True Patriot

Overview

Between 1961 and 1989, in Apartheid South Africa,132 political prisoners were executed by hanging at Pretoria Central Gallows. John Harris – hanged at age 27, was the only white person to be executed for fighting apartheid. A member of the clandestine "all white" African Resistance Movement, John Harris was left the “last man standing” after a nation-wide crack-down by Apartheid security police on the 4th July 1964 saw all members of ARM either detained or fleeing the country. Married to Ann - with a son only six weeks old, in a final desperate statement against Apartheid, on 24th July 1964 John Harris placed a bomb on a “Whites only” platform at the Johannesburg Station. On 1st April 1965, at 5.30am, John Harris – aged 27 – softly singing “We shall Overcome”, was executed by hanging in Pretoria. On death row he had one final request: that “one day in a new and free South Africa, on his tombstone should be written: ‘John Harris – True Patriot’.