Memorial and Funeral Notice for Cde Theresa Ramashamole
. Memorial: 3 December 2015, 15h00, Sharpeville Community Hall
. Funeral: 5 December 2015, 08h00, Sharpeville Community Hall
Please see the short biography below the notice.
Memorial and Funeral Notices for Cde Theresa Ramashamole.jpg
THERESA RAMASHAMOLA
Imprisoned for Life
(Original biographical information included with her bracelet in 1988)
Theresa Ramashamola was tried in the Pretoria Supreme Court
along with Mojalefa Sefatsa, Reid Mokoena, Oupa Diniso, Duma Khumalo, and
Francis Mokhesi. The five men and one woman, commonly known as the
Sharpeville Six, were charged with the September 1984 murder of Jacob
Dlamini, a Lekoa township councilor. The six were convicted and sentenced
to death in December 1985 for their alleged "association with the crowd"
that killed Dlamini, although the trial judge and appeals court acknowledged
that there was no direct evidence they were involved in the murder.
Dlamini was killed by an angry crowd on the first day of the
Vaal uprising when he refused to join a protest march against rent increases
and instead pulled out a gun and fired on the demonstrators. Thousands of
people were involved in the protest and at least one hundred people
participated in the attack on Dlamini. The appeal court ruled that as part
of the crowd, the six were responsible for Dlamini's death even though their
own actions did not cause it.
Theresa was accused of inciting the crowd to kill Dlamini and
not of participating in the attack herself. A single unnamed witness, who
the defense described as unreliable, said he overheard her saying, 'He's
shooting, let's kill him' when Dlamini opened fire on the crowd.
Ramashamola denied this. She said she had attended part of the march - in
fact she was hit on the head by a police rubber bullet earlier the same
morning. However, the crowd outside Dlamini's house was dispersed by police
using teargas and it was only later that he was attacked and killed.
In November 1984, when Ramashamola was arrested, she was
stripped and tortured with electric shocks. She suffered further injury
during the course of the trial when her arm was broken in a police vehicle.
A number of co-accused also suffered torture before and during the trial.
The state's evidence linking the accused to the scene of the
killing was weak and contradictory. The unreliability of this evidence was
a subject raised by the defense both in the trial and on appeal. In
particular, one state witness who implicated two of the accused,
subsequently made a statement to a solicitor saying that police torture
forced him to give false evidence.
International public pressure from December 1985 to November
1988 played a significant role in delaying the execution of the Sharpeville
Six. The United Nations Security Council called on South Africa to commute
the death sentences of the Six, saying the matter had caused international
condemnation. Appeals for clemency had been made over the 3 years Theresa
and the others were on death row, by UN Secretary General Perez de Cuellar,
President Reagan, British Prime Minister Thatcher, West German Chancellor
Kohl, French Prime Minister Chirac, and Amnesty International. The
conservative Daily Telegraph of Britain said that to hang six people merely
for having been in the vicinity of the murder was not retribution, but the
same crime six times over.
Although he had turned down clemency before, South African
President P.W. Botha commuted the death sentences of the Sharpeville Six on
November 23, 1988. The group instead will serve prisoner terms ranging from
18 to 25 years. Theresa Ramashamola was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment
and is currently the woman serving the longest sentence in South Africa.
Theresa was born in Sharpeville in 1960. In fact, her mother,
Mrs. Julia Ramashamola was part of the huge crowd that converged on the
Sharpeville police station on March 21, 1960. The demonstration was part of
a campaign of peaceful defiance intended to end the pass laws, which
regulated the movement of blacks. The police opened fire on the crowd and
69 people were killed and 186 wounded; many of them shot in the back. Mrs.
Ramashamola, three months pregnant with Theresa was uninjured. Twenty-four
years later in Sharpeville, on September 3, 1984, her daughter was struck on
the head by a rubber bullet as she took part in a protest against rent
increases.
___________
The source of this biographical information is from International Defence
and Aid Fund's bi-monthly publication, Focus, No74, 1988, I.D.A.F.'s New
Notes, No.35, 1988, and an article in the New York Times, July 13, 1988. We
appreciate their permission to use this material.
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