I intervened when Wierda’s wife came back from the kitchen with the dessert. ‘I think that’s enough on this morbid topic.’
After that I faded in and out of the conversation; I couldn’t care less about concentration camps or the politicians of Pretoria. The words at the table washed over me without touching me, like the wine, and eventually I found comfort in the TV room with Wierda’s children and their world of innocence and trust. I wrestled with a small boy for a place on the couch and before I knew it I was asleep with the boy lying partly over me. Wierda woke me gently and lifted his child off me. Then he took me back to my hotel. I was in no state to drive.
Back at the hotel I found that I couldn’t sleep. The nap on Wierda’s couch had taken the sleep out of me. I tried, but the sleep wouldn’t come, so I ordered a bottle of L‘Ormarins cabernet sauvignon from room service and packed my bags. I organised all of the files and documents I had in the hotel room into neat piles and put them in the stackers; everything was ready for collection by Roshnee’s clerk the next morning.
I finished packing too quickly; I still could not sleep, and the bottle was far from empty. After lying in the dark with wide open eyes for a while I got up again and sat down at the small desk. The stackers with the files Pierre de Villiers had brought me stood in the corner; I eyed them while pouring another glass of wine.
Wierda’s comment about my lists of the executed prisoners had hurt me, even though I had not said anything while a guest in his house. I looked at the files for a long time before I could work up the energy to pull out the first file. I started a new list and wrote their names out in full, as a penance.
William Matatule Ginny Goitseone Elizabeth Mokoena Wynand Dercksen Elizabeth Dercksen Girley Ndzube Johannes Modise Charmaine Opperman Joseph Mashiloane Sarah Ngobeni Johannes Bekker Geraldine Sauls Emily Patel Joseph Moliefe Anita Webber Catherina Hanekom Sharief Hendry Abner Monakali Timothy Jeffreys Pieter Grobler Sophia Shoch
I fell into a dreamless sleep after that. We had run our case. The Court was going to find Labuschagne guilty or not guilty. Nothing we could do now could affect the outcome. The process of washing the facts of the case from my memory banks had already started. I no longer cared about the case or the client; my job was done. I wanted the troublesome facts and details washed out of my memory.
The tension was still in every fibre of my body.
I was desperate to go home, but we still had to live through one more day of the trial.
Roshnee’s clerk, a young man with a ponytail and an earring, arrived while I was still having breakfast and collected all the files and my luggage. I found his fawning ways quite irritating, his addressing me as advocate, as if it was a title or mode of address. But at least he was being polite and efficient.
The Judge kept us in Pretoria for another day. When Wierda and I arrived at court we found Roshnee on the steps. The usher was waiting for us in the foyer.
‘The Judge wants to see you as soon as possible,’ he said.
‘Let’s put our robes on first,’ I said to Wierda, but the usher intervened. ‘No, sir, you must come immediately.’
Roshnee carried our bags with our robes into court and Wierda and I followed the usher.
When we arrived at the Judge’s chambers, James Murray and Sanet Niemand were waiting at the door. Murray caught my eye and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say that he was as much in the dark as I was. We followed the usher in. The Judge had his Assessors with him.
‘Morning,’ said the Judge. ‘I am sorry, but as you can see, I don’t have enough seats.’
He had cleared his desk of other papers and the files and papers of our case now occupied every square centimetre of it. There were three piles, one in front of each of the men who were going to decide Leon Labuschagne’s fate. The registrar sat at a small table next to the Judge, with a shorthand pad and a typewriter on the table in front of her. She was already dressed for court, but the Judge was still in his suit. The Assessors had half turned to face us, but apart from nodding to acknowledge our arrival, took no part in the discussion.
‘It won’t take long, anyway,’ said the Judge. ‘There is a slight complication. We won’t be able to give judgment until tomorrow.’
My heart sank to my knees. I had hoped to be home that evening. Now we were going to have to stay another night.
James Murray had the presence of mind to ask if the Judge and his Assessors required further argument from us on any particular point, but the Judge waved the question aside.
