Who Will Sing for Theresa

There is no clear image of Theresa Ramashamola, only a small, blurred snapshot, and it seems unlikely that there will ever be one, although she is only twenty-four. For soon she will be 'hanged by the neck until she is dead', and even if urgent pleas for clemency should succeed, the best she can expect is imprisonment for life. In South Africa it is prohibited to take pictures of prisoners. Theresa Ramashamola is the only woman among forty-four people now on death row in Pretoria, awaiting execution for overtly political crimes. She is one of a group known as the Sharpeville Six, five men and one woman sentenced to death for the killing (it is alleged) of Khuzwayo Dlamini, a local councillor in Sharpeville. Theresa has now spent more than two years on death row, and time has run out. The final appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected in December 1987. She is the first woman in South Africa to be sentenced

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