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S. African Convicts Seek Exoneration for Apartheid-Era Crime
by Anita Powell
Fusi Mofokeng and Tshokolo Mokoena spent 19 years in South African
prison for a crime both swear they did not commit, and for which legal
experts say there is little compelling evidence.
Despite being out of prison now, the two men say they still are not
free, more than two decades after a judge told them they would "rot in
jail" for allegedly plotting a crime that ended with the death of one
policeman and left another paralyzed.
The soft-spoken friends say they watched with heavy hearts as others
who confessed to the crime were pardoned and had their names cleared as
part of South Africa's post-apartheid [1]Truth and Reconciliation
Commission.
The two have steadfastly maintained their innocence - something that
didn't allow them to participate in the commission, in which thousands
of South Africans admitted to crimes and were given amnesty.
They were only paroled in 2011, after a legal battle, and say now they
are on a mission to have their records cleared.
Their story is a long one, and legal experts say it may not be an
isolated case of miscarried justice during South Africa's turbulent
apartheid era.
''Imprisoned amid claims of innocence
The year was 1992, and South Africa's apartheid system was in its death
throes. Mofokeng and Mokoena were best friends in Bethlehem, a small
town in the crosshairs of several political groups, including the
once-banned African National Congress.
On April 2 of that year, a van carrying ANC members was stopped by
police. Several men in the van opened fire, killing one policeman and
paralyzing another. One of the men in the van was Mofokeng's
brother-in-law, and the two had seen each other the day before.
That, said Mofokeng, was enough of a link to convince police to arrest
him for plotting with his brother-in-law -- and then to arrest Mokoena,
who had visited Mofokeng that day.
Based on the testimony of one witness, the two were convicted to life
in prison for conspiring in a plot that led to the policeman's death.
They were convicted of murder, conspiracy and attempted murder.
At the time, they said, the other suspects protested and said Mofokeng
and Mokoena were not involved. Mofokeng said the one witness who spoke
against them later visited him in prison and apologized, saying he was
threatened by police and forced to testify.
The judge was unstinting, however, and Mokoena said he told them they
would "rot in jail" for the rest of their lives.
''Mofokeng was 25; Mokoena was 30 and had a wife and young daughter.
His wife later divorced him, saying she couldn't continue to be married
to "a man with no future."
"I agreed," he said, and gave her permission for the divorce.
Mofokeng said he couldn't believe what was happening.
"It was very difficult to accept that I'm in prison for life... for a
crime I did not commit," he said. "It was very difficult to accept the
sentence itself. I think it took me more than seven years to accept
that I'm in prison. And that led to me to fall under depression. I was
severely depressed."
The men continued to protest their conviction and maintain their
innocence. Both said that at no point in their nearly two-decade prison
term did they ever question their innocence.
They were finally freed in 2011 after a legal effort led by the [2]Wits
Justice Project, an investigative journalism project at the University
of the Witwatersrand. Ruth Hopkins, who works with the project, said
those who investigated their case were wholly convinced.
"I think they're completely innocent," she said. "I believe them, when
they say they didn't commit that crime, and they were just at the wrong
time at the wrong place."
She said it's hard to know how many similar cases there are in South
Africa, but that the Wits Justice Project gets many letters from
prisoners who say they were wrongly convicted under the unfair
apartheid system.
Released into a new South Africa
''Mofokeng and Mokoena walked out of prison on April 2, 2011, exactly
19 years after that fateful day.
It was a surreal homecoming. The two men, who are black, were trapped
in a veritable time capsule during one of South Africa's most turbulent
periods in history.
They heard about the 1994 election that saw South Africa get its first
black president, Nelson Mandela. They heard about black men and women
gaining wealth, status and equality.
But in prison, those advances didn't matter. Color lines remained firm
there.
"We were going through a very difficult stage, as the prison warders
themselves were divided, the whites and the blacks," Mofokeng said.
"So they used to take their anger [out] on prisoners, assaulting them
on a daily basis for minor things. Nobody was really paying attention
to prisoners inside prisons in South Africa. The conditions in prison
were unbearable, really. The situation was the same, whether we are now
in democracy or still in apartheid. It took years for change to come
inside prisons."
When they emerged, it also took a while to absorb how much the world
had changed. Mokoena had to ask a young relative to show him how to use
his mobile phone. And when Mofokeng was invited to an event at a fancy
Johannesburg hotel, he could not believe his eyes.
"Mingling with whites there, sitting around one table was a bit
difficult for us," he said. "Because we are not used to sit[ting] with
white people at one table. In the apartheid years we were not allowed
to sit together with whites in one place. So it was very difficult.
Yes, we are aware that changes took place, but practically it was very
difficult."
"I always thought that somebody would come and move us," he said with a
laugh.
But even now, they say, they're not truly free - they're convicted
felons on parole.
The men asked to meet in a mall in southern Johannesburg. To get there,
they had to notify the local police they were leaving their small town
of Bethlehem. They had to report to police when they arrived in
Johannesburg. If they don't obey these rules, they face arrest.
It's awfully reminiscent, Mokoena says, of the apartheid-era "pass
laws" that restricted non-whites from traveling freely.
"No, I am not free," he said. "Because I am still under the door of
correctional services, because anything I do, they must know. They come
to my house, to sign, I must after two months go to their office....
I'm not free."
Around them, men and women of all colors patronize the mall. We three
sit together at a restaurant and eat the exact same meal: chicken with
vegetables and rice. Even that, people of different colors eating the
same food, was unheard of during their early prison years, where black
inmates got inferior rations.
Looking back and ahead
At a nearby table sits Mofokeng's brother-in-law, who was pardoned in
2000 and released. He now has no criminal record.
He's one of thousands of South Africans who participated in the
post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission and sought amnesty
for crimes they admitted to. Mofokeng and Mokoena said they couldn't
participate in that process, because they refused to admit to a crime.
Instead, they have applied to have their records cleared and are
seeking reparations for their imprisonment.
Both men say they feel no anger toward their nation, the courts or even
the wardens who mistreated them.
"I've realized that to harbor anger within me is going to destroy me,"
said Mofokeng, who used his time in prison to get a degree in adult
education. "I need to accept that that thing happened to my life, and
find a way of dealing with that and accept so I can be able to move
forward with my life. Without doing that, I was going to die. I was
going to kill myself by not accepting that bad thing happened."
But one emotion he allows himself is a measure of regret. He regrets,
for example, that he has never had children. He regrets that he has had
to wait two decades to marry the woman he loved as a young man. He
regrets that he works a low-paying job and doesn't have a pension or
any savings. And he regrets that his brothers and parents died while he
was in prison, and that his old friends largely moved on.
"I think I would have been very far by now, with life," he said. "As I
compare myself with my friends, those who used to be very close to me,
they are very far with life. They have a lot of things that I don't
have today. I think I could have achieved a lot of things in life, if
given a chance."
He said has no regret, however, about standing by his innocence.
"You cannot mix lies with the truth. The truth will always come on
top," he said. "I always thought at the end of the day, we'll be free.
And it happened."
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[3]http://www.voanews.com/content/south_africa_convicts_see_exoneration
_for_apartheid_era_crime/1593885.html
References
1. http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/
2. http://witsjusticeproject.com/
3. http://www.voanews.com/content/south_africa_convicts_see_exoneration_for_apartheid_era_crime/1593885.html