'I've Been Robbed Of A Life'

Lucky Shange is free at last – after spending almost 20 years in jail for a crime he says he didn’t commit.

- Aphiwe Boyce

IT WAS a moment he’d dreamt of for nearly 20 years – and a moment he’d given up all hope of experiencing.

Standing outside the prison gates was the beautiful daughter he’d only seen when she visited him behind bars. Now she was there to watch him take his first steps as a free man.

“She brought me a new pair of jeans and a shirt so I could leave my prison clothes behind,” an emotional Lucky Shange says.

The 40-year-old made headlines recently when he was released from Durban’s Westville Prison after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) overturned his sentence on a technicality.

He spent almost two decades locked up for a crime he didn’t commit until he was finally freed into a world very different to the one he’d known back then.

When he was arrested in 1998 there were no smartphones, Nelson Mandela was president and Donald Trump told Oprah Winfrey he’d only run for president if things “got really, really bad”.

Now Lucky has to adapt – and making everything worse is he should never have been incarcerated in the first place. He spent two years as an awaiting trial prisoner before being convicted of  murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances and possession of an unlicensed firearm in 2000. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Throughout his years behind bars his daughter, Thando, never stopped believing in her father’s innocence – although it took a lot longer to convince authorities he’d committed no crime.

He feels “such deep sorrow” that his child grew up without him and the joy he felt seeing her waiting for him on the outside is indescribable, he says.

“That sight is etched in my memory for life. Just like the day I received a call telling me about my imminent release.”