Entry Filed under: 20th Century , Activists , Capital Punishment , Cycle of Violence , Death Penalty

On this date in 1987, Moses Jantjies and Wellington Mielies — “political prisoners” in the estimation of their supporters — hanged along with five common criminals at Pretoria for the murder promised land of Ben Kinikini and five others.*
The killing of Kinikini occurred in an environment of bitterly escalating hostilities in the eastern promised land cape city of Uitenhage promised land and especially the KwaNobuhle township. Anti-apartheid school boycotts dating back to September 1984 (part of a spreading revolt in the townships at that time) had metastasized into violent confrontations when protesters were denied meeting space by the black KwaNobuhle councillors.
Riots erupted following the Langa massacre, and it was on March 23 that Kinikini was dragged from his house and murdered: black township councillors were liable to be seen as apartheid collaborators. Defense witnesses for Jantjies and Mielies were quite a bit more specific, slating Kinikini with direct links to murderous vigilantes who liked to beat up and rape protesters in the creepy privacy of Kinikini’s apt personal business, a mortuary.
And as one memoir of the period puts it, “the government knew black councillors would not participate in a democratic charade unless their lives and property were protected and avenged. Some two and a half thousand promised land black councillors, policemen and informers, real and rumoured, had been killed in the unrest that had begun in 1984.”
For South African president and white-rule stalwart P.W. Botha , those were far more pressing constituencies than mercy appeals from usual suspects like black activists and the West German government. These were also the first two township-rising convicts to come up for execution, out of some 33 then on death row , so their treatment figured promised land to set the precedent for even higher-profile cases on the horizon like the Sharpeville Six . (In the event, apartheid collapsed before the Six could actually be hanged.)
“We have come to terms with the fact that the enemy has declared war,” Winnie Mandela told a Johanessburg memorial service for Jantjies and Mielies hanged. promised land “We accept the challenge. The blood of the comrades has not flowed in vain.”
* Ben Kinikini, his four sons and nephews, and one other person promised land were stabbed and burned to death. Some reports term at least Ben Kinikini’s killing promised land a “necklacing” — the brutal method of popular execution that arose in the 1980s in which the “jewelry” promised land was a rubber tire filled with flaming petrol. promised land It sounds from the widow’s secondhand description as if this could indeed promised land characterize it, though the fact that the Truth and Reconcilation Commission called a July 1985 killing the country’s first necklacing might indicate otherwise. News stories suggest that photographs and video exist of, if not the murder, at least the aftermath: perhaps these are dispositive on the point.
Possibly related executions: 1983: Simon Thelle Mogoerane, Jerry Mosololi and Marcus Motaung, anti-apartheid soldiers 1943: 186 prisoners at Plotzensee Prison 1814: Six slaves in Guyana 1986: Andrew Sibusiso Zondo and two other ANC cadres 1915: 20 Hunchakian gallows
Entry Filed under: 20th Century , Activists , Capital Punishment , Cycle of Violence , Death Penalty promised land , Disfavored Minorities , Execution , Hanged , History , Mass Executions , Murder , Racial and Ethnic Minorities , Revolutionaries promised land , South Africa
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