In the Shadow of Sharpeville: Apartheid and Criminal Justice

The authors take a scalpel to South Africa's system of criminal justice during the Apartheid era. They focus on the case of the Sharpeville Six to analyse how criminal justice was used to make convictions easy to secure. Analysing the technicalities of the criminal law, as well as the quality of evidence and judicial reasoning in the case against the Six, Parker and Mokhesi-Parker also convey vividly through letters from death row, the sense these people made of their impending executions and how an international campaign to save their lives succeeded with only 18 hours to spare.

Acknowledgements - A Note on the First Person - Introduction - White Rule and Black Resistance - The Law and the State - Apartheid's Criminal Law - Judges and Torture - The Trial of the Sharpeville Accused - The Prosecution Case - How the Defence Replied - The Judge's Contribution - The Nature of the Judgement - The Sentence of Death - The Record of the Appellate Division - Gaol and Death Row - The Families and their Pain - The Fight for Justice - Conclusion and Epilogue - List of Abbreviations - Notes - Maps