All was not lost when Robert's appeal against his death sentences was rejected.

There was still a final avenue which many condemned prisoners, mainly for want of good legal advice, rarely exploited.

However, though Roshan Dehal had enough savvy to know about this option, Robert was reluctant to heed lawyer's counsel that they pursue it.

As an activist who had taken up arms against the white minority government, the idea of appealing to its president for clemency did not sit well in his mind.

At the time, he had been joined on death row by other MK guerrillas like Mthetheleli Mncube, Mzondeleli Nondula and Sibusiso Masuku.

" You had twenty one days (after the rejection of the appeal) to submit the clemency application," Robert explains. "To ask (then state president PW) Botha for clemency was very difficult. I had to come to terms with that because the other MK guys had not had their (appeal) case heard yet, so they could say they would never ask for it."

The lawyer helped him by securing an extension for the submission of the clemency application.

"What he did he said there's clemency papers being prepared, but he is looking further; investigating psychological evaluation (of McBride), and they agreed and granted his request. In a sense it helped me out a very tight situation."

Soon after learning of the Court's decision to reject Robert's appeal, Paula and Doris left for Lusaka, Zambia.

They were going to confer with Robert's leaders in the ANC.

The two women met the ANC leaders in the Lusaka home of then head of the organisation's international affairs (and now president of the ANC and of the republic of South Africa) Thabo Mbeki.

The leaders included the ANC's then president Oliver Tambo; MK chief of staff Chris Hani and Jacob Zuma; now deputy president of South Africa.

"Before that my contact with the ANC had been through Rashid and Hassim Ibrahim (alias 'Georgie')," says Paula. "I phoned Tambo - the easiest of them. I felt like I was speaking to someone who just felt the same as me, who had an understanding of the thing, and who said whatever was necessary must be done, it doesn't matter."

She was most impressed with the attitude of Hani.

"Basically, I said to him, we are faced with a situation where Robert may be given a notice of execution and given a seven day period, and we have to take extreme measures in that instant. He says, 'nothing is extreme to us'. Hani I knew that about him. Even on issues like this whole thing of renouncing of violence (when Robert applied for clemency); it was Hani who said he could renounce it publicly. 'I don't mind if he denounces the organisation, it doesn't matter what he does'."

When Paula returned to the country, she communicated with the judge who had sentenced Robert to death again.

She asked Judge Shearer to support Robert's application for clemency by writing a letter to the State President.

This time she spoke to Shearer telephonically.

In a subsequent letter to a Zimbabwean supporter of the campaign to spare her partner's life, Judy Todd, she expanded on this exchange with Shearer.

Judy was the daughter to former prime minister of (then) Southern Rhodesia Garfield Todd.

She was offering material and emotional support to her.

"At one stage I phoned Douglas Shearer about Robert's case as I felt I wanted him to explain to me how he could live with himself after passing the death sentence," Ms Leyden wrote in the letter. "The judgement on extenuation in the case was unusual as there was a dissenting judgement - Shearer and Brian Leslie (an Assessor) found no extenuation while the other Assessor Prof. Milton found that there were extenuating circumstances and he argued against the imposition of the death penalty.

"When I spoke to Shearer, he said to me that the case had upset him as he could see that Robert was a highly intelligent and sensitive young man. However, he felt bound the by the restraints of the law which made the death penalty mandatory in a case such as this. After a very long conversation, he told me what he had done (and I quote) was to have 'written what I consider to be the most strongly worded report in S.A. judicial history, recommending to the State President that Robert be granted clemency as there are factors extraneous to the definition of extenuation which apply in this case'."

As Robert fought for his life on death row, his former lover and co-Accused Greta Apelgren was fighting against losing her mind at Klerksdorp female prison.

After her physical clash African comrades who had got embittered against her because she would not play along and get involved in lesbian relationship with them, she was put in isolation by the prison authorities.

There was no one to talk to her.

Her only chance to engage in conversation with anyone coming once a month; when her parents came to visit.

"Sometimes I do cry when I think of much of the (solitary) confinement stuff," Greta relates in an interview conducted more than a decade after her claustrophobic experience. "Say maybe a smell of a drain reminds me of the smell of prison; that would bring back all those memories. Or watching a film about prisoners. It would take me back."

From her cell in the basement, she could hear the animated chatter of her comrades in their communal cell upstairs.

"I used to hear them, and they used to sing on the top. I couldn't see them, but I could hear them. (The big activist) would scream out abuse at me. I didn't mind that, at least I knew she's there. For two or three months, there was this whole sound."

Then there was silence.

"I asked, 'how come the people are so quiet? Don't they come even come into the courtyard any more?' She (the female warder) said, 'no, they've been transferred back to Kroonstad where all the political prisoners used to be'. I asked, 'have they gone just to visit?'. 'No, they requested to be transferred. They said they don't like to be in this prison; they want to go back to the political prisoners because it's a better prison'."

She lost it when she heard that her comrades were no longer with her in Klerksdorp prison.

Though they had had a fall out, she thought, as fellow travellers in the liberation struggle, at least they could have sent down a message to her bidding her goodbye.

"All I could say was, 'how can they go and leave me behind? Why am I still here? Why didn't you take me?' She said, 'no, why should you go?', and I said 'why not?' I couldn't believe my comrades left me behind - the fact that they left me and they knew I was in the basement. I went completely mad. I actually scraped the paint off the wall. I screamed and screamed, (but) no one could hear me. I was climbing the wall.

"I was out of my mind, as if I could scratch and climb up and get out and to Kroonstad. I was so mad. I felt abandoned. I felt like I was thrown in the hole and left there. Not by the warders, but by my own comrades. I could not rationalise it until a good couple of days, and I came down to earth and understood they must have had deal then or whatever."

Outside, the struggle to save her son's life was beginning to take its toll on Doris McBride.

She had now moved to Eldorado Park in Johannesburg, and was visiting her son on death row regularly.

Most of the times, she drove down to Pretoria with her young grandson Derrick Robert.

Bonnie and Gwyneth jokingly called Derrick junior their mother's "handbag".

Doris was with her grandson when she suffered her first stroke.

Bonnie, the child's mother, was at their Eldorado Park house.

"We had a Toyota by then, 'XR3', the first time she was driving that car," Bonnie reports. "Then she started seeing double. She had Derrick in the car. She could see something is wrong; something was happening. Because of the child, she just wanted to get home. She was coming back from visiting Robert on a Pretoria road, which was very bad. All the way to 'Eldos' (Eldorado Park), she was not well. Fortunately, as she pulled into the yard, Auntie Girly was there, and she said she's not feeling well. She put the child in a cot."

When Doris came back, her younger sister made her a cup of tea and the two went and sat in the lounge.

"She (Doris) was very red, so I said to her, 'are you okay?'" Girly remembers. "She said to me, 'I don't know'. I said to her, 'how are you feeling? Take off your blouse'. So she says, 'no, I'm not feeling hot, I drove most of the way with one eye - the one eye seems to be blind'. So I said, 'which eye?' It was the left eye."

Girly phoned Mali Fakir and asked her bring a doctor.

"From there now, Ali (Mali's husband) got my sister to the car and took her to hospital there (in Lenasia), 'Lenmed'. For about three days she was like in a coma."

* In May 1988, Robert was joined on death row by "the Messina 2" - Mthetheleli Mncube and Mzondeleli Nondula.

The two were ANC combatants who were captured in Messina after crossing the border from Zimbabwe.

Mncube's legendary status had reached Robert at "Beverly Hills" after he had got engaged in a heavy gun-fire battle with his captors.

Before Mthetheleli and Mzondeleli arrived on death row, Robert was eagerly looking forward to meeting them.

Unfortunately, the feeling was not mutual.

The first of the pair whom Robert met was Mthetheleli.

The two men were in the shower.

"When I saw him, I went to him - you are not allowed to talk in the shower -, I whispered to him that 'I'll write you a letter'," says Robert. "I remember moving closer to him, and they (the warders) were all watching us. The place is tense. I showed him 'everything is okay'; smiled. He was very cautious and suspicious. I don't know why. Maybe there were right, I was wrong to be too trusting. Always he was suspicious. He would never trust me."

Robert was deflated by his comrade's response.

"To me, it was an honour to meet them. The guys never opened up to me. I thought maybe he was made like that because of his experience (when he was captured), and I was always trying to keep the relationship. I was always rebuffed."

Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), the non-government organisation which was founded in 1987, was central to the campaign against the death penalty in South Africa.

Before LHR started taking an interest in the plight of inmates at Pretoria Central prison's death row early in 1988, it was an open season for the hangman.

"They literally had a free hand," says Paula. "That's what the LHR can take credit for. It was making sure that everybody exhausted his rights; it was giving hope to people inside. That there are people who will actually listen to you. (That) when you get a notice of execution, it's not the end of the world. Actually, we can fight it. Before it was like, notice of execution, you get hanged. Some people didn't even get seven days' notice. That's how the prison used to operate. You'd have people on four days' notice. Just because they literally had a free hand to do what they wanted."

The figures support her.

1980 - Executions: 130 Reprieves: 27

1981 - Executions: 95 Reprieves: 36

1982 - Executions: 100 Reprieves: 26

1983 - Executions: 90 Reprieves: 40

1984 - Executions: 115 Reprieves: 35

1985 - Executions: 137 Reprieves: 35

1986 - Executions: 121 Reprieves: 22

1987 - Executions: 164 Reprieves: 20

1988 - Executions: 117 Reprieves: 49

1989 - Executions: 53 Reprieves: 66

Brian Currin, LHR's co-founder and the organisation's national director then, credits Paula for the eventual dismantling of the gallows.

"Paula played a significant role in motivating me - pushing me to play the role I played," says the trained lawyer. "I really believe that, if it hadn't been for Paula, there would have been more executions. I think there's a good chance that there would not even have been a moratorium on executions."

Brian grew up in the East Rand town of Benoni.

His political views were honed at Stellenbosch university, where he was studying law.

"I got involved in the Students' Representative Council (SRC). I was a liberal student there; took up issues. I was told I was a communist. All sorts of things. My involvement was white politics, and it was only when I got involved in (legal) practise in the late seventies that that changed. My first political client was (Father) Smangaliso Mkatshwa (now South Africa's deputy minister of education). He was house arrested in Soshanguve, and I started doing court applications for exemptions and exceptions."

Both Currin and Mkatshwa were Catholics.

Brian practised as an attorney between 1977 and 1987, working as a partner in a legal firm in Pretoria.

"From 1984 onwards, I developed a very busy political-labour practice. It was much safer for a white guy to be involved in political work than a black guy - the guys lived in the townships. I was really probably at that stage - 1984/5/6 - the most active of the political lawyers. I did all the work for the (Catholic) Bishops Conference and for the South African Council of Churches and all these detainees in the townships. I had a group of five to six advocates that worked full-time with me representing them. They would go with me to (Pretoria townships) Hammanskraal, Soshanguve, Mamelodi. All over the country; all over the Northern part."

