still, everyone looked glad to be out in the open in the spring sunshine, the brooding atmosphere of Court C some distance away down the hill. We huddled around Judge van Zyl, but I noticed the Warrant Officer standing on his own in the shade of a tree, his eyes hidden by military-style reflective sunglasses. His arms were folded across his chest. He was close enough to observe but too far to be a party to the immediate events.
‘Right,’ said the Judge. He must have been hot in his suit. ‘Who’s going to begin?’
We might not have been in the courtroom but the events at the inspection were as much part of the evidence as the evidence given from the witness box.
I stepped forward and stood directly in front of Judge van Zyl. He was flanked by the two Assessors. ‘Judge, I’ll take the lead, if you don’t mind. I would like the defendant to stand next to the door of his bakkie so that we can measure the exact distance from there to the left side, to the sliding door of the minibus.’
We turned to watch as Labuschagne was brought out of the police van. He walked over to the bakkie. The handcuffs had been removed, but the cell sergeant stayed at his side.
‘And now I would like the defendant to point at the sliding door of the minibus,’ I said.
Labuschagne raised his right hand and pointed, not as you would do with a pistol in your hand, but sufficiently close to it for our purposes. I had not told him the purpose of the inspection and he looked sheepish. I had not seen him in natural light before. His skin was pallid from lack of exposure to the sun.
‘Can we agree that the distance from the defendant’s hand to the side of the minibus is no more than four or five paces?’ I asked. Then I stepped over and dramatically paced out the distance. ‘Three and a half to four and a half meters, I would say,’ said the Judge. His Assessors nodded. ‘Did anyone bring a tape measure?’
No one had, but the Judge’s estimate was accurate enough for my purposes.
‘Anything else?’ asked the Judge.
I stood right next to the sliding door of the minibus. Then, without warning, I gripped the door handle firmly and opened the sliding door.
Kellunck! Shoosh! Whabam!
Labuschagne groaned and fell over backwards instantly as if he had been shot, his legs pulled up into his chest and his hands clamped over his eyes.
He calmed down as suddenly as he had fallen over. The atmosphere at the reservoir was electric. Marianne Schlebusch rushed over and put her arm around Labuschagne’s shoulders. She and the cell sergeant led him back to the police van. He was crying. I had a lump in my throat. I was glad his sister wasn’t there to see what I had done.
I heard a car start up behind me, and the next moment the Warrant Officer sped away from the reservoir in a cloud of dust, his jaw clenched in a deathly white face. We stared after him until he disappeared around the first bend of the winding track. No one spoke until Labuschagne had also been taken away, handcuffed as before, in the police van. This time they put him in the front, where he sat squashed between the driver and the cell sergeant.
Another car started up and then stood there idling. It was Professor Nienaber’s and he had Dr Shapiro and Marianne Schlebusch with him in the car.
‘Why did you bring us here?’ Judge van Zyl was angry. I felt Wierda’s eyes on me. When he had brought me to the reservoir months earlier he had been the one taking risks. I owed him an explanation.
‘There is something to these doors, Judge,’ I said.
I demonstrated by opening and closing the sliding door three times. The sound it made when it closed was the same as when it opened.
Kellunck! Shoosh! Whabam!
We stood in a row staring into the interior of the empty minibus, the sun behind us and our shadows on the ground in the exact positions in which the police had found the bodies of the seven young men of the Diepsloot Karate Club.
I counted the shadows. There were seven, of different heights and textures on the uneven ground, devoid of class or distinction, reduced to dark outlines in the dirt; the Judge and two Assessors, the two prosecutors and Wierda and I.
Calm slowly settled over the scene at the reservoir.
‘Fine,’ said the Judge. ‘James, is there anything you want to point out now that we are here?’
Murray’s shadow moved out of the line and said, ‘Yes, we would like the Court to take particular note of the winding and undulating nature of the track leading to the reservoir.’
‘And the rocks lying in the roadway too,’ said Niemand.
The dust of the Warrant Officer’s hasty departure still hung in the air.
Judge van Zyl made a note. ‘Yes, we were just talking about that in the car coming down.’
When no one said anything further, he added, ‘Shall we reassemble at court then?’
I told him that I had one further request, to return to the gallows room, but that it would have to be done in the absence of our client. After explaining what I wanted to do, we got back into our cars and headed down the hill.
Five minutes later we were at the front entrance of Maximum. We insisted that the warder on duty in the guardhouse call the Major.
‘We need to see the gallows again,’ explained the Judge.
The Major looked at the women, but before he could voice his objection Judge van Zyl cut him short. ‘The women are coming with us.’
The Major led us through.
This time we had caught them by surprise and the prison was in its normal daily routine, not the inspection mode in which it had been when we had come for our first inspection a week earlier.
There were prisoners in the corridors with rags tied to their feet, shuffling to and fro and polishing the floors in the process. They stood heads down with their backs to the wall and did not make eye contact as we filed past, but I sensed that they were glancing at us under their eyebrows and in their peripheral vision. Their anguish was palpable, their eyes perhaps searching for the Sheriff with his folders of letters from the State President.
