Maximum Security Prison |
9 |
The seven escorts followed hard on the heels of the Prison Medical Officer as they took the stairs down into the pit room below the gallows chamber. The doctor swung a stethoscope like a lasso in his hand, a cigarette dangling between his lips. He was still a young man, with the lean body of a medical school student, but his face was prematurely old, lined with the creases of too many examinations of assault and rape victims, of countless autopsies on the broken bodies of adults and children who had died unnatural deaths, and of witnessing too many executions.
Two of the escorts were still breathing heavily from their prior exertions. The others took the stairs equally gingerly. By the time they reached the bottom the doctor already had the earpieces of his stethoscope in place and, out of habit, warmed the disc between his hands as he took up a position in front of the first hanging body.
The escorts scampered around the doctor, each to his designated prisoner, and quickly unbuttoned the prisoners’ shirts to expose their pallid chests. As the escorts held the prisoners steady the doctor moved briskly down the line and listened perfunctorily for a heartbeat. He had heard the prisoners’ necks break a few minutes earlier and did not waste any time pronouncing them all dead. He turned on his heel and left.
Upstairs the Warrant Officer spoke to the officers behind him and they followed the doctor out of the gallows building to the admin offices. The usual procession of doors had to be unlocked to let them through and locked again behind them. They had some paperwork to complete before they could retire to the staff common room for tea or breakfast.
At first none of the men in the pit room or in the gallows chamber moved. The pit room was bare except for seven coffins stacked in the corner, two trolleys and a hose-reel connected to a faucet. It was the same size as the gallows room but had no windows. The dead men hung above the pit and spun slowly on their ropes. Blood, excrement and urine continued to drip into the pit.
The escorts stood in a cluster around the bodies, watching the fluttering limbs.
The Warrant Officer was dismayed at the inaction.
‘Roer julle gatte daar onder! Kry hierdie fokkers van die toue af!’
The escorts sprang into action. Each removed from his breast pocket a name tag and tied it to the big toe of his prisoner. Then they assembled in the corner and put on rubber gloves and Wellingtons. When they were ready a key was thrown down from above and one of the escorts stepped behind the bodies and began to unlock the handcuffs. One by one he threw the handcuffs in a bucket. The other escorts followed him down the line and stripped off the white hoods, shirts and trousers. They dumped everything in the pit. When all the bodies were naked, an escort pulled the hose reel up to the line while his colleagues stepped well out of the way. Then he turned the water on and hosed the bodies down where they hung. Soon the pit was a mess of soiled clothing and body waste. The man with the hose expertly steered the waste into the drain while another picked up the items of soiled clothing one by one with a stick and placed them in a plastic drum for dispatch to the prison laundry. The escorts stood aside for a moment as the last bit of water swirled into the drain.
In the gallows chamber above, two of the standby warders threaded a length of rope through a pulley attached to the beam overhead and threw one end into the pit room. Then they moved the pulley along the beam until it was directly above the first body. Below two of the escorts moved a heavy wooden trolley over the pit and under the body while another slipped the rope around the body of the prisoner and fastened it around the dead man’s chest. As soon as he was ready he stepped back and raised his thumb; the two men above promptly pulled the naked body back into the gallows chamber.
Within a few minutes the prisoner was back where he had started, at eye level with the Warrant Officer in the gallows chamber. There one of the standby warders held the prisoner steady while another struggled with the hanging rope. The noose had cut into the prisoner’s neck and the rubber grommet was slippery with blood. After a great deal of swearing and manoeuvring the rope was slipped back over the prisoner’s head.
When the prisoner was lowered back into the pit room his head was flopping grotesquely on his chest, his neck muscles stretched and torn and the vertebrae crushed. The two escorts watching from below expertly caught the descending body by the hands and feet and slung it onto the wooden trolley in one movement. They untied the rope around the prisoner’s chest and passed it on to the next pair of escorts. As they wheeled the trolley to the stack of coffins in the corner, a second body was already ascending into the gallows chamber. When the first pair of escorts reached the coffins they took down the top one and placed it on the floor. One slid its lid aside while the other hauled the trolley over. Then they unceremoniously tipped the body into the coffin. It landed face down and they left it so. One of them shoved the trolley with his foot towards the pit where the next pair of escorts caught it just in time to receive the second body from above.
Soon the escorts were all working in pairs with assembly line efficiency. In the corner an escort removed the tag from his prisoner’s toe and tied it to the handle of the first coffin. His companion used a hammer to drive the screws through the lid. As the blows rained down, another pair of escorts arrived to tip a second body into its coffin. At the pit the third pair was tying the rope around the chest of their body. With the first prisoner in his coffin, the pair of escorts returned to the pit and took their place under the fourth body.
While the escorts were disposing of the bodies in the pit room the paperwork was being attended to downstairs. The four officials who had to sign them sat down at a table and passed the documents down the line for signature. The first one was for the prisoner at the head of the line on the trapdoors, Mnuxa Jerome Gcaba:
CERTIFICATE OF DEATH
I hereby certify that I have examined the body of
MNUXA JEROME GCABA V3664
who has been executed and that he is dead.
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MEDICAL OFFICER
The undersigned declare that on this day
10th of December 1987 in Central Prison, Pretoria
MNUXA JEROME GCABA V3664
was executed.
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DEPUTY SHERIFF CHARGED WITH EXECUTIONS
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MEDICAL OFFICER
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COMMANDING OFFICER
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EXECUTIONER
/mo.
The Commanding Officer deferred to the Medical Officer, who had to sign twice. The Deputy Sheriff and the Executioner patiently waited their turn.
The Deputy Sheriff Charged with Executions took the batch of signed documents and put them in a folder. The top one was for Gcaba and advised the Court that its order had been carried out:
1/4/14 4533
OFFICE OF THE SHERIFF
OF TRANSVAAL
PRIVATE BAG X67
PRETORIA
0001
10 December 1987
Registrar of the Supreme Court
Private Bag X9014
PIETERMARITZBURG
3200
THE STATE versus MNUXA JEROME GCABA
I beg to inform you that the abovementioned condemned prisoner
who was sentenced to death at SCOTTBURGH
on 12 DECEMBER 1986
was executed today.
The death warrant and certificate of death are enclosed.
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SHERIFF OF TRANSVAAL
An hour after the trapdoors had dropped their load into the pit room the paperwork in the admin offices was complete and the seven coffins were ready to be taken down to the chapel. The officers went to breakfast with the Sheriff, the Executioner and the Medical Officer. The escorts had time only for a quick cup of tea in their staff room before they had to rush off to their next task.