Hard Line

Three hangings spark a furor

Ten minutes after a chilly dawn at Pretoria's Central Prison, five men stepped up to five gallows, accompanied only by a hangman, a physician and a prison official. At a signal from the official, the hangman pulled a single lever, springing five trapdoors. Church bells tolled in the black ghetto of Soweto 40 miles away, while cries of anguish and indignation reverberated around the world.

Two of the men executed were common murderers. The others—Thello S. Mogoerane, 23; Jerry Mosololi, 25; and Marcus Motaung, 27—were guerrillas of the outlawed African National Congress (ANC), the black resistance movement dedicated to toppling South Africa's white supremacist government. Despite ANC claims that the trio deserved to be treated as prisoners of war for their part in attacks that killed four policemen in 1979 and 1981, the South African courts handed down criminal convictions. In the international outcry that followed the convictions, the European Community, the United Nations Security Council, more than 50 U.S. Congressmen and Senators, and hundreds of other groups and individuals sent pleas to Pretoria for clemency.

South African courts have condemned to death eleven ANC members since the congress formed its military wing in 1961. Last week's hangings were the first since 1979, however, when ANC Member Solomon Mahlangu was executed for his role in a Johannesburg gunfight in which two whites were killed. The executions emphasize South Africa's hard antiterrorism line in the aftermath of an ANC bomb attack on air force headquarters in Pretoria last month. The blast killed 19 people and injured 200.

The government last week commuted the death sentences of three other ANC guerrillas on the ground that their attacks had caused no fatalities. But that show of moderation was all but eclipsed by the hangings, which were a grim reminder to South Africa's 21 million blacks of the glaring inequities in the country's justice: of the 100 people executed in South Africa last year, only one was white.

Indeed, far from deterring ANC activities, the hangings are likely to bring increased violence. This week marks the seventh anniversary of the riots that began in Soweto in June 1976 over a government regulation requiring the use of the Afrikaans language in the schools. Over a period of 16 months, 700 people died. Amid the heightened racial tensions accompanying that anniversary, many South African blacks will be mindful of the message sent by the mother of Jerry Mosololi on the eve of his death: "Go well, my son. You must know the struggle will not end even after your death."