SOUTH AFRICA: The Old Man & the Gallows

In the bloody 1906 uprising of the conquered Zulus, a 26-year-old Zulu warrior named Mdhlani Ngcobo remained loyal to the whites and was rewarded by being made head man of his village. Mdhlani married, prospered, begat children, grew old, respected and respectable. But one son, Clifford, became a thief and a gangster. Three years ago, son Clifford, all his bravado gone, crept into his father’s hut. He whispered that he had murdered a white Durban policeman, and blubbered: “They will hang me.”

But the police never tracked down the murderer. Mdhlani kept his son’s secret, after first pledging him to mend his evil ways. Soon Clifford was back to his old tricks: armed with three revolvers he terrorized the good people of the villages.

And so Mdhlani went out alone into the veld, stayed there three days and three nights, praying to God for guidance. When he returned on the third night, he went straight to Clifford’s hut, took one of Clifford’s three pistols and killed his sleeping son. Then he surrendered to the police. In Durban police court, he said: “I shot my son because he killed a white man. Do what you will.” Mdhlani was sentenced to hang.

Then, in a land where a Negro’s life has little value, a strange event occurred. Led by Anne McTavish. a white Durban city councilor, scores of white women, leaders of their communit)-, went into the city streets and set up little tables with placards reading: “Save this old man from the gallows.” In three days they collected 17,000 white signatures pleading with South Africa’s Governor General Ernest George Jansen to reprieve 72-year-old Head Man Mdhlani. It was the first time in South Africa’s history that so many whites had united to save a colored man. Impressed, Governor General Jansen promised to review the case.