‘I’ll come into court to remand the case to tomorrow.’
We nodded and turned to leave.
‘There is no need for senior counsel to robe,’ he said. ‘Wierda and Niemand can appear.’
While Wierda and Niemand did the honours in court, James Murray and I stood outside in the atrium. We stood in silence, watching the other lawyers milling about with their files and briefcases and clients in tow. After a while the silence became embarrassing. Murray was not a talkative man. I looked up at the boy with the scales in the glasswork in the windows high up. His scales were even. The girl’s pen was in the air. What verdict would she record?
‘What do you think is going on?’ I asked Murray.
He coughed behind his hand before he answered, his eyes on a clerk rushing past us on the way to the Chief Registrar’s office. ‘I think one of the Assessors may not agree with the proposed verdict. Or maybe the Judge doesn’t agree with what they want to do.’
I nodded in agreement. ‘Did you see the set of his jaw when he said that they were not ready? There is definitely something going on there. But you know him better than I do, what do you think?’
He smiled wanly. ‘He’s definitely not in a good mood. Maybe it is just as well that we don’t have to appear before him today. He can be quite irascible when he’s in a bad mood.’
I wasn’t sure that I agreed with this assessment. If Judge van Zyl was not in a good mood he would not have called us in or extended us the courtesy of not having to robe to go into court. He could simply have entered the court and announced there that they weren’t ready.
‘Maybe they’re just being careful, taking their time to write an appeal-proof judgment,’ I finally suggested.
‘Yes,’ said Murray, ‘but that should be bad news for you. They would have to take more time with a conviction than an acquittal.’ He was alluding to the fact that a conviction could be taken on appeal but an acquittal was final.
We stood together, the battle fought and the outcome in the hands of others. It was, in a way, a release from further responsibility. We just had to see out the remaining time. I looked at my colleague. We had both won and lost many cases. It is difficult to work out why anyone would choose this profession where every case is a contest. We fight in someone else’s cause, and when we win or lose it is the client who enjoys the benefit or feels the pain.
So we stood and waited, two old workhorses of the legal profession, so comfortable in our environment that we didn’t need to fight with each other. Yet one of us was going to lose when the verdict was announced. To the outsider it might have appeared as if we didn’t care about the outcome, but that impression would have been false. One of us was going to lose, and the trial would live with us forever.
When the others came out of the courtroom Wierda suggested that we fetch Dr Shapiro from his hotel and take him to the Voortrekker Monument. It was better than sitting around in a hotel room and easier on the nerves.
But first I needed to see Labuschagne to brief him on the continuation of the trial. We had to be ready for every possibility. Wierda and I went through the courtroom and down the steps to Cell 6 to speak to him. We found him in tears, and he became hysterical when he saw us. The more we tried the less sense we could get out of him. The stress must have taken its toll and the delay in the announcement of the verdict must have been the last straw; he was inconsolable and I couldn’t discuss what I had wanted to with him while he was in that condition. The ce
ll sergeant offered to take him to the District Surgeon for medication. We offered to accompany Labuschagne, but the cell sergeant said that he couldn’t allow that; the prisoner was his responsibility and his alone.
We waited in Cell 6 until they came for Labuschagne and we watched him being led down the narrow passage to a police van in the courtyard.
Roshnee and her clerk had no interest in the monument, so only Wierda and I went to the hotel to collect Dr Shapiro.
Voortrekker Monument
61
Dr Shapiro resumed his conversation about the death penalty with Wierda in the car on the way to the monument.
‘We didn’t talk much last night about the other variable in capital cases, the judges who impose the death sentence, did we?’ said Dr Shapiro from the passenger’s seat as we passed the prison complex in Potgieter Street.
‘There are other variables too,’ said Wierda, one eye on the traffic. ‘Such as the fallibility of witnesses.’
I studied the American from the relative privacy of the back seat and wondered whether he would see Wierda’s remark as a dig at him.