Early in 1987, he felt he needed to explore another avenue to fight against the injustices of apartheid.

He borrowed money from the South African Catholic Bishops' Conference so that he could leave for overseas.

"I left my job, left everything and left the country for four months and went to North America and raised over one million rand. Came back, set up the LHR November 1987 I set up the office. I employed one person in Pretorius street (in Pretoria); 'Van Erkoms building'. Employed a secretary. Early 1988 I employed a co-director, Peter Motlhe. The thing got going. Eventually, we were about one hundred and twenty people at LHR."

One of the people recruited by Brian to work for LHR in its early stages was Aubrey Lekwane; a short, soft-spoken activist from Irene.

Brian had previously represented Aubrey when he was still attached to the legal partnership in Pretoria.

At the time Lekwane was a student at a technikon in Soshanguve, Technikon Northern Transvaal ("TNT").

"Aubrey Lekwane was my first 'comrade' client. In 1984. It was the first incident of stone-throwing by comrades at the police. Aubrey was on of the group of students at the Soshanguve technikon who went on a riot, and the police were called in, and there was a major confrontation. A big war, and people were shot. One student was killed, and a lot of them were injured."

The white liberal lawyer got into the picture after receiving a call from Father Mkatshwa to represent nineteen students who were arrested by the police during the uprising.

Aubrey matriculated from Vlakfontein Technical high school (in Mamelodi) in 1983.

"During that year, we were advised that we could do well at a technical institution and that should be our direction," he says. "Plus there was a full bursary, and I think I was one of the first black students who pursued technical courses with the aim of teaching. That's how I got to 'TNT'."

At the technikon, he immersed himself in student politics.

"I was in a group of students who were quite involved in organising protests and leading the negotiations on behalf of students. And when the riot police came one day because we were not getting anywhere and there was just like mayhem, I was there with students; trying to leave. Like, we have to retreat. Then I was hit by a teargas canister before it ignited, and my leg just like flopped. I couldn't run. I just remember one funny thing. When two guys carried me over a fence to this house in Soshanguve, I asked them to wait because I thought I lost my private parts. I could not feel them, so I checked and (finding them), said 'let's go'."

Aubrey and a number of his fellow students ended up in detention at Soshanguve police station.

"Then the following day we were informed that there was lawyer who was going to see us. I wasn't sure who contacted the lawyer. It happened to be Brian Currin, and then, during the consultation, he had to get details from each one of us. I informed him where I lived. Then we discovered he is from Irene, and that's where I lived also. That's where our friendship sort of started."

Later, Brian recruited Aubrey to work for LHR.

When Paula met the former student activist in 1988, Aubrey was LHR's regional organiser, manning its Johannesburg office.

He was won over by Paula's suggestion that the LHR take on the death penalty.

"So I asked Paula, 'how do I get to work with you?' I was in Jo'burg. There was the Pretoria office (of LHR), but I wasn't there, and death row is in Pretoria. With my links with Paula, she arranged that I should visit somebody on death row. The first person I visited was Similo Wonce, a young fellow, and he's alive today."

* In her mission to save her lover from the gallows, Paula was driven by the incredible belief that her efforts would not come to naught.

"I never thought that," she maintains. "I can honestly say that. Even at that time - it's not with hindsight -; I really never thought that I won't succeed. I can't explain why. It's just that to me the possibilities were endless of things that could be done."

Though she did leave room for Robert being thrown into "The Pot" after receiving a notice of execution, even then, she earnestly felt it would still be possible to save him.

"I had established a kind of decision that, if the worst came to the worst, we'd have seven days, and then extreme action needs to be taken. That was the closest I ever came to admitting that something could go wrong - was that we might at one stage get to that seven days. But I didn't live thinking he's about to be hanged. I just lived thinking what has to be done next - either stave a bit off; stall the whole process. Do whatever. It's not that there wasn't tension; there wasn't stress. But I just handled it in other ways."

Besides Robert's mother and sisters, the closest people to her during this time were her musician brother John and the friend she first met at the university of Cape Town, Caroline Cullinan.

Both John and Caroline witnessed the almost religious-like devotion with which Paula engaged in keeping alive the love she had found on death row.

Paula was staying with John.

Her brother noticed that her concern was not about Robert only.

She was worried about every inmate on death row.

"It's easy to be simplistic about a thing in the sense that Paul was driven by a personal obsession, and that happened," says John. "She's able to, in her emotional life, it would intersect perfectly with things that she does in her professional life. She wanted to safe Robert because this was the man that she was involved with, and she couldn't bear the thought of life without him. But at the same time it was the general approach on the death penalty, and she worked completely tirelessly on behalf of lots of different people. There's a lot of purity in that, actually."

After his encounter with Paula, Aubrey Lekwane spoke to his boss at LHR about joining the abolitionist struggle.

"I think I played quite a role to persuade Brian Currin to seriously take up death row cases. I remember him saying, 'Aubrey, understand this, as a legal advisor, let's not raise hopes of these people. We should only take those cases which we think there is a case for it'. I remember saying to him that it's a desperate situation and if it can be expressed through the court procedures, let's take every case. And for every case - even if we lose -, as desperate as it is, we are opposed to the death penalty. That's our mission. So let every case haunt those judges - let them be forced to repeat the decision to decline clemency for these people."

The national director of LHR saw merit in Aubrey's argument.

"He actually took that very seriously. Of course I was also persuaded by Paula. I had to persuade Brian."

When Paula and Brian met for the first time, the two warmed up to each other.

She suggested LHR exploit her daily presence on death row to get information on the inmates who were about to be executed.

"He there and there opened the door. In a sense I said I was there everyday, I could get information out, and he said as soon as I got it I must come there; straight after the prison, and they would start investigating. From there really what we started doing was there were two angles: the one of getting the stays of executions and the other was the constant comment - the press file. During those years, we put out a statement every second day or something. We would send stuff to all the foreign missions here; just the kind of propaganda angle on it. As I say LHR took it up immediately and then was very much at the forefront of the abolitionist struggle."

Brian concedes that, until Paula got into the picture, taking on the death penalty was far removed from his mind.

"Funny enough, I remember in Toronto, meeting with the Amnesty International anti-death penalty desk - in 1987, when I was campaigning to raise money. They said to me, 'what is Lawyers for Human Rights going to do about the death penalty?' I said we're not going to do anything about it, that's not the on the top of our agenda."

Aubrey was the first LHR officer to start visiting death row regularly.

The first death row inmate (other than Robert McBride) the LHR official started visiting was a youth from Port Elizabeth, Similo Wonce.

"He was one of the Port Elizabeth group of people who were convicted on 'common purpose' (doctrine). And you started to realise what purpose you could serve by visiting them. He didn't have visitors. I also started to learn very quickly the basics of criminal law - after seven years there, I don't know why I never studied law; but I was too busy, I would never really have had the time -; I advised. I must have drafted hundreds of affidavits."

He started asking Similo a lot about his trial.

"That's how I came to establish that he was under the age of eighteen when he was arrested, and that never came out in the trial before. He's now in Port Elizabeth, I think. I think you want to almost forget - I've never maintained links with him. He was saved."

Another death row inmate whose neck was literally saved because Lekwane started visiting him was an activist from the Pretoria township of Soshanguve, Sibusiso Senela Masuku.

Aubrey had met Brian Currin when he was still a student at a tertiary institution at Soshanguve, Technikon Northern Transvaal ("TNT").

Therefore, when the two young men met, they had common ground.

* On 31 August 1987, Masuku was found guilt for the murder of the Soshanguve policeman and sentenced to death.

The judge found there were no extenuating circumstances and refused him leave to appeal.

One of the first inmates Masuku looked for when he got to Pretoria Central prison's death row was Robert McBride.

He had Derrick in prison when he was en route to Robben Island.

Then, a few months later, Masuku had the most unlikely encounter under the shadow of death.

The frail, short activist vividly recalls his first meeting with Almond Butana Nofemela; a fellow death row inmate.

He met the tall, fair-complexioned prisoner in the shower.

Nofemela knew the password to finding Masuku in the sprawling township of Soshanguve - "Mantolo" ('He who can talk his way out of trouble').

"On death row, everyone knew me as 'Sibusiso'., but he called me 'Mantolo'. I was taken aback. I wondered where he knew me from. When he saw how surprised I was, he laughed."

The former policeman had landed on death row after murdering a farmer in Brits, Jan Hendrik Lourens.

Of course, at the time Masuku did not know this.

Nor did he realise that his association with Nofemela would lead to the unmasking of apartheid hit squads.

"Then he told me, 'Actually, you are lucky, we had long been hunting you down while we were outside. There was a shebeen in Soshanguve called 'Leks'. He asked me, 'do you remember that day when there was a stokvel at 'Leks'? You went into the yard, but somehow we lost you. You went in, bought three pints of beer, but we could not figure out how you then went out of the shebeen'."

Nofemela and his colleagues in the security branch were on a mission to execute Masuku.

"Then I remembered that, on that day, my girlfriend had come over and I followed her out of the shebeen. We went out through another exit. But then I was unaware that I am actually dodging them."

Paula's fortuitous meeting with Aubrey Lekwane early in 1988 was the turning point in her battle against the death penalty in South Africa.

Through Aubrey, she brought Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) on board.

"I remember at some stage Paula had linked up with them because they were the only people who would provide funds," says Robert. "Most of the LHR work was not done like the political guys who got funding from AIDA and the legal aid people. LHR basically was made up of good people like Shucks Sefanyetso, Aubrey Lekwane; people who would go beyond the call of duty and were not interested or obsessed with the availability of fees."

He reckons that is where the success of LHR's fight against the death penalty came from.

"They would actually consult their clients - most lawyers would just look at the papers and, on that basis, go ahead. These guys would spend time. LHR also adopted certain prisoners. They would visit every week. They also started developing good ideas about what's taking place inside the prison."

Then Paula and Aubrey realised the importance of organising the next of kin of the inmates on death row into an organisation so that they could fight for their loved ones as one unit.

They named the structure 'FOPOD' - 'Families of People On Death Row'.

Paula was the central person in FOPOD and the general assault on capital punishment, says Robert.

"She was the anti-death penalty. I am saying that mainly because there were others who felt helpless to do anything. She was the driving force rallying people to actually feel they can do something about things - organising protests in front of these different western embassies and stuff. She was quite a force in getting people organised. Without her these things would not have existed. It's as simple as that. There would have been no reductions in hangings. She was obsessed with fighting this thing."