The Major led us straight to the door leading to the staircase with its fifty-four steps and briefly stood aside for the warder with the keys to let us through. I watched the others disappearing ahead of me into the stairwell. Only the warder with the keys and I remained at the foot of the steps. Then the door behind me slammed shut and I heard the key turn with the rattle of the tumblers in the heavy lock. I felt alone and suddenly very afraid.
I reluctantly put my foot on the first step. My foot felt heavy, sticking to the floor. I put my hand on the inner guardrail. It was cold and I jerked my hand away when I remembered its purpose, to serve as a handhold for the warders when they had to drag reluctant prisoners up to the gallows. The staircase was narrow and the wall on my left and the steel mesh on my right pressed inwards; the only escape was upwards. I looked up. The shuffling sounds of the others’ footsteps drifted down towards me. Vertigo and claustrophobia overwhelmed me and I froze on the spot.
If Wierda hadn’t come down for me I would have stayed there.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘They are waiting for you.’
When I looked up there was light at the top. I held out my arm and Wierda took my elbow and led me all the way up. It felt like an eternity before we reached the ante room before the gallows. I saw that the door to the gallows chamber was open. I took a deep breath and went and stood against the wall under the window.
The gallows machine was primed but there were no ropes attached to the beam overhead. I could smell fresh machine oil. There were six hanging ropes, coiled and ready, on the table next to me. A sheet with names and measurements lay on the table next to the ropes. It was as Labuschagne had said: I could smell the blood on them. I moved a few paces away from the ropes.
‘What do you want to show us?’ asked Judge van Zyl without ceremony.
I stood with the flat of my hand against th
e wall behind my back. I asked the Major to push the lever forward. My voice was shaky. The Major pulled out the safety pin and moved slowly to the front of the trapdoors. He put his hand on the handle of the lever and engaged the clutch gingerly as he looked over his shoulder at the Judge. When there was no countermand from Judge van Zyl he slowly pushed the lever until the trapdoors suddenly disappeared in a thunderous Kellunck! Shoosh! Whabam!
The wall shuddered under my hand. We stood in silence for a long time, looking into the darkness of the pit.
‘I think we should get back to court,’ the Judge said pensively.
We followed the Major down. On the way out we could hear singing behind the walls.
When we got to the guardhouse at the front the Major called me aside. He was angry.
‘We have six men to hang tomorrow; they are in the Pot. You can hear them singing, and you’ve come to muck about with the gallows. Now the whole prison is tense. No one is going to sleep tonight because they think we are doing secret and unscheduled executions.’
I apologised and explained why I had done it.
The Major nodded, but did not say anything.
‘I am defending a man’s life,’ I added, ‘and I’ll go as far as I have to in order to save him from the killing machine you’ve just shown us.’
We stood facing each other on the hard concrete next to the summer garden. The walls of the prison towered above us, the sun against a clear blue sky beating down on us so that we had to squint. Cicadas were screaming in the hillock overlooking the complex and in the jacarandas in the parking area in front of the main gate, drowning out the singing from A Section. There was birdsong in the summer garden, but the heat had forced the animals into the shade.
‘I understand,’ he said eventually, ‘and I hope you win. He was one of my best men.’
He used the past tense and I felt a cold drop of sweat run down my spine into the waistband of my trousers. What did it mean to be a good man in a place like this?
The guard at the main gate was humming the same tune as the prisoners while he signed me out.
I caught up with Wierda in the parking lot outside. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck were still standing on end, but we had found our trigger event.
The Warrant Officer was still nowhere to be seen.
When we entered Court C I could sense that something was wrong. James Murray was speaking in a hushed voice to a uniformed policeman. He would not meet my eyes. The Judge and Assessors walked in and took their seats. The policeman bowed and left.
‘Yes, Mr Murray,’ said Judge van Zyl.
Murray fidgeted with his papers. I noticed that his hands were shaking. The usual composure with which he had handled all the incidents of the case thus far was gone.
‘I have no further witnesses. I am not calling the Warrant Officer,’ he announced.
The Judge interrupted before Murray could explain his change of plan. ‘Why not? I thought I had made it clear that I was going to allow his evidence to be given in rebuttal, and even that I was keen to hear it.’
I looked over at the Warrant Officer’s seat. There was no one there.
Murray resolved the mystery quickly and without emotion. ‘He’s dead, M’Lord,’ he said. ‘He died while we were at the inspection in the prison.’
No one spoke and there was no movement. I suppose we had all been caught unawares. We had spoken about death and killing and of the dead for days now, as if death were a foreigner, but it had come to visit us in the most obvious way by taking one of the principal actors in our own play of life and death. There was a perceptible increase in the tension in the courtroom.
‘How did it happen?’ asked the Judge. ‘He was with us just an hour or so ago. I remember seeing him at the reservoir.’ He turned to his Assessors for confirmation.
