Duma Kumalo stood by the whitewashed walls of the execution room in Mountjoy Prison in quiet contemplation yesterday. His own neck was measured for the hangman's noose in the 1980s when, as one of the Sharpeville Six in apartheid South Africa, he was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit.
In Mountjoy to talk to prisoners about his experiences, Mr Kumalo said he was impressed that much of the 150-year-old gallows had been preserved. On a recent visit to the Johannesburg prison where he was on death row, he had discovered that the execution room was now a gym. "That is denial, it is important to remember," he said.
Mr Kumalo, who is starring in a play about his life at The Helix in Dublin City University, was charged along with five others for the murder of a deputy mayor in the black township of Sharpeville, south of Johannesburg, in 1985.
Just 17 hours before he was due to hang on March 18th 1988, his death sentence was commuted to 25 years. He was eventually released in 1991 as part of the political negotiations, but despite the miscarriage of justice his name has never been cleared.
Mr Kumalo said that early on in his sentence he had tried to eat glass from a broken window. "A doctor told me: 'You are not born in jail, one day you will be free'," he said.
He spoke about how, through his role in the play about his life, He Left Quietly, he was trying to give voice to those who could not speak and highlight the continued difficulties in South Africa.
A female prisoner from South Africa thanked Mr Kumalo on behalf of the other prisoners present, some of whom were serving life sentences. "You show us that we should have hope no matter how tough things may be," she said.