Other people included Aubrey Lekwane himself; Kethiwe Marais - an activist whose husband Steve Marais was at Pretoria Central prison -; Charlene Smith - a journalist - and Debbie and Irene Thafeni, sisters to Menzi Thafeni; a death row prisoner who was close to Robert.

FOPOD was non-sectarian, and strove to fight for all inmates on death row.

This policy pitted Paula, Aubrey and their other comrades against a number of activists aligned to the UDF.

The UDF-aligned activists later initiated an organisation called "Save the Patriots campaign".

The campaign was started to stop the executions of inmates who were sentenced to death for political offences only.

The feeling was that political activists had no business worrying themselves about prisoners who had landed on death row for "criminal offences".

Paula did not share this sentiment.

"I think it depends on your definition of what's political," she explains. "I just think people need to take a broader look at that. You can sentence someone to a long time in prison or whatever, and you can make mistakes. Or you can put your own value judgement on it as a judge. But at least they can come out in the end. The Guilford 4 - all those people -, their lives were stuffed up, but they are alive and they can live their lives because they are now out of prison.

"The death penalty you can't reverse. And in politics, to be 'political' to me is a world view. Is like how you think your prejudices are - and we all have them in different degrees, and judges certainly have them. And that people can actually go to their death in a very civilised judicial way because of one man's prejudice. That's political to me."

Paula, Aubrey and activists in FOPOD were convinced that even non-political prisoners on death row had to be seen had to be seen "as products of the same system that you are fighting".

"If you are not going to deal with people who've been produced by that system and oppressed by that system, then your politics are abstract," Paula argues.

On death row, Robert also had differences with some of his MK comrades over the right attitude to adopt towards "non-political" inmates.

The MK guerrillas were also reportedly condescending towards "internal" comrades like Menzi Thafeni, who had never been to exile.

"A lot of MK guys who came did not associate with people they regarded as criminals or like Menzi, who was (an internally trained) 'comrade'," says Robert. "They elevated themselves to a level above the other guys. Whilst I could speak and I knew what I'm talking about - I had respect, the whites respected me -, I never put myself higher than the others. I would make jokes that any common person would make. I was also very naughty, Very naughty. I used to be always smuggling - doing something to keep myself busy. They guys liked me because of that played games with the cops and stuff; hide their hats away. If a cops opens the door and puts the key, I take the key out and I don't give it back. Now he's in shit if the white man comes because McBride's got the keys. It's trouble. That's how Menzi came to be close to me,"

He was very enamoured of Menzi, the young activist from the Eastern Cape.

"Jail makes you a crook, but Menzi was honest and straight forward. He'd even tell the older men in jail they mustn't do funny things. He wouldn't be scared to talk. And also, he liked to exercise. To gym. I like to gym inside the cell and after a while, he started 'gyming' also in the night. Then Paula used to travel with his sisters. They stayed somewhere in Fourways (in Johannesburg). She used to pick them up and bring them with. There was that kind of linkage also."

The girlfriends to Mthetheleli Mncube and other MK cadres who were at loggerheads with Robert were also at some stage involved with FOPOD.

Unfortunately, the rift on death row extended to FOPOD outside.

"Their girlfriends outside would threaten and accuse Paula in meetings," Robert recalls. "At one time I believe they brought her to tears with their threats and funny comments. They later disappeared and left the guys in the lurch. Also, they stole money - some of the money we were supposed to get."

The young Menzi Thafeni was disconcerted when he saw his MK heroes at one another's throat.

"Menzi would give me some information, because they would try to turn Menzi against me," says Robert. "He used to give a lot of information to me because he felt that if I did something wrong they must tell me to my face - they mustn't talk behind my back. There was a time when people could see what was going on. Guys like Zonga Mokgatle - speaking to him afterwards. He's from the 'Upington 14'. Upington guys could see what was going on. Kenneth Khumalo, Xolile Yona - those guys I met afterwards. When I met them afterwards, they said they could see what was going on. Also, the other thing with Upington people, because of the way Upington is - where black and brown mix easily -, they are not susceptible to ethnocentric positions."

When Robert had visitors, he was often directed to a glass panelled room which some of the warders had hinted to Paula and Doris that it had recording devices to take down everything that was being said.

He was thus peeved when he learnt that his comrades were of the view that his white girlfriend was a "CIA agent".

"All the rumours going on from other MK guys about me and Paula - the Boers put me in there so that they can tape my conversations because I'm so fucking dangerous in their minds, and my comrades think I'm being put in there because I'm weak - I'm giving information to some white woman who is a C.I.A. agent!"

He thinks the allegations were motivated by racial prejudice.

"Racism; that's all. She was not South African, then they thought she must be C.I.A.. And she's white. She's still got a British passport. Also, they knew that I never spent a lot long time outside the country. Maybe they thought I'm stupid. As an innocent explanation, they wanted to 'protect' my interest also."

Sibusiso Masuku says the allegations about Paula were first made by Mthetheleli Mncube, who claimed to have got the information from "a reliable source".

"Folks did suspect that she's a CIA agent," he concedes. "We couldn't understand why there was such intense campaign on Robert's behalf by the Lawyers for Human Rights. He was getting a lot of support from overseas through his association with her."

Another factor was Robert's high profile in the media relative to theirs, whereas they had much time in MK camps in exile.

Robert had never been to a camp to undergo military training.

Masuku says Robert's application to the State President for clemency was another factor which distanced him from his comrades.

"Initially, we had misgivings about it," says Masuku. "It was as if one is regretting one's actions in the struggle for freedom. It seemed funny. There were also differences on how the warders in prison treated us. They were 'nice' towards him and hard towards us. I cannot say that was because he was Coloured - there were other Coloured prisoners who were treated harshly. LHR played a great role in popularising Robert McBride, giving the impression that he is special among all inmates on death row."

Masuku's misgivings about the LHR notwithstanding, the organisation was destined to save his life.

He got to know Paula through Robert, and thus became one of the inmates whom Aubrey started to visit regularly.

At about the same time, on death row, former Security Branch policeman Almond Nofemela was playing "the riddler" with him.

"One day, when we were quite used to each other, he asked me, 'do you know who killed Griffiths Mxenge?'" Masuku relates his conversations with Almond Nofemela. "I said 'yes'. He asked, 'who?' When I replied 'the Boers' he laughed his lungs out."

At the time, the gruesome death of the Durban ANC-aligned lawyer in November 1981 was still a mystery.

Mxenge was literally butchered.

When his body was found at Umlazi soccer stadium, he had more than thirty stab wounds.

The lawyer's throat was cut and stomach slit open.

When Sibusiso met Nofemela on death row in early in 1988, the police had still not solved the renowned human rights lawyer's death.

However, when Sibusiso tried to probe to find out how much the former SB knew about the matter, Nofemela clammed up.

At a later stage, he told Masuku about the murderous cross-border raids he and his colleagues in the Security Branch used to conduct, hunting down activists belonging to the exiled liberation movements.

Sibusiso suggested that Nofemela spill the beans as that would maybe help save his life.

He offered to organise a meeting between him and Aubrey Lekwane from LHR.

Almond Nofemela - "Kaizer" to his fellow inmates - resisted Sibusiso's pleas that he talk.

He was confident that he would never get hanged.

Masuku noticed that Nofemela enjoyed privileges which other inmates did not have like having contact visits.

Among his regular visitors were two white men who he now knows were Dirk Coetzee and Eugene de Kock.

"The SBs used to have contact visits with him," says Masuku. "He could go to the office of the head of prison to play with the phone. He was not forced to cut his hair, and he could only shave when he felt like it."

Robert was also aware that Nofemela was some kind of a special prisoner.

"There was a time, I think I was going to a visit, and I saw him there with white people," says Robert. "He said it's students from university studying. I'm sure it was de Kock and them coming to see him. I'm sure of that. It was very funny when the story came back, because they were not young whites. The way it was, you'd see this strange thing and just forget about it. I asked Masuku, 'who are these people?' If I remember correctly, my thinking was maybe they were trying to get me. I wasn't thinking about any other story."

Masuku was still battling to get Nofemela to talk when he received his notice of execution - the first of two he received while on death row.

He was transferred from his cell to "The Pot".

"The first time I was in ('The Pot'), I was saved by the fact that I had not applied to the state president for clemency," Masuku explains. "The LHR helped me. I was given fourteen days to apply."

* The Sharpeville Six" became another success of the campaign waged by Paula and the LHR against hangings.

Their lawyer, Prakash Diar, was working very closely with them.

When the six received their notices of execution on 14 March 1988, neither their lawyer nor their families knew that they were about to be hanged.

Word went out through Robert and Paula.

Usually, if Paula had gone to visit her boyfriend in the morning, she would not got back in the afternoon.

However, on that fateful day, she visited him twice.

When she came for the second time, Robert had learnt that the six were in "The Pot".

"Sometime during lunch time," Robert relates. "These guys were 'plucked' from there. Duma Khumalo was in that section, that's how I knew. And Reginald Sefatsa. They took them - I knew they took them when they took Khumalo. When Paula came - she came late, she only had 20/30 minutes' visit -, and I just told her, 'the Sharpeville Six are in 'The Pot', speak to the lawyers and the families since nobody knows.' She left early to sort the thing out. They were informed Monday afternoon and Friday afternoon they were supposed to hang. In effect it's three working days. Usually it's seven days - five working days. With these guys they really wanted to be 'coward' and wanted them to be killed."

John remembers how his sister fought relentlessly to save the six activists.

"Paula's involvement on it became very, very vivid thing for me. She was working late to try and get a stay of execution for the Sharpeville Six. It was a thing of the last minute - from late at night and early in the morning. It was very funny because I remember that night the whole idea of the gallows and state killings and everything became very vivid. I actually had a dream.

"It was the weirdest dream. I was asleep in my bed; my bed was sort of long. You know when you have a dream that you actually think you are awake; you are in your room and all that of stuff. You just dreaming. It was a terrible thing because I woke up and I was lying in my bed. Basically, the end of my bed became like a trap door; a trap door that would open to drop someone down. It was just a weird thing. It was just a very vivid thing, I remember."

Brian Currin also got involved in the battle to stop the hanging of the Sharpeville Six.

He even made a telephone call to the then minister of Justice, Kobie Coetzee.

"We did everything possible, and eventually, I spoke to Kobie Coetzee. At midnight. This was on the last day; the very last day. I still remember listening to the news on my way home after having done all the work in the office - hearing that the executions will take place in the morning. Prakash (Diar; the lawyer of the Six) was talking to me all the time and in collaboration with Prakash, I personally spoke to Kobie Coetzee at about one o'clock midnight."

Prakash's application for a stay of execution of the six was successful.

In 1988, thanks to campaigns led by the LHR, the prison authorities no longer had a free hand with inmates on death row.

The LHR would oppose every notice of execution given to an inmate.

