Maximum Security Prison

18

The hanged men’s relatives were escorted into the chapel as a gang of prisoners were let into A1 Section to clean the cells of the Pot and to gather the dead men’s belongings. The cleaning gang considered themselves lucky as they were allowed to keep any consumables they found, such as a bit of tobacco, if they were lucky, or an unopened packet of biscuits. Prison gear like shoes and socks, underwear and pyjamas would be sent to the laundry to be recycled and issued to the next intake. Personal belongings would be bundled up and given to the relatives after the funeral service.

The chapel formed the hub linking the two wings of B Section and was situated in the shadow of the building housing the gallows and the pit.

Nearer my God to Thee

Nearer to Thee

The escorts sat in the back pews and sang and prayed with the bereaved, asking for peace in the afterlife, for love in the present one, and for salvation for those who had done what they had done. There was some sobbing, but for the most part the tears had been shed long before, during lonely nights in distant parts when the relatives of the condemned men had thought of their loved ones and had waited for this awful day to arrive. That day had now arrived in full. In a way it granted the relatives release, it freed them to think of happier times long gone when their sons and brothers were children doing the silly things that boys do to catch a parent’s eye or to amuse a sibling.

The coffins lay side by side in front of the pews with name tags hanging from the handles and modest wreaths resting on the plain wooden lids. They took up the entire width of the room. The plain nondenominational chapel was full, with an escort and two relatives for each of the hanged men.

The solitary prisoner in the cell adjacent to the chapel could hear every note of the hymns and every word spoken by the parson. In fact, he could easily have led the sermon himself, having heard it so many times since he was transferred here when Maximum first opened its doors to receive the condemned. The admin staff in their offices in B Section preferred not to hear the inevitable crying and wailing and had retired to their common room for tea and biscuits as soon as the sermon began. For them these men would cease to exist as soon as the administrative processes were completed and their photographs were removed from the office wall.

There were two representatives of each family at the service and more family members were waiting in the parking area outside the main entrance. Trains from distant parts of the country had brought them here. The Department of Justice had paid for their tickets and for their overnight stay in cheap hotels. For most of them the train ride and the stay in a hotel were novel experiences. The train from Cape Town had taken two days to cover the one thousand eight hundred kilometres; the distance from the lower South Coast of Natal was only eight hundred kilometres but the journey had taken equally long as the elderly Zulu relatives of the condemned men had to catch a minibus from a distant rural area to Port Shepstone where they had to wait for the train to Durban, and then had to wait for the Johannesburg train that departed only the following day. Those who had come from the East Rand were used to train travel and had taken suburban metro trains and buses earlier in the morning.

The seven escorts sat in the back pews; they had to keep an eye on the coffins as much as on the visitors. The parson rambled on in English though none of those present, neither the visitors nor the escorts, was English speaking. God had forgiven these men, he declared, but no one believed him. The escorts had witnessed the manner of death and had seen the broken bodies. When the parson called for everyone to stand in prayer the escorts rose and bowed their heads with the families of the men they had helped to kill and then sang the last hymn with them.

The parson finally brought the proceedings to a close and the bereaved filed past, hands stroking the coffins in a final moment of intimacy.

In the main foyer an administration officer handed each family a small parcel containing the humble personal possessions of their departed relative, a Bible perhaps, and a few letters, the record of an appeal or a petition to the State President begging for mercy. The admin officer explained, through a warder acting as interpreter, that death certificates would be posted in a week’s time, and that the family could apply for details of the grave number and site after five years.

Every item had to be signed for in the register.

The visitors were made to march to the exit at the main entrance in a column of two’s, a posse of warders escorting them to the gate, the rifles on the guard towers aimed at them.

They comforted each other in the parking lot. Eventually the visitors left as quietly as they had come to this place, as mystified and bewildered as they had been when their sons were arrested and later sentenced to die. They were left to wonder if this was the way things were always destined to be, and never to know the answer. The hymn played over and over in their ears and would haunt them for a long time to come:

Nearer my God to Thee

Nearer to Thee