Murray’s answer was terse. ‘His car collided with a bridge, M’Lord.’
When no one responded he added, ‘The police came to inform me a few minutes ago. There were no other cars involved. They showed me his identity document and told me that he was killed instantly.’
‘Where did it happen?’ asked the Judge.
‘It was on the highway to Johannesburg, M’Lord.’
We would learn later that the Warrant Officer’s car had collided at high speed with the stanchions of a bridge over the highway. According to witnesses there was no apparent reason for his car to have left the road and no sign of avoiding action on his part. There were no brake marks and no sign of physical breakdown that could have caused his car to veer off the road as it had.
‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ said the Judge at last.
There was another lengthy silence before he spoke again. ‘Please convey my and my Assessors’ condolences to his family.’
Murray nodded dutifully. ‘We shall do so, M’Lord.’
‘Shall we adjourn to tomorrow for closing argument then?’ suggested the Judge.
Murray shook his head. ‘If it pleases M’Lord, we are ready to argue now.’
Judge van Zyl turned to the defence table. ‘Are you ready to proceed?’
‘We are, M’Lord.’ I remained standing. ‘But we need to recall one of the expert witnesses to explain the significance of the events at the reservoir and at the prison during this morning’s inspection. That should not take more than a few minutes,’ I added.
‘Call your witness,’ he said and picked up his pen.
I called Marianne Schlebusch to the witness box and, as soon as she was ready, I asked the one question that remained.
‘Miss Schlebusch, could you please explain the significance of the events at the reservoir and in the gallows room?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We have found the trigger event, M’Lord.’
‘Please go slowly,’ said Judge van Zyl. ‘I want to take notes.’
‘Yes, M’Lord.’ She measured her words in small bundles, at dictation pace. ‘The trigger event had three components, each consisting of a separate stimulus. Each was significant enough on its own, but cumulatively their weight or influence was far greater. The first was the sound of the sliding door of the minibus, reminding the defendant of the opening of the trapdoors. The second was the men rushing out of the minibus, resembling the falling of the bodies after the trapdoors have opened. The third was the white headbands or bandannas they wore. In those conditions they would have resembled the white hoods used during the execution process.’
The image was stronger than the words I have to describe it.
‘It was staged, a setup,’ Sanet Niemand hissed, but James Murray did not cross-examine.
Marianne Schlebusch took her seat behind me.
When I sat down Wierda handed me a note. It was from Pierre de Villiers: Why was he driving away from the court? And why was he going so fast?
Palace of Justice
60
James Murray kept his argument simple – almost certainly in keeping with the adage that if you have a good case you must keep it simple. It was a solid, technical argument with no obvious flaws.
The defendant fired thirteen shots, he said, and every single one of them was fired with such deadly accuracy that it hit the target in the vital spot, the upper chest or neck. He asked the Judge and Assessors to look again at the autopsy photographs and pointed out, one photograph at a time, where the bullets had struck. One bullet had gone through a raised forearm first; its victim must have been in a defensive pose, he demonstrated with care.
The shell-casings were distributed over a wide area, he pointed out. He waited for the Court to find the markings on the scene plan and rattled some of the shell-casings in his palm. The defendant must have moved around between shots, Murray said, while he poured the shell-casings from one hand to the other. Murray held up the ballistics report and reminded the Court that the defence had not disputed its contents.
Thus, he concluded, the accuracy of the shooting and that fact that the defendant had moved around from target to target proved beyo
nd reasonable doubt that his mind was fully functional, that he could not have been in a state of automatism.
It was murder, said Murray, it was murder seven times over. The Court should declare it to be such, he said, so that the scales could be brought back into equilibrium again.
The argument was, of course, not quite as simple or as short as that. Murray and Niemand had prepared a lengthy written argument dealing comprehensively with salient points of law and the anticipated defence argument. They discussed the facts and the evidence, the experts’ opinions and their reasoning, the usual legal technicalities.
The Judge didn’t ask a single question during Murray’s argument and I saw more than one member of the media nodding in agreement every time he made a telling point:
Road rage
Time to reconsider actions
Familiarity with firearm
Expert marksman
Herded victims to a secluded area
No provocation at reservoir
Careful arrangement of bodies a message or statement
Fled when engine would not start
Went into hiding
Gave no explanation when confronted by police
Defence a concocted self-serving pack of lies
Willingly participated in escort duties
Physically participated in the act of killing, pulling prisoners up, some twice
Not a good witness, evasive, unresponsive
Uncaring attitude, no genuine remorse
Reaction to minibus sliding door staged
A far-fetched unconvincing effort to save his life
Wierda and I had considered all of these points during our preparation. Individually they didn’t amount to much, but cumulatively they came down on our client’s neck with the weight of lead.
It had been a mistake not to eat anything at lunch. My blood sugar levels were getting low and I wasn’t sure that I would be able to sustain a lengthy argument. The events at the prison earlier in the day also preyed on my mind. I tried not to think of the six men waiting in the Pot as their time ran out.
Shepherds and Butchers Page 45