Robert says the activities outside the walls of the prison walls lifted their morale.

"Generally, death row became less gloomy because we knew that people were fighting outside to do things; messages could be taken out, newspapers were writing about death row. There was more focus on the issue."

However, on a personal level, there was an instance when his life hung in the balance.

Late that year, when he, Paula and their comrades in LHR and FOPOD were still savouring their victories against the death penalty, they received information that the government wanted his application for clemency to be submitted immediately.

The feeling of the government was that Roshan Dehal had had enough time to gather whatever additional information he needed.

"What Roshan (Dehal) did, he staggered the investigations," Robert says of his lawyer's approach when he asked for time to so that his client could be examined by medical practitioners. "I remember being taken to HF Verwoerd hospital (now Pretoria Academic hospital). They put all these funny things on my head."

The Ministry of Justice was now insisting that Roshan submit the application so that the State President can decide whether to grant Robert McBride clemency to not.

Paula knew that once the application had been submitted, the matter was out of their hands.

On October 20, 1988, she wrote an anguished, impassioned letter to Judy Todd, one of the supporters of the anti-death penalty campaign who was based in Zimbabwe.

She told Judy about her visit to Judge Shearer and, subsequently, to Brian Leslie to try and boost Robert's appeal for clemency.

Shearer had informed her that he had written a letter to the State President recommending that Robert be granted clemency.

"On the strength of this, I went to see Brian Leslie (one of the Assessors in Robert's trial) and told him what Shearer had said, asking him to submit a similar report. There is no precedent for this, as only the presiding judge submits a report on clemency. However, he agreed to consult Shearer about this and submit a report as well. He told me later that he had done this, but could not reveal the contents of such a report as it was confidential.

"At the time when the Sharpeville Six applied for clemency and it was turned down, (State President) Botha publicly stated that one of the main reasons he had not granted clemency was that he had had no recommendation from the trial judge to do so. In the light of this, our case is very strong."

She informed Judy that a number of prominent people in South Africa like Zach de Beer, John Dugard, Andre du Toit, Murray Hofmeyer, Alex Boraine and Harvey Tyson had also written to the State President asking him to spare Robert's life.

"But time is now running out - he could be given notice of execution at any time. I visit Robert every day at Pretoria Maximum Security Prison - Death Row -, which is now so full it is overflowing. There are over three hundred people there now. I do not think I have ever experienced a greater sense of helplessness, to see the person that I love sitting behind this glass and bars, and to know that there are people who are waiting to kill him. To think that one day the Sheriff of Pretoria will come to his cell and hand him a notice saying that in seven days time he will be led out of that cell to the most brutal death imaginable.

"In the judgement, Shearer spoke of the 'gross callousness' of Robert's actions - I do not know of anything more callous or cold blooded and premeditated than informing another human being of the exact hour, minute, second of their death and then leading them to it.

"About a month ago I saw the face of someone who had been given notice of execution, someone who was due to be hanged the following morning. The look on that young man's face haunts me - I do not know whether I can describe it; it was almost trance-like, a totally blank look that plumbed the depths of alienation. It was not resigned, but something close to that - every ounce of that person's being, dignity and soul had been stripped away from him. I cannot see Robert like that. I live that in my dreams.

"I do not know, Judy, whether there is anything you can do. If there is, both Robert and I would really appreciate it. His father is serving a 12 year sentence on Robben Island, and I know that his sense of helplessness is even greater.

Thank you

Love Paula".

* Gordon Webster spent three year's on Africa's famous "university".

He charecterises his stay at Robben Island prison was "educative".

"It also changed a lot of my views and attitudes. Being in prison makes you start to study yourself - your weakness. There will be time to sit down and think. And to think. It makes you a better person. There's all the hardships, without you really worrying so much. You faced a lot of hardships, and there's nothing worse - that can be worse than this experience. That sort of thing makes you a different person."

As soon as Derrick met up with him, he took him into his plan to escape.

But the plan was temporarily disrupted when the prison doctors took him off Lexotan.

He was taking the medicine twice a day - in the morning and in the evening.

"What happened after that, when they took me off Lexotan, the escape was now impossible because it almost deranges you. You can't talk coherently, you can't act coherently. The movements are retarded - you can't move as effectively. You feel listless; you can't hold a conversation with people. Gordon was going to go with me, but when he saw me in that state he advised me against it also."

Gordon had another misgiving with Derrick's plan: it was an open secret.

"We had a hunger strike once, in 1990, and all the people in 'D' section; senior prisoners; were anti-hunger strike, they wanted it to be withdrawn," says Gordon. "They wanted life to be normal because once there was an escape, everything would change and they would suffer. It was quite possible for them to inform on Derrick's idea that these guys want to escape. So that they won't jeopardise their own luxury."

Early in 1989, after Roshan submitted Robert's application for clemency to the State President's office, Derrick was transferred from Robben Island to Pretoria Maximum Security Prison.

The white warder who informed him of his relocation relished driving the knife in.

"You know, these Afrikaners are really out of conscience," Derrick recalls bitterly. "They treat black people as less than humans. They came to me and said to me, 'jy moet jouself gereeed maak, jy gaan Pretoria toe. Hulle gaan jou seun hang' ('Get yourself ready to leave for Pretoria. They're going to hang your son'). It's twelve o'clock, I'm leaving at two o'clock. I think I was walking from the hospital or something like that because I used to go the hospital and do my own tests (for blood sugar level.)."

Before he was taken to the boat that was to take him across to mainland, he was subjected to a degrading body search.

"That's the humiliation - so many of us had to go through a strip search. And it's not done professionally. You had to take all your clothes off. After that you must go down and squat without any clothes, and the warders are passing remarks as they see you. I think that is the most hurtful part about everything. Here are people who are supposed to earn our respect, showing absolute disregard to any kind of human rights. Any kind of human respect; any kind of Christian attitude towards us."

* Derrick's transfer from Robben Island happened when Doris had returned to the family home in Wentworth.

She was deeply frightened about the reasons behind her husband's move to Pretoria Maximum Security Prison.

"I thought they are moving him because they know that Robert is going to be hanged," she says. "I thought they were taking him there to see his son because they were going to hang him. That's the only thing I thought. I didn't think of anything else."

By then, Bonnie had got married and left home, and Gwyneth was back at her boarding school in Ixopo.

"I was more or less alone here," reports Doris during an interview at her 'Hardy Place' house in Wentworth.

She is seated in her favourite chair in the sitting room-cum-dining room.

"I just used to sit. I never used to go and sleep in the bedroom because I was afraid. In here I can see the rest of the house. So I used to sit in this chair - this very chair -; I used to sit on it and sleep in it. Get up in the morning and go to the toilet and have a wash and go back and sit here."

By then, she had suffered a second stroke which left her with paralysis of the left side of her body.

"It was very bad. Terrible. I wasn't getting any (disability) grant. I just used to make do with - if somebody comes and gives me something. There was a man who used to give me some money and go. He is now dead. He was the principal of the same school which Trevor (Webster) is now the principal of (Assegai primary, in Wentworth). But now I had no one to send, so the money is sitting there and there's no-one to go and buy. Afterwards there was some children who used to come in and I could send them, but otherwise things were very bad until Gwyneth came back."

When the father and son met for the first time at Pretoria Central Prison, it was through the glass partition of the visiting room on death row.

Though Derrick was in handcuffs and leg-irons and chained to a warder, he was cocky.

He remarked to his son that, in the eyes of the warders, he was so dangerous that they had to keep him chained.

"He was walking straight up," says Robert. "You know in jail most of the time you have to keep quiet and watch what you are saying. You know this fucking cunt is above you all the time with a baton. Or just with his voice. But with him he was defiant; very loud; saying 'you are looking good' and things like that. That set the stage that he is willing to fight, even if he's doing it for show. He's willing to fight again."

The warder who took Derrick to see his son at death row was carrying an Uzzi machine gun.

The father was tempted to go for it.

"To me, I would have been very happy even to kill a few and die - to make an impression as some assistance to Robert or something like that. I thought, 'you can't just sit down, you'd rather move and do the wrong thing than to do nothing. Because there's a bigger chance that you can do the right thing'. He sat with that Uzzi. I just smiled at him. He was standing with this Uzzi there. If we were outside the prison walls, I would have taken him."

A month after Paula Leyden's poignant letter to Judy Todd in Zimbabwe, in November 1988, the Sharpeville Six were reprieved.

The activists' death sentences were commuted to sentences ranging between eighteen and twenty five years.

In reprieving the activists, the Nationalist party government sought to placate its supporters by commuting the sentences of four white policemen who had also been sentenced to death.

Two of them, Jack la Grange and Robert van der Merwe, were convicted for murdering two drug dealers and attempting to murder a businessman.

The other pair, Patrick Goosen and Leon de Villiers, were convicted of murdering an anti-apartheid activist in Cradock in the Eastern Cape.

Following on the reprieve of the Sharpeville Six and the four policemen, Paula's optimism that her partner's life would also be spared increased.

She was already waging an inexorable letter writing campaign to influential individuals and organisations both inside the country and abroad in her name and Doris's name.

Amnesty International, the United Nations, the British Labour Party, the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, Father Trevor Huddlestone and United States senator Paul Simon were some of the numerous overseas organisations and personalities who responded positively to the campaign and wrote letters to the State President asking him to spare Robert's life.

During Robert's trial, David Gordon, the senior counsel for the defence, had planted the legend that his client was somehow related to the Irish soldier Major John MacBride.

"I discovered that there had been a 'John MacBride' who came to South Africa and he fought on the side of the Boers during the Anglo-Boer war," the advocate reports. "I knew that he was no relative - I know there was no blood relationship, but I thought that it was just ironic that John MacBride had come to South Africa at the time of the Boer war to fight on the side of the Boers.

"I think he was executed as a result of his participation in the Easter Uprising. I think it was either the Oxford or the Cambridge book of history which says many people think that one of the reasons why he was executed was not so much what he had done during the Easter Uprisings but because he had actually come to fight in Southern Africa. It was just ironic that this was a 'John MacBride', and there was a 'Robert John McBride'."

The Irish bought the legend that Robert was a great grandson to Major John MacBride.

As a result, there was an avalanche of letters from Ireland to PW Botha's office asking him to grant McBride clemency.

One of them was written by a grandson of the Major:

" Dear President Botha,

My grandfather was Major John MacBride, who helped to organise and fought as second-in-command of the Irish Brigade against the British in the South African war of independence. It is likely that this activity was a factor in the British decision to execute him after the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916.

Robert McBride, who it appears is a great grandson of Major John MacBride, is now under sentence of death in South Africa. Your Excellency has the power to commute this sentence. I understand that the judge and the assessor concerned in the trial have recommended that you should do so.

