An excursion to the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Facility to see the gallows was an eye-opening insight into our past.
- Wits Journalism 2026 class visited the Gallows museum in Pretoria and met the unexpected
- Visiting the gallows was an unsettling yet needed confrontation with our South African history
- A journey through the disheartening and silencing reality of the gallows
Visiting this facility was not simply an academic excursion, it was an encounter with a past that still deeply affects our present day. Stepping into an archive of South Africa’s past, which can seem distant. Yet, beneath the silence that lingered around my colleagues was something far heavier, a tension that seemed to wait, like the moment before a floor gives way.
Before the tour, I understood the prison as a historical site tied to South Africa’s complex legal and political history, particularly during apartheid, whereby 3500 executions, including political prisoners, took place. I arrived expecting to observe that history, to engage with it intellectually as part of an academic experience. That illusion collapsed the moment I stood before the gallows. In that instant, history ceased to be abstract instead, it became immediate, intimate, and deeply unsettling. I encountered a space where silence itself carried meaning, where absence spoke as loudly as presence. I began to realise that this was not merely a site of memory, but a confrontation with the unsettling realities of justice, power, and their consequences.
The gallows themselves were stark and unembellished, almost deceptively ordinary. There was no dramatic spectacle, just wood, metal, and the heavy stillness of rooms that seemed to absorb sound. Yet the simplicity of the structure amplified its meaning.
As the guide explained how executions were carried out, the space began to feel suffocating, as though the walls held echoes of final breaths and unspoken words. The chapel, which was ironically no place of comfort. The fifty- two steps leading up to final breaths, the trapdoor right by my feet, silent and unmoving, symbolised a terrifying finality. Standing there, seeing the names and pictures on the walls of the individuals who had occupied that space. Seeing the Vulindlela family, seeing Solomon Mahlangu’s last words plastered above the door, I thought about their fear, their resistance, their humanity. The morgue fridges that stored unappreciated human life.
Critically reflecting on the experience, the gallows emerged as more than a mechanism of execution. They symbolised the authority of a state capable of determining who deserved to live or die. In the context of South Africa’s apartheid history, this power becomes even more troubling. The justice system was not neutral. It was deeply entangled with racial oppression and political control. The gallows thus stand as a reminder of how legal structures can be used to legitimise injustice. They embody a form of institutional violence that dehumanised individuals, reducing them to subjects of punishment rather than recognising their inherent dignity.
Even in a post-apartheid society committed to human rights, the legacy of such spaces lingers, challenging us to reflect on how justice should be defined and practised. Walking away from the prison, I carried with me a profound sense of unease but also a deeper awareness. Some histories are not meant to be comfortable. They are meant to confront us, to unsettle us, and to ensure that we remember the cost of the freedom we celebrate today and to never allow the floor to fall away beneath our humanity again.
FEATURED IMAGE: A portrait of Kamogelo Lesabe. Photo: Alaistair Russell
RELATED STORIES:
- Wits Vuvuzela, SLICE: The filtered past: why our history education needs the hard truth, April 2026
- Wits Vuvuzela, Walking Through History:Experiencing the Apartheid Museum on Human Rights Day , March 2025
- Wits Vuvuzela, REVIEW: Apartheid explored ‘between the cracks , May 2025
