In November 1980 three young freedom fighters, Petrus Lubisi, Ncimbithi Mashigo and Naphtali Manana, were sentenced to death for attacking a South African police station.
They were Petrus Lubisi (21), Ncimbithi Mashigo (20) and Naphtali Manana (24). They were incarcerated in one of Pretoria’s dungeons awaiting a final appeal.
In November 1980 the Pretoria Three, all members of the South African liberation movement the African National Congress, were sentenced to death by the Pretoria Supreme Court They had been accused of high treason, membership of the ANC (a banned organisation), murder, and, with six others, with attempted murder. All nine were found not guilty of murder. The Pretoria Three were found guilty of participating in a raid against the Soekmakaar police station, which the apartheid court judged to be an act of high treason and attempted murder. The judge ignored the fact that no one was killed. He sentenced them to death.
Naphtali Manana, Ncimbithi Lubisi, Petrus Mashigo, and six others were charged in January 1980 with treason, attempted murder, and terrorism in incidents including the attack on the Soekmakaar Police Station and the siege at the Silverton branch of the Volkskas Bank. Manana was tried in the Pretoria Supreme Court and found guilty of high treason because he was an active member of the ANC, he had received military training overseas, and had returned to South Africa to commit acts of sabotage. The charges in connection with the Silverton bank siege were dropped. Manana, Lubisi, and Mashigo were sentenced to death while the six other co-accused received sentences of 10 to 20 years imprisonment.
The Pretoria Three are part of the Soweto generation. They saw their classmates gunned down by the apartheid police as students peacefully protested against teaching in Afrikaans, a language they identified with oppression. They concluded that the apartheid regime would never listen to peaceful demands and protests. They recognised that the only way to end the inhuman system of white supremacy was to fight back. They left South Africa with thousands of their classmates to train as freedom fighters.
During the trial, evidence was given that police from the Soekmakaar station were assisting authorities in forced removals of people from the area, and that the police force at the station had been increased to deal with resistance. Press reports in October 1979, at the time of some of the removals, gave accounts of how police with vans and dogs were called in as people resisted, and of a number of families being forced into trucks and taken away.
Giving evidence during the presentation of the defense case, Petrus Mashigo said that the attack on the police station had been intended as an “armed propaganda” attack in protest of the forced removal of black residents in the area, and to demonstrate that the ANC sympathised with them.
When the sentences were handed down, ANC President Oliver Tambo, appealed in the Hague for world pressure to commute the sentences. International reactions included appeals from the United Nations and the British Labour Party. On April 7, 1982, the defendants’ appeal failed in the Bloemfontein Appeal Court. The last attempt to save Manana’s life, and the lives of Mashigo and Lubisi, would be a petition to the State President for a reprieve. Their death sentences were commuted to life in June 1982. He served his sentence on Robben Island.