I add my voice to that of the Irish and other European Community and world governments asking you to exercise your right to grant clemency.

It would be tragic if you did not take the opportunity to save this descendant of one of the heroes of your country's foundation.

Yours sincerely

Tiernan MacBride."

At the end of May 1989, a new inmate arrived at Pretoria Central Prison's death row.

In the land of apartheid, even the prisoners of different races who were awaiting their appointment with the hangman could not stay in the same section.

The slightly built, twenty three year old new arrival was white, so he was kept away from Robert McBride and the other black inmates.

However, for the rest of the two's stay on death row, he and McBride would be "twinned".

Barend Strydom was the self-professed right-wing 'Wit Wolf' ('white wolf) who had shot seven black people dead at point blank range in the centre of Pretoria.

Robert McBride was dubbed "the Magoo Bomber" by the white media.

Trevor Leslie Simmons, one of Robert's inmates, grew optimistic about McBride's release when Strydom arrived.

"He's a funny guy," Robert says of the Coloured inmate who, like him, was from Wentworth. "Trevor used to sell drugs - mandrax. Then he started fiddling with his daughter, and the wife found out. Then he killed the wife with a peak-handle in an argument. He denies it and says that the wife wanted him out of the because she was jolling (in love with) a policeman. I don't know how true that is."

When Strydom arrived, the prophet in Simmons reared his head.

" Mac, don't worry, your 'train' has arrived," he remarked to his 'home-boy'.

" You're going out one of these days."

* Barend "Hendri" Strydom earned his notoriety in the eyes of many South Africans, black and white, on the hot afternoon of 15 November, 1988.

Brandishing a gun in Pretoria's Strijdom Square in Church street, he went on a shooting spree which left seven dead and fifteen injured people.

All the casualties, fatal and non-fatal, were black.

Strydom subsequently appeared in court in the very same city.

During his trial, he claimed he belonged to a hitherto unknown right-wing organisation called 'Wit Wolwe' ('White Wolves').

He testified that, when he shot black people at point-blank, he was acting the instructions of God.

God had told him to shoot "the animals".

During Strydom's sojourn on death row, his link with Robert grew stronger when he too fell in love with a woman who was his regular visitor, Karin Rautenbach.

Karin shared her boyfriend's extremely right-wing political views.

Paula often met Strydom's father Nic, his step-mother Daphne and Karin as they too visited their loved one on death row.

Nic Strydom was once the Heidelberg regional leader of the Afrikaner Weerstandbewing (AWB) - a right-wing Afrikaner movement.

"I met and got to know his parents," says Paula. "I approached them when they started visiting there. I could see they kept themselves to one side. I approached them and I got to know them, particularly his step-mother. Actually, I got on well with her. The father I could talk to and discuss things with on a kind of political level. I could talk to him, but could never talk to him on a human level. His step-mother I actually got to know quite well. Actually, I like her. For her, she came into that family; she married this man, Barend Strydom's father. It was an extreme right-wing family. She must have been sixty when I knew her."

Paula could not stand the young Afrikaner girl who, in the eyes of some sections of the media, was her right- wing counterpart.

She held Karin in absolute contempt.

"(Daphne Strydom) didn't support what he had done, but she didn't want him to be hanged," Paula says of Barend Strydom's step-mother. "She hated this girl who started visiting him - Karin. For me she was the worst, that Karin. And her mother was so extremely right-wing. I think she thought she was on a mission for God."

The visitors to death row could not get into that section of Pretoria Central Prison with their vehicles.

They parked them a long distance away, and were then fetched by a prison vehicle and taken to death row.

Barend's girlfriend was ill-at-ease when she had to share the vehicle with black people.

Karin's animosity towards Paula was equally intense.

"I think in many ways she almost hated me more because she saw me as a traitor because like, how can I have a white skin and yet be in this thing," says Paula. "She was absolutely full of hate. Her mother was the same. It's interesting because Strydom's step-mother would sit in the visiting room - I'd be there with Irene Thafeni (Menzi's sister), Debbie (Thafeni) and whatever -, she'd sit with us and talk when her husband wasn't there. If she came on her own, she would just sit and she'd allow herself to be just a normal human being. She'd sit and chat and talk about things and complain about the warders - the kind of thing you talk about outside prison. We had a petition (against the death penalty) which she signed."

Three MK combatants, Jabu Obed Masina, Frans "Ting-Ting" Masango and Neo Griffiths Potsane - "the Delmas 3" - arrived on death row a month before Barend Strydom.

Though the three were ideological fellow travellers to Robert McBride, like Mthetheleli Mncube and Mzondeleli Nondula before them, they were remained aloof from the MK cadre from Wentworth.

Instead, it was a new arrival from Namibia who got close to Robert.

The prisoner, Leonard Sheehama, was member of South West People's Organisation.

Sheehama got to death row at about the same time as the Delmas 3 - in April 1989 the same year his country got its independence from South Africa.

"I was close to Sheehama," says Robert. "He's actually dead now. Sheehama was a very small guy - he looked about 13 in facial features, but he was actually 25. He was accused of a lot things - over 35 murders. There was one; Standard bank was blown up. Also, he put a bomb in a butchery. But he was acquitted after an appeal afterwards."

Robert believes one of the causes of the hostility of his MK comrades towards him was ethnicity.

However, his knowledge of Afrikaans was the catalyst for his friendship with the activist from Namibia.

Until the country's independence, Afrikaans had been the only official language.

As a result, the black Namibians got to be very articulate in the language.

"He could not speak English," Robert says of Leonard Sheehama. "He could speak Afrikaans. He could not speak Zulu - he had to speak to me because I can speak Afrikaans. The issue of ethnicity never came up because he needed someone to communicate with."

* Derrick wanted to escape from Robben Island so that he could save his son from the gallows.

"If I had managed to come out, I'd have got out of the country," he says. "I would come with a hell of a lot of bloody material. I'm not saying I'm 'Rambo', but the thing is, it would have been a style like that. I would have planned the thing properly."

But now, at Pretoria Maximum Security Prison, he was helpless.

Once, when the father was taken visit Robert on death row, he remarked to his son that where he was, one could not even smuggle out a stamp.

Robert got the message - there was no way that Derrick could escape so that he could come back to safe him from the gallows.

Help would have to come from the women in his life - his mother Doris, aunt Girly, lover Paula and sister Bonnie.

Before she suffered her second stroke, Doris McBride and a number of parents to some of the political prisoners on death row visited Zimbabwe.

The trip was organised by Paula.

One of its objectives was to gather support for a plan she and Robert had conceived of exchanging the inmates on death row with South African spies who were captured members of the Zimbabwean defence force.

Doris travelled to Zimbabwe with Betty Masango, Ting-Ting's mother; Mthetheleli's mother Winifred Mncube; Simon Potsane, father to Neo; Martha Ndlangisa Vilakazi, Sibusiso Masuku's aunt and Joyce Dube, Jabu Obed Masina's mother.

"What they did was they brought all the families together so that they can go as one," Robert recalls. "They had already put things in place. I think by that stage Paula had gone to Zimbabwe and went to Angola to do training and came back, and my mother had gone to Zimbabwe also. They were trying to get appointments with different people. Of course they didn't get to see (Zimbabwe's president) Robert Mugabe - Thabo (Mbeki) was not pushing as hard as he should have been pushing. The idea was spurned initially. It was like saying we'd rather die than go back to exile and stuff. That's how I interpreted it. Also, I felt maybe it's a stupid idea. But for me, I saw no value in dying."

Some of the activists associated with the "Save the Patriots campaign" took issue with Paula when she organised the trip.

"Just to kind of 'who's authorised this?; 'who have you consulted?'. I just didn't care, this has to be done," says Paula. "I am not a big believer in consultation, I just wanted the job to be done. Even that we had a battle with, but at least the mothers and the sons saw the value of it and so didn't object to it. But it was a real battle; we had a lot of conflict over it."

While in Zimbabwe, Doris stayed in Phyllis Naidoo's house.

"She was very nice," Doris says of the veteran activist. "Her home was clean. In fact in that house, lots of people were in and out. From different groups and parties and things. People from overseas - all over. That's why it was so convenient to stay there because you met all the people from all over the world. She would have them there, talk to them, take notes and all that."

Paula had got to know Phyllis Naidoo when she was in Zimbabwe previously.

"I went up to Zimbabwe and I stayed with Stallios Cominos. I knew him from university, and he was married to (author) Julie Fredericks. I stayed with them and they introduced me to Phyllis. I went up there to try and go look at this whole thing of prisoner exchange, and then I met with Phyllis. I then went to stay with Phyllis. From then, whenever I went to Zimbabwe I stayed at her house. She was very involved in the whole thing."

She found Phyllis to be "an incredible woman".

"She was very central to the whole outside campaign (against the death penalty). Even the campaign to get the ANC to adopt decisions on the death penalty and for them to take up the cases of Robert and whatever. Because she was right in there. Her and Michael Lapkin."

When Paula was looking at the exchange of the political prisoners on death row with Zimbabwean prisoners, she got in contact with the families of the South Africans in Zimbabwe.

"I got in contact with the wife of one of the people on death row in Zimbabwe and met her quite a few times to see if they can put pressure on like, the military here. On (then minister of foreign affairs) Pik Botha and on people to get the exchange moving. Her husband was called Mike - Mike Smith. In fact she was estranged from the chap, but she wanted to help him."

The other South Africans men held by the Zimbabweans were Kevin Woods and Mike Khuzwayo.

Brian Currin also at one stage got involved in attempts to persuade the Zimbabwean government to agree to the idea of a prisoner exchange.

"Brian (Currin) came with me to Zimbabwe once," says Paula. "We had problems with the then minister of justice. He was on death row in (the then) Rhodesia himself - we thought we'd be able to relate to him. He basically said those guys came into our country and they did this and they're just going to bloody stay there. He didn't say they're going to hang, but he basically said he can't help us. We spent the rest of the time trying to get Mugabe, which we never did."

Unfortunately, Paula and Brian's sympathetic ear in the Zimbabwean cabinet belonged to the "wrong" ideological school.

After a protracted fraternal conflict which had even got violent, the parties of the two leading figures in the country's struggle for freedom, Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo had buried the hatchet and united.

Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Unity (Zanu) was predominately Shona, Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Unity (Zapu) was mainly made of members from the Ndebele tribe.

The Zimbabwean minister who seemed keen to help the South African pair was Zapu, and the party had a weak voice in the union.

* Towards the end of 1988, Robert and Paula started talking about the possibility of getting married.

"She believed that I'm not going to get hanged," Robert relates. "I would say, 'okay, maybe a couple of years later we'll be together. Why don't we just get married now? Why must I wait till I'm out if I'm going outside?'."

No inmate on death row had ever been granted permission to get married.

Paula thought they would have reason to be optimistic if the authorities approved the application.