‘Or the police,’ I said quickly, to divert the point in an innocent direction.
‘No,’ said Dr Shapiro, ‘I’m referring to the personalities and value systems of individual judges. Do they play a role here like the composition of a jury makes a difference in California?’
We drove in a long and steady curve around Magazine Hill. I craned my neck to follow the narrow road going uphill where the bakkie and the minibus had jostled and duelled their way to their fateful meeting at the reservoir. From the highway one would not suspect that there was a road up there; it was well shielded from view by the side of the hill and the vegetation. I was content to let the other two run the conversation.
Wierda took up the argument. ‘There are at least three ways I can see in which a judge could affect the outcome of a capital case here: firstly, by making a mistake on the facts or the law; secondly, by having a predisposition in favour or against the death penalty; and thirdly, by not recommending clemency afterwards.’
‘Are there any examples of those in the cases of these thirty-two?’ asked our guest.
‘Mistakes of law or fact are fixed by the Appeal Court,’ said Wierda, ‘and clemency is really the State President’s domain.’
We reached the gate to Schanskop, the hill on which the Voortrekker Monument stands. I passed the money for the entry of one car and three adults to Wierda.
‘You would have to be a fool to think that the disposition of a particular judge towards capital punishment does not play a role,’ Wierda said once we were picking up speed again.
This was my first visit to the monument. It dominated the landscape for miles around and turned out to be far larger than I had imagined. The parking area at the foot of the koppie was relatively deserted and we made our way towards the entrance. A laager of sixty-four ox wagons carved from local granite encircles and protects the monument. We entered the laager through a black wrought-iron gate with an assegai motif symbolising the black enemy. We approached the bronze sculpture of a Voortrekker woman and her two children at the foot of the monument. On either side of her, black wildebeest representing the dangers of Africa were chiselled into the walls.
We entered through the solid teak doors at the main entrance and I took in the features of the massive hall. The floor was local marble, shiny and cold. The internal walls at ground level were covered by a frieze consisting of twenty-seven two-and-a-half-metre-high panels of Italian marble. Each frieze depicted a scene from the Great Trek. Four large arched windows of yellow Belgian glass filtered copious amounts of natural light into an eerie glaze that lent a sepulchral atmosphere to the main hall.
We moved around the hall slowly and stopped in front of each panel. No one spoke anywhere in the hall; the only sound was that of shuffling feet. My eyes may have been on the frieze, but my mind was trapped in the next day’s activities in court. I separated myself from Wierda and Dr Shapiro and searched out the lesser halls and rooms of the monument, my thoughts wandering as my feet moved from room to room and from one display to the next.
Poisoners and stranglers and multiple killers are always hanged; there never is a legal reprieve for them – their killings are deliberate and takes a concerted effort to complete. The poisoner has to obtain the poison and then administer it. Death comes slowly to the victim and the killers usually watch with false concern as the victims gag and gasp while they are dying. The strangler has to get his hands around the victim’s neck and squeeze for as long as it takes for the victim to stop struggling and to go limp. The multiple killer has to regroup after the rush of blood associated with the first killing has receded. Then he has to kill again and again.
There were men on Death Row for having murdered multiple victims, some as many as three or four, but none for as many as seven. My assessment was that beyond three there was no hope of a reprieve, and even then, hadn’t Hansen been one of those hanged in that last week, for killing two women? If two was too many, seven was as good as dead, as my friend Colin had said.
What could I say in favour of our client? Labuschagne’s actions seemed deliberate and callous. Shooting seven people dead after engaging them in a game of cat and mouse over many kilometres in the traffic did not sound like an impulsive act, committed in anger on the spur of the moment. Multiple killers always got the death sentence.
We had argued the opposite, but my mind was playing games with me.
I thought of Scheepers and Wessels. Would Scheepers have killed Ginny Goitseone if she had been white, like Scheepers and his companions? Would Burger and the others have allowed him to kill her if she had not been black? Surely Wessels would never have treated a white woman like he had Elizabeth Mokoena. Scheepers and Wessels had killed black women, displaying in every act an inhuman disregard for their victims as people.
