HISTORY

In 1979 James Mange was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death by the Apartheid regime; a consequence of opposing an illegal state. SENTENCED to hang by the neck until dead in 1979, former MK operative James Mange never thought he would survive to tell the tale. Reliving his one year on death row at Pretoria Central Prison, the dreadlocked Mange said he had resigned himself to his fate and was awaiting his date with the hangman. “Conscious of the very intransigent nature of the apartheid regime we were fighting against, I never imagined myself being spared. I had accepted my fate and was prepared to meet my creator,” he said.

The hanging of MK guerrilla Solomon Mahlangu in the same year (1979) despite an international outcry had merely served to diminish whatever hope Mange may have had of being spared the gallows. Mange and 11 other ANC comrades were found guilty of treason and were handed sentences of between 14 and 19 years in jail. Mange, however, was the only one to be given the death penalty in what was known as the Maritzburg Treason Trial. Judge Joos Hefer, who later chaired the Hefer Commission into spy allegations against former Scorpions boss Bulelani Ngcuka, sentenced Mange to death. The accused had refused to take part in the trial after the court ruled that the hearing would be in camera.

In a statement, they argued that an open trial was essential as treason was a charge affecting the whole of society, “and to exclude the public is to exclude the people affected by what the ANC seeks to achieve”. When sentencing was pronounced, the 12 accused displayed placards which read: “Apartheid is a crime against humanity”, “Apartheid is high treason” and “Never on our knees”. “On your first night on death row, you begin to look at your life from that point backwards and cannot think beyond the death sentence. You tend to live within yourself,” Mange said. Though the death sentence was not a surprise, Mange recalled several questions that bothered him. “The questions included whether I did enough for the Struggle, whether I had a fulfilling life and and whether I missed anything. The answers were all in the negative because you can never do enough for the Struggle,” he said. Bringing solace, however, was the fact that he was privileged to have been a part of the mammoth task of trying to change the system.

He remembers that his cell was not far from that of Dimitri Tsafendas, a parliamentary messenger sentenced to death for the assassination of the architect of apartheid, then prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, in Parliament on September 6, 1966. “I was able to communicate with Tsafendas from time to time and he was fun, though bitter. He would say ‘never trust politicians’ because he thought they had sold him out and had forgotten about him.” Mange recalled a cell near the gallows which they called “ebhodweni” (the pot), where those who were to be hanged were kept in isolation for seven days leading to their date with the hangman. He said most of the prisoners became religious, singing hymns and praying all day. And on the morning of the execution, those to be hanged would be taken around the death row cells to bid their fellow inmates a final goodbye. What he won’t forget is how his homeboy from White City Jabavu, Soweto, who he remembers only as Richard, tried to give him a coded message on the morning he was to be executed. The warders moved him quickly before Mange could make sense of his message. “I felt so hopeless. So helpless.” Being face to face with a prisoner who is about to be hanged, Mange said, was an image hard to describe. “It’s like you are seeing their soul. It’s like their flesh is no longer there,” he said. But while Mange had resigned himself to be hanged, little did he realise that his mother, with the help of his lawyers, had brought an appeal against his conviction.

He was not even aware there had been an international campaign led by international bodies such as the UN, OAU (now AU), the Non-Aligned Movement and NGOs in SA to have him saved from the gallows. And when two warders came to his cell one morning in 1980, he thought his time had come to be hanged. An Afrikaans-speaking warder told him: “Nou gaan ons jou nagmaak… is jy nie bang nie?” (Now we are going to make it hard for you. Are you not scared?) But instead of being led to the gallows, Mange was taken to an office where he met one of his lawyers, Rajan Moodley, who had come all the way from Durban to tell him that his death sentence had been commuted to 20 years’ imprisonment. It took him several minutes to grasp the reality that he was no longer going to be hanged. “I was dazed. It did not sink in immediately that I was spared the gallows.” Mange earlier told one warder that although he was going to be hanged, he’d continue to live in the hearts and memories of the oppressed people of SA. He was transferred to Robben Island, where he began growing dreadlocks, reportedly becoming the first prisoner in SA to refuse to cut his hair. He was released after having served 14 years. Although he formed his organisation, called the Soccer Party, in 1994, he is now back in the ANC fold. In his spare time he is a musician. He has released 10 reggae albums, and is married with three children.

The story of James Mange is the story of a true African visionary.