"We knew it could be turned down. There was this whole procedure you had to go through of being interviewed by social workers. And your family being interviewed by social workers; through Nicro (National Institute for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of Prisoners)."

Her interview was "a nightmare."

"It was woman at Nicro. A white lady. She was a social worker. I hate social workers. For me, it just stupid questions. It was like, 'you do know he can be hanged and you this tension you'd be under?'; 'maybe the love won't last'; 'how do you think its' going to work' etcetera. It was just irritating for me. I did it because I had to do it in order to get the permission. I had to grit my teeth to speak to them because I have a loathing for social workers."

The social workers then phoned Paula's parents to establish their views on the unusual matrimonial union.

"They phoned my mum. They spoke to her briefly. She basically said she had no objections to that. Then someone phoned my dad and said to him, 'we're social workers from Nicro. We want to see how you feel about your daughter getting married'. He then said, 'have you spoken to my daughter?', they said 'yes'. Then he asked them, 'what do you want to speak to me for me then?' He then said, 'do you know how old is my daughter? My daughter makes her own decisions. She has done that for long time. Don't trouble me!' In his mind, firstly, it's none of their business - the social workers' business. It's got nothing to do with them. He was really irritated. They never called him again."

Though Doris was not that abrupt with the social worker who went to interview her, she too made it clear that the ball was in the lovers' court.

But she was initially worried when she first heard of the intentions of her son and Paula.

"I asked Robert in prison one day, when he told me they were getting married, 'why in here? How can you ask to marry anybody when you are in here? You can be here today and tomorrow you could be gone. What is she going to do? And you may never come out of this place, and she'll never have a husband. Or you'll be dead; one of the two. How can you ask anybody to marry you? I think it's very wrong of you to do that. You shouldn't do that'.

"So he said to me, 'mummy, I don't want to marry anybody else. If there were any other girl, I wouldn't marry her at all'. I said, 'I'm not saying to you don't marry this girl, I don't want you to marry this girl. I'm saying you shouldn't be marrying any girl because you are not in a position to ask anybody to marry you 'cause you'll be here today and gone tomorrow and leaving the person as a widow'. He said, 'oh mummy, we talked about that. She's willing to take the chance'. I didn't want her to be hurt."

Robert was interviewed by a black senior member of the prison services.

"There was a guy called Kambule. I think he had a doctorate in something. It's 'Major Kambule', I think. He spoke to me, 'why do you want to get married?' He spoke to me like a human being - not feeling sorry for me; not thinking I'm mad. He seemed a sharp guy; very bright. I said I'm in love and I want to get married, even if it's the last thing I do on earth. Because he said 'you know you're going to get hanged. What's the use of getting married?' - in a nice way."

Paula got the happy news that their application to get married was successful when a tragedy had taken her out of the country.

Sahdan Naidoo, Phyllis Naidoo's son, had been murdered in Zambia.

Phyllis was formerly exiled in Lesotho.

She left the country for Zimbabwe shortly after the SADF raid on the capital city of Lesotho - Maseru - in 1982.

When Phyllis was lecturing at the university of Zimbabwe, Sahdan was running an ANC farm in Chongela, Zambia.

The death of twenty eight years old activist on 22 April 1989 was a real acid test for the avowed abolitionist.

He and another ANC activist, Moss Mthunzi, were shot dead by a fellow worker named Tex.

Tex was a self-confessed agent for the South African government who was in the process of being rehabilitated.

When an ANC delegation came to tell the mother of her son's death, she surprised them when she showed concern for the murderer's next of kin back in South Africa.

"I said to 'TG' (ANC leader Thomas Nkobi), 'have you informed Tex's mother? She doesn't know what happened to her son - she thinks her son is with the ANC."

Sahdhan Naidoo and Moss Mthunzi's joint funeral was held in Zambia on 22 April, 1989.

The ANC's president, O.R. Tambo, MK's chief of staff Chris Hani and other top ANC leaders attended.

Paula also attended, and the message of condolence she was carrying from Robert McBride and other MK guerrillas on death row was read.

Later, Phyllis surprised her comrades further with her stoicism.

When Tex was in custody and about to go on trial in Zambia, she asked that his life be spared.

"There's a letter that I'd written to the prosecutor in Lusaka, saying that I am campaigning for the abolition of the death penalty in South Africa and I cannot now ask for you to impose the death penalty on Tex," she recalls. "So now 'TG' says, 'you're mad! He took the best thing that was going in your life and now what do you say?!' I said 'no'. You know, this was the real test for me."

Paula drove with Phyllis from Zimbabwe to Zambia for her son's funeral.

She received the news that the application for her and Robert to get married had been approved on their return Zambia.

She read the approval as a good omen.

"When we got permission to get married, that was the final seal for me because I knew he wouldn't be hanged. Not because I had any belief that they would feel 'we let him get married, we won't hang him'. Not that. I just thought to have got that through; to get the acknowledgement of his humanity on death row - to allow him to go through a marriage ceremony -, it was such a significant battle to have won. For me, it put a seal on it."

* Though the "Immorality Act" prohibiting love across the colour line had been scrapped when Robert and Paula got married on 10 May, 1989, the couple experienced its effects.

Though both are atheists, they were prepared to go take their vows in a religious ceremony

However, Father Mabena, who was close to Robert, was prevented from conducting the ceremony because he was black.

Instead, a 70something white priest, Father Giles Ambross to officiated.

After the ceremony, the couple would be allowed to spend forty minutes in close physical contact.

The day and night before the historic day, they previewed it.

"I think we made jokes, and I was saying 'I won't be able to sleep tonight, I will be thinking about it," Robert remembers. "'Maybe they will book us into a hotel for the night'. But I was probably feeling normal. I don't get apprehensive like, when it's something like that. I am able to keep relaxed. And also, I want things to be quite secret to the other people around me. I'd probably pretend to be as normal as possible."

Paula is very much comfortable dressed informally.

However, on 10 May 1989, Robert was pleasantly surprised when his wife-to-be walked into the room where he usually consulted his lawyer.

"They escorted her in. I think they were one to two minutes late. I remember she had high heeled shoes - she was slightly taller. I am just thinking how she was walking because she can't walk with high heels. She was dressed in a long dress, slightly floral pink and blue."

" I just felt I must not go in my jeans or my shorts," Paula smiles when asked about her sartorial metamorphosis on her wedding day. "I had taken clothes through to him. It was a blue shirt and pants and shoes."

Her mother had driven her to the prison, but the couple had felt they should cherish their forty minutes together and not utilise their privilege to have families and friends present at the wedding.

Annette Leyden remained in the car when an overjoyed Paula went in.

"(Paula) was probably more excited than me," Robert casts his mind back. "She was full of smiles, and I was just normal; relaxed. I was also excited, but I didn't want to show it because you sort of learn in prison - you can come so close to something, then it can be taken away. You don't raise your expectations - your desires -; you're sort of in control. The one thing is you don't want them to laugh at you. That is the worst punishment. You don't show you are excited because they would see when you are disappointed. You just keep cool. Paula was happy and quite animated."

Present in the room during the ceremony were the priest, the bride, the groom, the head of prison Captain Cronje and two other white prison warders.

The prison officials were not in the best of moods.

"They looked like it was a bloody funeral," Robert laughs. "I am thinking of their faces now. They were hanging down. Cronje, I got his face in my mind now. He never even smiled once. He was angry. More than angry, in fact. It was like defeat almost in his face. I looked at him thinking maybe he'd smile - his face is hanging and eyes are red. I think they hated me the most at that moment. One youngster was alright, he was looking away."

He does not remember the priest pronouncing the customary "you may kiss the bride" after they had exchanged rings.

"I don't think he said that - I don't he would have encouraged us to break the regulations. Funny enough, like, the details I don't remember very well. I just remember it being a very nice warm day - the sun coming through. They used to have a plastic roof. It was almost like the first time when I came to death row. Similar. It was the same kind of feeling. The main reasons was I loved the heat - the weather -; even though I am from the coast. I remember being relaxed. The priest didn't stay. He left. I think we had tea or something. She was allowed to bring the cake. I don't think I even drank the tea. For some reason I just stood there, and it got cold. Just holding hands was a victory."

Later, after the ceremony had ended and Mr and Mrs McBride were enjoying their first ever forty minutes physically close to each other, Cronje left.

The warders stepped in a number of times when the couple tried to steal a kiss.

When the head of prison left, there were now two prison warders watching over the newly-weds.

"I am the first death row prisoner to have such contact ever," says Robert. "He left and went out. It had never happened before. It was like an abomination to him. The end of the world."

He had prepared himself for a return to the normal routine of meeting the love of his life (now his wife) across the glass partition again.

"Even though I knew it's a temporary thing and it's only like forty minutes or something, I had sort of programmed myself that it's going to be normal. It's just a short period. There was a sense of feeling alone again, consciously, just when she left. It was like she was going away. (But) there was a sense of achievement - a sense of 'once more to the bridge, back to the road again, back to reality'. I would say I quickly adapted."

* On 17 May - a week after Robert and Paula's wedding - Sibusiso Masuku was informed that his application for clemency had been rejected.

When he had earlier Masuku got out of "The Pot" after he had won his stay of execution in 1988, he got even closer to former SB who was now his fellow inmate on death row, Almond Butana Nofemela.

Outside prison, the former SB member had been hot on his heels.

But now the hare and the hound were joined by their common dread of the hangman.

At the time, Aubrey was visiting Masuku regularly.

The LHR official was privy to some the claims of Nofemela that he had undertaken operations to eliminate ANC activists in Frontline states.

He urged Masuku to probe Nofemela further.

"I said to him, 'get more from this guy'," says Aubrey. "And I felt bad - the guy was on death row; I felt I was using him. So I also to ask him about his trial."

It was just as well Aubrey started familiarising himself with Masuku's case because, at around that very time, the inmate received his second notice of execution.

"I was offered 'the last meal' twice," Masuku sighs, shaking his head. "I gave the deboned roast chicken to the other inmates in the other sections."

As Masuku tossed and turned in "The Pot", outside, Aubrey traced two witnesses who had given evidence for the state in his trial.

"I went looking for these witnesses and recorded them. They were shocked because they thought 'it's over, that guy is probably dead'. I was busy trying to build a case to create hope for him because I was now using him to get information on this guy (Nofemela)."

The LHR lodged an urgent application to stay the execution of Masuku and two other inmates, Oupa Josias Mbonani and Anton Koen.

Mbonani was a MK cadre, Koen a Port Elizabeth man who was convicted in 1988 for the murder of an elderly woman.

When the application was being heard at the Pretoria Supreme Court on 23 May 1989, anti-death penalty activists staged a demonstration outside the Union Buildings in the city.

