‘Sharpeville 6’ Get 4-Week Stay of Execution

PRETORIA, South Africa — A Supreme Court judge today granted a four-week stay of execution for the “Sharpeville Six,” blacks whose scheduled hangings Friday prompted a massive international clemency campaign.

Shortly before the court hearing began, a car bomb exploded outside a courthouse and police station 25 miles away in Krugersdorp. The blast killed three black men, one of them a policeman, and injured 16 people.

Black leaders had warned that the hangings might provoke violence, although there was no immediate evidence linking the blast to the Sharpeville case.

Justice W. J. Human, who sentenced the five men and one woman to death three years ago, said there was evidence that a key prosecution witness had perjured himself during the trial.

Scores of people in the courtroom, almost all black, burst into applause when Human announced his decision. Several hundred more people on the steps outside cheered, raised clenched fists and sang freedom songs when they heard the news.

Convicted in Murder of Black

The six were convicted of complicity in the 1984 mob murder of a black town councilor during anti-apartheid riots, even though there was no direct evidence that they directly contributed to the victim’s death.

President Reagan and the leaders of Great Britain, France, Italy, West Germany, the European Community, the United Nations, and many international and domestic religious, labor and political groups have called on Botha to grant clemency. The governments of Japan and Greece today announced they too asked South Africa to reconsider its decision.

The judge based his decision on a defense application questioning the reliability of testimony by prosecution witness Joseph Manete. Human cited a May 11, 1985, statement in which Manete said he had been forced by police to identify two of the accused as having been at the scene.

Human said he was never made aware of that statement and, therefore, did not allow the defense to cross-examine Manete on that point.

“If Manete’s statement had been available I would have allowed cross-examination,” Human said.