Tribute to hero who challenged apartheid judicial system

Mxolisi Petane, a retired SANDF major-general who died recently, was a little-known struggle hero who took on the apartheid judicial system in a ground-breaking case that paved the way for the ANC to be recognised more as a liberation organisation than a terrorist movement, reports Legalbrief. Paying tribute to Petane, senior Cape Advocate Michael Donen, who represented him in the pioneering case, S v Petane, in 1988, said the MK soldier had faced the death sentence for placing a car bomb outside a shopping centre in Parow, and shooting a policeman. Donen said although Petane's best chance of survival was to try to assuage the judge, he instead wanted to claim prisoner of war status as his defence, as adopted by the UN's Geneva Convention. Petane therefore refused to plead to charges of terrorism put to him, telling the court that the indictment 'failed to disclose that it was an apartheid state', Donen said. 'It ruled SA's people through the barrel of a gun. It used terror to frighten them into submission to white majority rule. The state and its judicial arm were the terrorists,' Donen had argued on Petane's behalf. Their defence went further, saying Petane did not recognise the jurisdiction of an apartheid court and asked the court to consider his plea for prisoner of war status. The court did so, sparking a legal debate that was watched closely in SA and internationally. Petane failed in his bid because, as Donen said, no apartheid judge could admit that the state and its judiciary were illegal and that the ANC's armed struggle was justified. Petane, however, used the space offered by the court to show the world 'who the real terrorists were'. He was sentenced to imprisonment on Robben Island and joined the SANDF after 1994.