At the same time, Paula and Brian were addressing an anti-death penalty meeting at the university of Witwatersrand, demanding that the impending executions be stopped.

The Pretoria Supreme Court turned down the urgent application for the execution of Masuku, Mbonani and Koen.

Four other inmates who were scheduled to be hanged at the same with them - Simon Mbatha, Abraham Mngomezulu and Patrick Msomi - had already exhausted all their remedies.

A fourth, James Henry Cohen, had refused legal representation by LHR and expressed the wish to be executed.

Luckily for Masuku, the application to the Pretoria Supreme Court was not the only avenue LHR was exploring to save his life.

When Aubrey located the two witnesses who had given evidence for the state in his trial, they confessed that they had lied in court.

He recorded their statements, made them sign, and then prepared an accompanying affidavit.

"We had to actually go urgently to get the stay of execution on the basis of new evidence which we felt could be tested," says Aubrey. "It was very subjective - it was the tape recorder, which could have been forged, but it wasn't, it was very real. And then we had my own affidavit, corroborating what happened. Advocate Jack Untehalta led the appeal in Bloemfontein."

On the morning of his scheduled execution, Sibusiso Masuku was woken at five o'clock so that he could go and have a shower.

At six o'clock, he and six other condemned prisoners who were about to be hanged attended a church service.

As a Muslim, Masuku was ministered to separately by an Imam.

At half past six, when each of his colleagues had contact visits with two relatives, Masuku was all alone.

The next of kin who could be there to comfort him before leaves this world were in detention.

The two, his brother Dumi and aunt Martha Vilakazi, were arrested the previous day at a demonstration against their imminent execution at Union buildings.

There are fifty two steps which lead from the cells on death row to the gallows on the upper floor

"We were in leg-irons and handcuffs as we went up the steps," Masuku reports. "I had given up hope. About twenty white warders escort the inmates as they go to the gallows. The prisoners who are about to be hanged are beaten up viciously and abused as they go up."

He and six other inmates were on the tenth step when the head of prison, Captain Cronje stopped them.

Cronje informed Masuku that he had once again cheated death - he and another MK activist, Oupa Mbonani, had got stays of execution.

Unfortunately, the other five condemned men had to go on and ascend the rest of the steps to heaven.

Not long after Masuku had survived "The Pot" for the second time, what Almond Nofemela thought impossible happened.

The former security branch member received his notice of execution.

He was transferred from his cell to "The Pot".

"Dirk Coetzee told him that his colleagues wanted him to be hanged because he knew too much," says Masuku. "He called me and said he now wanted to talk. He wanted me to arrange that the people from LHR should come and see him."

Up to that time, the only information Aubrey Lekwane had got from Nofemela related to assassinations of activists in Frontline states.

He did not have an inkling that the inmate could help solve the case of the mysterious death of Griffiths Mxenge.

Robert was also used to Nofemela.

"I talked to him a lot," says McBride. "Nofemela became the cleaner there. I always treated him with respect, though he had been an SB. All prisoners did. It's not going to help me anyway to be antagonistic towards him - we're all prisoners together. When he came to me and spoke to me about his business - he's not sure what to do, but he would never open fully with me -; it will always be very vague and full of good intention. But he would never open fully. Masuku was very instrumental in getting him to give the whole story."

The day Nofemela received his notice of execution, Paula and two sisters to Menzi Thafeni were on a visit on death row.

The sisters, Debbie and Irene, often travelled with Paula when they were going to visit their brother and she was going to see Robert.

The Thafeni siblings were cousins to Nofemela.

They would sometimes see him when they came to visit Menzi.

"We were visiting," Paula remembers. "I was in the courtyard when Irene came to me and told me that Nofemela has been talking about this lawyer he killed."

Paula went to talk to Nofemela in the visiting room.

"'Are you telling me you killed Griffiths?'" she recalls asking the death row inmate.

A warder was standing over her, monitoring the conversation.

"I could not drive fast enough to the office to get the story out."

At the Lawyers for Human Rights offices, Paula and her colleagues set in motion a process which led to a sensational report on Nofemela's revelations in the Weekly Mail (now Mail and Guardian) and the recording of his affidavit.

The affidavit was then used to secure him a stay of execution, setting in motion revelations of the sordid activities apartheid death squad, the so-called "Civil Co-Operation Bureau" (CCB).

* After Paula and Robert's wedding on death row, his profile in the media went even higher.

However, in most of the articles on him, McBride could not shake off the pejorative "Magoo Bomber" label, let alone his linkage to the right-wing Barend Strydom - the Wit Wolf.

On death row, the hostility of his fellow MK guerrillas towards him increased in direct proportion to the rise of his profile outside.

"I asked to clean the floors because I wanted to be outside the cell. And I wanted to exercise. There was talk that, 'look, he's selling out like a common criminal'. I didn't mind. The problem is when they wanted things smuggled, they'd come to me. Every time there's a letter they wanted to go out, they'd come to me, and I never failed once with a letter."

There was also conflict over mooted hunger strike.

The inmates wanted to strike for better food and other rights on death row.

"I was different. To me, the rights mean fokol (nothing) - if they kill you softly or they kill you hard, they're going to kill you. If they're going to give you nice food and then kill you - or give you horrible food -, they're going to kill you. The main idea is to save your life here. I'm not worried about the rights. I can survive here. So I never supported the hunger strike - it's not going to help us, we're going to die. They want us to die, and we are going to harm ourselves. What happened is, the comrades split; some would follow me."

When the "Delmas 3" - Frans "Ting-Ting" Masango, Jabu Obed Masina and Neo Griffiths Potsane - arrived on death row in April 1989, they joined those of their fellow combatants who were not on good terms with McBride.

"When they first came they started mixing with these guys first. Jabu Masina was a guy who was good. He was a straightforward guy - nice guy. Somehow they believed I must follow them., whatever they do. I can't follow stupidity or foolish pride. I cannot do that. I was not scared of any of them. Mthetheleli would beat up Mzondeleli and would threaten to beat up the other guys when sometimes the head of prison would give us a chance to meet, and he could not threaten to beat me up because I was respectful, but I was also full of shit."

A physical confrontation between Robert and one of the members of the group opposed to him was inevitable.

"It was a very silly thing," McBride recalls. "I think we were looking for money from the South African Council of Churches. We had to give all the names of the comrades on death row. I was reading out the names for Paula to take down - Paula was visiting me. This guy, by some weird coincidence, he was sitting next to me. He heard me mentioning his name. He said nothing. In the morning in the shower, he says, 'why do you mention my name in your mouth to your wife?' He pushes his finger in my face. At the time my aggression levels were very high, and I just jumped on him and got stuck into him. Over the next few days, some other guys had to mediate because the thing was going to get very nasty."

Years later, it would emerge that at this very period, Nelson Mandela was privately meeting with the State President in contemplation of starting negotiations with the Nationalist party.

Even the closest confidantes of Mandela in prison were ignorant of this.

Some time in the mid-eighties, before a Nationalist party congress in Durban, PW Botha had given the impression that he was ready to cross "the Rubicon" by announcing far-reaching changes in the country.

The State President subsequently developed cold feet.

There were Nationalist party leaders who were unhappy impatient with Botha's reluctance to break the country's political impasse.

At the time South Africa was a polecat in the world, reeling under the effects of sanctions and a sports and cultural isolation campaign.

Botha's colleagues were looking for a visionary who could take a leaf from Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev and introduce changes which would save them.

The State President had suffered a stroke earlier, and was not in a very good physical condition.

On 20 September 1989, the rest of the members of the Nationalist party's caucus

ganged up against Botha and forced him to resign.

His replacement, Frederik Willen - FW - de Klerk, immediately announced that South Africa would have a "a new dispensation".

To that end, de Klerk stated that he was intent on negotiating with the liberation movements.

"(The change of presidency) gave us a lot of hope," says Paula. "Not hope because we believed (de Klerk) was nicer human being, but because he was more pragmatic. He was more of an opportunist than PW. PW was like lost in his irrational sense of himself. FW had a better sense for his own survival."

One of the new State President's first moves to prove his bona fides to the world and the liberation movements was to order the release of seven ANC leaders who had been in prison for more than two decades.

The seven, including Nelson Mandela's confidantes Walter Sisulu and Ahmed Kathrada, were Mandela's co-Accused during the famous "Rivonia Trial".

Sisulu's release was an important milestone in Robert's life in prison.

"In winter, you'd have up to about three or four blankets," he reports. "Until 1989, there was no sheets. After (Walter) Sisulu was released, we got sheets. Everything changed. They started allowing us to play soccer and showing us videos. There was more freedom; more exercise. You could talk anytime. I was allowed a radio. What happened also on death row, we were first allowed radios in 1990. FM radios. After that, they also allowed even Medium Wave radios. We could listen to the (radio) 702 (political) debates. One of the highlights was the Gulf War - 1990 to 1991; November to February. I would listen to the Gulf War news on BBC."

The response of the inmates to Sisulu's release was "very enthusiastic but cautious".

"Generally, we were not very clever then. We felt they can't let that guy die in prison; that it was a gesture of goodwill. Things generally changed (for the better) after Sisulu was released. Prison conditions changed in jail just about two weeks after he was released. We got sheets. We could write to Sisulu letters - he would mention us at rallies and stuff. Paula and them went to Sisulu and Kathrada and spoke to them. Of course we started thinking, 'they released Sisulu, how are they going to hang us?' - you can't release the father of the guys' revolution and on the other hand hang them. What message are you sending? We started getting very confident."

* On February 2, 1990, on the opening of parliament, FW de Klerk delivered a far-reaching speech.

In 35 minutes, he surprised the world and changed the future of his country in a way nobody at the time had expected.

He unbanned the liberation movements which had been up to that time outlawed like the African National Congress (ANC), Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP).

The State President announced that his government was committed to releasing Nelson Mandela unconditionally.

He also placed an official moratorium on all executions.

Paula felt personally vindicated when de Klerk suspended hangings.

But she suspected that that did not mean Robert would be released very soon.

"I knew he'd be one of the last (to be released); that was my feeling. What was interesting was all the announcements de Klerk made on February 2 were political announcements: unbannings, releasing political prisoners etcetera, and just in that mix was a completely unpolitical - what should have been an unpolitical thing -, which was the (suspension of the) death penalty. I think that was a victory. Pressure had grown on that issue to such an extent that it was included in this batch of political reforms - which it didn't have to be."

She acknowledges that, "overwhelmingly", there was support for the death penalty in the country.

"(But) it had become so politicised that actually, he had to do it. Why that is important to me is because I'd fought with people in the liberation movement who said 'don't fight the death penalty, fight for the release of political prisoners on death row' - 'fight for prisoner-of-war status, don't fight the death penalty'. I said I think we can win the one with the other. And for me it was important because I couldn't in all conscience just for my own self - I couldn't fight for the lives of 32, 60 or 70 people on a death row of 450. It could have happened that they could have said on February 2: 'okay, we remove all the political prisoners on death row'. For me it would have meant there is still a long battle to be won on the death penalty."

