Shepherds & Butchers

Wierda and I received the trial records of the thirty-two men who were hanged between 26 November and 10 December 1987 from Pierre de Villiers on the second day of the trial, just before the close of the prosecution case. We had to read them at night and during the breaks as we could not afford to lose concentration during the hearing. Side by side the case files stood almost a metre wide.

I looked at the files in the stackers on the floor in my hotel room. What was there in these files that would shed light on the matter at hand? Was there anything to explain our client’s conduct? I wasn’t sure that I would find the answer in those files, but I had to read them all.

Executioner

Head of Pretoria Central Prison

Head of Maximum Security Prison

Deputy Sheriff Charged with Executions

Medical Officer

Warrant Officer in Charge of Security

There must also have been at least seven warders, with four acting as gallows escorts and three on standby duty, but their names did not appear anywhere in the records Pierre had given me.

Indictment. Statement of facts. List of witnesses.

Post-mortem report. Plans. Photographs.

Judgment. Sentencing reports. Sentencing.

Death warrant.

Sheriff’s return. Identification statement. Death certificate.

I read Moatche’s case with great care, looking for unusual features. I did not have to search for long.

INDICTMENT

1. EDWARD PHATAK TSHUMA of 255 Difateng Section, Tembisa, a Black male and South African Citizen aged 20 years;

2. SIMON RAMOATSHE MOATCHE of 187 Difateng Section, Tembisa, a Black male and South African citizen aged 21 years; and

3. JACOB SESING of 300 Difateng Section, Tembisa, a Black male and South African citizen aged 18 years are guilty of the crimes of:

COUNT 1: MURDER: IN THAT the accused on or about 19 March 1983 and at or near LAMANDLELA STATION in the district of KEMPTON PARK unlawfully and intentionally killed WILLIAM MATUTULE, a Black male.

COUNT 2: ROBBERY WITH AGGRAVATING CIRCUMSTANCES AS DEFINED IN SECTION 1 OF ACT 51 OF 1977: IN THAT the accused on or about 19 March 1983 and at or near LAMANDLELA STATION in the district of KEMPTON PARK unlawfully assaulted WILLIAM MATUTULE, a Black male, by stabbing him with knives and then and there by force and violence took from his person and possession an unknown amount of money, his property or in his lawful possession, and thus robbed him of the same.

The events of the evening of 19 March 1983 started innocently enough. Tshuma, Moatche, Sesing and Tshuma’s female companion, Elizabeth Radebe, were drinking at a party in Tembisa. There they hatched a plan to rob some people. The three men were already armed with knives. They caught a train to Leralla. At Leralla the train stopped before starting the return journey. The foursome stayed on board. They had found no one to rob on the outward journey. Then Mr William Matutule, a working man in his thirties, boarded the train at 21:20.

During the journey Moatche, Tshuma and Sesing went from carriage to carriage searching for a suitable victim. They roughed up a number of passengers but found no one with any money. One potential victim eluded them by running to the front of the train.

When they saw Mr Matutule disembarking at Lamandlela Station a few minutes later, Tshuma, Moatche, Sesing and Elizabeth Radebe followed him. The station was deserted. The three men ran after Matutule while Elizabeth watched from a distance. The men caught Matutule at the stairway of the pedestrian bridge. They demanded money from him. He was unarmed and protested that he had no money. Sesing held him while Tshuma and Moatche went through his pockets. When they found nothing, Tshuma said that they had wasted their time. They then took out their knives and started stabbing Matutule. He tried to escape by running up the steps but he was caught halfway across the pedestrian bridge and dragged down to the station platform. The men continued to stab Matutule indiscriminately and repeatedly. He eventually collapsed and fell down between the platform and the railway line. Matutule died of internal and external bleeding as a result of multiple stab wounds. In the frenzy Tshuma had accidentally stabbed Sesing in the arm.

The three killers left the scene with Elizabeth Radebe and went to another party.

Mr Matutule’s body was recovered by the Railway Police just before midnight. The police found a thirty-metre trail of blood from the top of the pedestrian bridge down the steps to a large pool of blood on the platform. The post-mortem report listed eighty-seven stab wounds. Matutule had been in the prime of his life and had been killed for nothing.

