John Frederick Harris was a member of the Armed Resistance Movement which opposed apartheid. On 24 July 1964 they informed the Johannesburg Railway Police that a bomb had been planted in Johannesburg Railway Station. This bomb later exploded, injuring 23 people and killing one 77-year-old woman. John Frederick Harris, a school teacher, was charged with the offence, convicted and hanged. At the trial, he was represented by David Soggot, who was to become one of South Africa's most prominent civil rights lawyers. At his cremation the 13-year-old Peter Hain

Peter Hain

Peter Gerald Hain is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for the Welsh constituency of Neath since 1991, and has served in the Cabinets of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, firstly as Leader of the House of Commons under Blair and both Secretary of State for...

, whose family had been friendly with Harris, stood up and recited a passage from Ecclesiastes chapter 3: ‘A time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down and a time to build up".

Harris was the only white person to be executed for resistance to apartheid.