Nelson Mandela was released from Cape Town's Victor Verster prison on 11 February, 1990.

The following day, in a historic speech broadcast to a captive world, the iconised activist reciprocated de Klerk's gesture in releasing him and announcing major political changes.

He said he was prepared to act as a "facilitator" for negotiations of the country's future between de Klerk's government and the liberation movement.

Three months later, the first tentative steps towards a negotiated settlement were taken when leaders of the ANC and those of de Klerk's party met at Groote Schuur, in the Cape.

Immediately after the signing of what came to be known as the "Groote Schuur Minute", Mandela visited Robert McBride and other political prisoners at Pretoria Central Prison's death row.

" It was on 5th May, 1990," Robert remembers. "It's a day after Groote Schuur talks. It was on Saturday. The Groote Schuur talks were 3rd and 4th, and the 5th he was there."

At the time, Captain Cronje had been replaced by Captain Steinberg as head of prison.

"I thought maybe we are getting released or it's prisoner exchange thing. Then we saw all the security guards around and stuff, so I started suspecting it's Mandela. I think somewhere along the line Steinberg told us. When the president walked in, it's like I knew him forever. Not from books, but in person. There was a familiarity when he stepped in. I just knew him. I can't explain it, but it was not unusual for him to walk into a room where I was."

The delegates who saw Mandela when he visited death row prisoners included McBride himself, Mthetheleli Mncube, Mzondeleli Nondula, "Ting-Ting" Masango and Sibusiso Masuku.

The prison authorities dressed up the inmates for the occasion.

"There was another coat, it was shaped like a normal coat you'd wear with a suit," says Robert. "They gave us that when we met Mandela. It was like we were going to court or something."

Mandela is quite tall.

But Robert is even taller.

The veteran ANC leader immediately recognised the MK cadre who had literally divided South Africa along racial lines.

"When he stepped into the door, I was away from him, but then he came straight to me and said, 'ah, Robert! How are you?'; he came straight to me, so I was feeling very happy. There was also a feeling of his presence - you can feel this is a big man. He is like bigger than all of us. There is no bullshit with him. I know he can be quite dictatorial, but that never emanates from him. What you get from him is the positiveness. After that, I was confident."

Robert complained to Mandela about the media's association of him with Barend Strydom.

"He said 'you can't tell the newspapers what to say. As far as I am concerned you are a political prisoner and you will be released. I will see to that'. That was the end of the conversation on that issue. I believed him."

When Paula visited her husband a few hours after the meeting with Mandela, she found him in an ebullient mood.

"He was very upbeat and very sort of cocky in a way," Paula laughs. "He was pleased with the way the warders were behaving - 'Mister McBride, can I get you a cup of tea?' He probably felt the table are turning."

Earlier on, when Brian Currin offered Paula employment at LHR, she had declined because she did not want to be "tied down".

She wanted to be free to travel in and out of the country, campaigning to save her lover's life.

When FW de Klerk announced a moratorium on executions, she was now ready to work full-time at LHR.

* FW de Klerk's February 1 1990 speech and Mandela's release were followed by formal negotiations between, primarily, the ANC and the Nationalist party government.

The ANC's negotiating team was led by former trade unionist Cyril Ramaphosa, who was at the time the organisation's secretary general.

Ramaphosa's counter-part in the Nationalist party was Roelf Meyer, the minister of constitutional affairs in de Klerk's cabinet.

As the negotiation process unfolded, it became evident that Robert John McBride, the former MK cadre on death row, was going to be a hot potato.

Because of the notoriety he had achieved in the eyes of white South Africans, his organisation was hard pressed to convince its negotiating that he is a political prisoner who had to be released as per agreement between the two parties.

Robert, Derrick and Paula responded differently when it seemed some of Robert's comrades in the ANC were equivocal about their support for his release.

Early in the "talks about talks" between the ANC and the Nationalist party government, the two parties came to an agreement over the release of political prisoners.

A joint ANC/government working group set up after the Groote Schuur talks in May reached agreement in principle on the definition of a political offence.

The issue of releasing political prisoners and allowing exiles to return, as well as the simultaneous suspension of the armed struggle by the ANC, were the main obstacles to formal negotiations.

The working group guidelines for defining political offences closely followed the "Norgaard principles" used for the same purpose during the Namibian settlement earlier.

Observers noted that, according to the said principles - devised by one by professor Norgaard -, prisoners like McBride and Strydom were ruled out on one more than one count.

For instance, under the Norgaard principles, acts aimed at killing civilians indiscriminately did not qualify as political transgressions.

The onus was thus on Robert and his supporters to prove that, unlike Strydom, he had not targeted civilians "indiscriminately".

They would also have to prove that, in detonating the "Magoo"/"Why Not" car bomb, he was acting under the instructions of his commanders in MK.

Paula was irate when she learnt that the agreement excluded political prisoners on death row.

She publicly criticised the ANC's negotiating team, leading to a confrontation with Jessie Duarte - an activist who would later become a member of the executive council (MEC) in the Gauteng province.

"In terms of the agreement between the ANC and the government, there was no provision made for the release of people on death row - political prisoners," Robert remembers. "Paula said the agreement basically means that we would not be released, which was the truth. They ran to the (ANC) Women's League - it had just started. Jessie Duarte was sent to come and complain. She phoned Paula at work. She was saying 'why do you say these people won't be released? You're causing heartache to the parents' etcetera. It was an organised, orchestrated campaign against Paula. We had to go through a lot of shit. I can't remember all the things now, but it was really a matter of having to swallow a lot of pride. Eventually, I just told people to go to hell.

"Fortunately, Paula had established a good relationship with the outside (ANC) leadership. She was held in high esteem, and on any issues regarding prisoners she would be consulted by Matthew Phosa and Cyril Ramaphosa. That eased things a little bit."

Robert's attempts to gain recognition as political prisoner were made harder by the evidence he had given during his trial.

Then he testified that he had acted unilaterally when he detonated the car bomb at Durban's beach front.

The MK guerrilla was then attempting to get a finding of extenuating factors in his favour and escape the noose.

Now he changed his tune and stated when he detonated the car bomb at Durban's Marine Parade on 14 June, 1986, he was following instructions of his commanders in Umkhonto We Sizwe.

It would obviously have strengthened Robert's case if he was backed by his commanders in MK.

However, as they carefully studied the unfolding events in their fatherland, the commanders were keeping their peace.

Having seen what Robert had gone through, it was perhaps understandable that his superiors should not be too keen to implicate themselves before they were assured that they would be indemnified.

As she had done when she went to see Judge Douglas Shearer at his home and when she met ANC leaders in exile over Robert's case, Paula exploited her whiteness to further her husband's interests.

She kindled a strange relationship with the late Kobie Coetzee, then minister of justice in de Klerk's government.

"I never had an experience of oppression myself," Paula explains. "I never had an experience of someone taking my dignity away. I didn't have to work through anything to actually go to people in the previous government and present myself and say this is what I want. I think on that it level it (her whiteness) was certainly an advantage. And it's also the same with people like Kobie Coetzee. Kobie Coetzee, I can say it quite honestly, likes me. I met him often, and he likes me. He actually liked me, and he is a racist - there's no question about that. He would have felt differently about me if I'd been a different colour because he would have come up with prejudice - if I was a different colour he would have liked my character, but he would have had to get over so many more hurdles before he'd even understand me."

She used the chemistry between herself and the minister to advance the fight to get Robert recognised as a political prisoner.

Robert was not the only prisoner who, having been convicted for political offences, was now having to convince the de Klerk government that he was a political prisoner.

On Robben Island, Gordon Webster was in the same boat.

So were about twenty other fellow inmates of his.

The remaining Robben Island political prisoners went on hunger strike to try and earn their freedom.

"We were supposed to be in the grey area," says Gordon. "All those who were charged for murder were not released. Murder or other serious offences. So we took it upon ourselves and said 'the thirtieth of April is coming, and first of May everybody should be released'. And we were not released. For twenty four days, I was on hunger strike."

The negotiating teams of the Nationalist party government and the ANC had agreed that an amnesty committee comprised of a number of judges be set up to consider the applications of sentenced individuals who wanted to be considered to be political prisoners.

Paula, who was now working full-time for LHR, handled the applications of many prisoners.

These included that of her father-in-law; his co-accused Antonio du Preez; Gordon and her husband Robert.

She found it strange judges who been serving during the era of apartheid should the ones who were now considering the applications.

Justice Leon, who had sentenced Andrew Zondo to death, was one of the amnesty judges.

"We were arguing against the amnesty committee and the amnesty process; the bills that gave rights to the amnesty process. We were saying, 'how can you have people deciding on the political status of people when they themselves sentenced political prisoners to death? (Judge) Solomons had sentenced a lot of political prisoners to death. Leon is classic. Each release that happened gave us more ammunition to fight with. That's the way we went, particularly the Witbank case - which we used extensively. It was also the thing of trying to get Derrick out."

" The Witbank case" involved MK guerrillas Ronnie Maboa and Stephen Vilakazi.

The two had detonated a car bomb in Witbank which, like Robert's "Magoo"/"Why Not" car bomb, had claimed the lives of three people.

However, the victims of the Witbank bomb were black, whereas those who died from Robert's bomb were white.

Maboa and Vilakazi had each got an eighteen year prison sentence.

Gordon Webster was eventually released from prison on 24 May, 1991.

He and his fellow inmates who were on a hunger strike were intent on getting their freedom at all cost.

"We were really dedicated," says Gordon. "We either leave in a coffin or we were going to leave alive. We were very committed to that. Very much so, because there were only three of there - four or five were in hospital. There was nobody on the island."

McBride's three death sentences were eventually commuted to a life sentence.

"I got reprieved on 21st April 1991. It was five years after I had been sentenced to death. Almost to the day."

As one of his fellow inmates on death row had predicted when Barend Strydom arrived at "Beverly Hills", the right-wing prisoner was Robert's "train".

FW de Klerk's government sought to placate both the left and the right by reprieving McBride and Strydom at the same time.

Robert could not wait to pack his belongings and get out of death row.

"I left and went to Pretoria Local Prison. My father was in Pretoria Maximum Security. 'Local' is where Steve Biko died. The whole prison is like a city inside. Death row is on the mountain."

On death row, the lights in the cells were never switched off.

Now Robert would at least be able to sleep in the dark.

But he would soon to learn that, though he his neck had escaped the hangman's noose, the 'Magoo'/'Why Not' car bomb would continue to hang from it like a millstone.

His was reprieved, not forgiven.