If Scheepers and Wessels were hanged for killing across the racial divide, then Leon Labuschagne would in all likelihood follow them onto the trapdoors. A multiple killer who picks his victims for their race is as good as dead, I thought. Labuschagne was as good as dead.
In the windowless and dimly lit museum in the basement of the monument I stooped in front of an extract from a contemporary article in a newspaper stating the intention of the Voortrekkers. They had complained about the way they were being treated by their own government. They wanted self-determination and freedom from oppression. They promised to treat all races they were to encounter on their trek fairly, to negotiate with unknown chiefs for peaceful coexistence.
I rejoined Wierda and his guest at the cenotaph in the middle of the main hall. Wierda was giving Dr Shapiro a history lesson. They walked off again and I decided to shun the lift and instead to take the stairs to the top. I had hardly started when I was struck by vertigo for the second time that week, in addition to a far worse attack of claustrophobia. I wanted to turn around but a grossly overweight German couple had followed me into the stairwell. I was forced to go higher. I looked for a way out of the stairwell but there was none. The space between the concrete walls got narrower the higher I went up the spiralling stairwell, which I knew to be an illusion, a trick played on me by my own mind. I tested it by stretching out my arms and touching the walls every now and then. The distance remained constant even as my mind told me otherwise. Not wanting to be alone in there, I had to wait for the Germans every few steps to catch up with me. I was bent on beating the demons and fought my way up and up, the drumming in my ears getting louder with each leaden step, all the while stubbornly refusing to look down. But I needed someone near to take care of me should I be overcome by fear.
Halfway up I stopped, but there was no way out. Above the rush of the river in my ears, there were African voices again. I shook my head and they faded away. I looked out of a small window in the wall on my left; the ground below was a long way down. I felt a strong pull towards the window. Leaning towards the inside of the stairwell, I turn
ed my head to face the grey wall to the right, away from the outside world. My heart was hammering against my ribs and my throat felt constricted.
I forced myself to go higher and higher. The rough plaster of the central pillar provided some comfort but no handhold. The stairway eventually opened into a large open space under the cupola; a suspension bridge spanning crevasses on either side was the only pathway to the top. I had to drag myself along hand over hand, step by step, gripping the handrails, pulling hard on them as my legs refused to co-operate.
Two hundred and eight steps after I had left the museum in the basement I reached the very top. I had come all the way to look out over the parapet of the circular balcony. Much as I did not want to approach the waist-high wall, I was compelled to do so. I went down on hands and knees just as the Germans reached the top. They stood looking down at me. I lost all shame and asked them for help. They held me by my upper arms, one on either side, and escorted me to the edge. I pushed against the parapet with my hands as I peered over the wall down to the cenotaph below. By a trick of the light it appeared as a square pit the size of the one underneath the trapdoors, and that shocking image combined with the demons of vertigo to force me back to my knees, and then to all fours again. I struggled against the efforts of the Germans to keep me upright and begged them to take me to the stairwell at the opposite corner. My breathing came in wheezes and then great gulps for air that arched my back as I crawled around the low wall to the stairwell at the opposite corner.
The German couple helped me to my feet at the top of the stairs. On the way down I found an exit and stepped out into the sunshine. The moment I was outside the vertigo dissipated. I slowly regained my strength and walked around to the other side. I stood looking over the city of Pretoria. My eyes found the reservoir in the distance, directly between the monument and the city. I traced the path of the minibus and Labuschagne’s bakkie. They had come off the Old Johannesburg Road, on my left, and took the freeway in the valley between the monument and the reservoir almost directly below me. Then they’d slewed around the reservoir. That road was hidden from view. Near Maximum they had turned around and come back, but took the turn up the hill and through a sharp turn down to the reservoir. I traced their route a second time with my finger. They had had so much time to reconsider, to concede defeat, to call off their stupid game.
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