The killers were arrested soon after the murder when Tshuma and Radebe’s relationship ended in some acrimony and she went to the police and reported what she had witnessed. After their arrest Tshuma and Moatche pointed out relevant places at the scene, which indicated that they had personal knowledge of events and facts only the killers could have known. They also admitted to having stabbed Matutule but put the blame on Sesing who, they said, had stabbed Matutule repeatedly. They claimed that they had inflicted only minor injuries in defence of Sesing.

Sesing was arrested later when he was released from hospital; he had been shot in the leg during an unrelated incident and still had a fresh stab wound in his arm. He claimed from the outset to have an alibi, but the evidence was unable to sustain that defence. His alibi defence contradicted that of Tshuma and Moatche.

On 11 July 1984 the three men were convicted of murder and attempted robbery with aggravating circumstances. The Court found that Tshuma had been the ringleader in the planning and execution of the attack upon Matutule and that each of the accused had probably inflicted an equal number of stab wounds. The Court turned to the question of whether extenuating circumstances were present in respect of the murder conviction.

Tshuma had been almost nineteen, Moatche twenty and Sesing seventeen years old when they killed Matutule. After an extensive review of case law and other authorities with regard to the effect of youthfulness and intoxication on the matter and a discussion of the concept of inherent vice, the Court found that the accused had acted out of inherent vice. They seemed to fit that category of township youth who were described in an Appeal Court judgment as men who stabbed for the sake of stabbing. The Court also found that they had planned the crime carefully and that robbery had been their motive. They had clearly acted in pursuit of a common purpose. Liquor had played no discernible role in their behaviour.

Tshuma and Moatche were both sentenced to death on the murder count and to eight years imprisonment on the attempted robbery count. Sesing was given fifteen years imprisonment for the murder and eight years imprisonment for the attempted robbery. The two terms were to run concurrently.

Tshuma and Moatche’s appeal was dismissed and on 28 February 1985 the Department of Justice wrote to say that the State President had declined to grant them clemency.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE • DEPARTEMENT VAN JUSTISIE

REPUBLIEK VAN SUID-AFRIKA • REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA

CONFIDENTIAL
Veritasgebou/Veritas Buildings
Privaatsak/Private bag X81, Pretoria, 0001.
’Justisie’/’Justice’
28 2923 – 146 mej A Muller
Verwysing/Reference
9/5/4 – 3510 (R/2)

The Registrar of the

Supreme Court of South Africa

Private Bag X8

JOHANNESBURG

2000

1986-02-28

CAPITAL CASE: THE STATE VERSUS (1) EDWARD PHATAK TSHUMA

(2) SIMON RAMOATHSE MOATCHE: MURDER

The State President has decided not to grant clemency to the above-named.

………………………….

DIRECTOR-GENERAL: JUSTICE

By right Moatche and Tshuma should have been hanged within a week, but their families made further representations to the State President. They spent another nineteen months in the death cells before the State President’s decision was made known on 20 November 1987. There were two letters. The one advised that in Tshuma’s case the State President had decided to commute the death sentence to life imprisonment. The other advised that Moatche had not been granted clemency. No reasons were given for the decision.

I put the file back in the box and ordered a bottle of red wine, an Allesverloren cabernet sauvignon, from room service. The steward opened the wine and left and I sat down to ponder the vagaries of the legal process.

What can you do with a hopeless case? How do you stand in court with a serious expression on your face and conviction in your voice to tell the Judge that it was a case of self-defence when the dead man had eighty-seven stab wounds? And how does an alibi go down when two of your co-accused tell the Judge under oath that you were with them at the scene? You can’t cross-examine entries out of books, fingerprints off a dressing table or bullet holes out of a corpse. The prosecutor must have enjoyed the fiasco at the defence table.

Tshuma and Moatche had come to within a week of being hanged two years earlier, but there had been a stay of execution. Who granted it and why? The files did not disclose these details. The State President must have been advised then that there was no reason to grant either of them clemency. Why then did he subsequently grant clemency to Tshuma but not to Moatche? I could understand why Sesing did not receive a death sentence, on strict legal principle, but the hanging of Moatche seemed almost as random an act as the choice of Mr Matatule as victim.

Did they hang the wrong man? Pierre’s note on top of the papers in the file read.

I would drink a lot of wine through the years (though none better than that Allesverloren), but I would never be able to answer that question. I repeated it as I looked at the label on the bottle through my empty glass.

V3208 Simon Ramoatshe Moatche

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