[Back]

General

• The Sun will Rise. Statements from the Dock by Southern African Political Prisoners. Edited by Mary Benson, IDAF, 1981
• Walking with Pride. Court Statements by ANC Cadres on Trial, ANC booklet, March 1990

Treason Trial 1956-1961

Throughout 1955 and 1956 the Special Branch conducted a series of raids on offices and private homes of hundreds of opponents of apartheid. Documents, letters, pamphlets, even pieces of clothing were seized in preparation for a show trial. Finally, early on the morning of 5 December 1956, hundreds of policemen throughout the country descended on the homes of leaders of the Congress Alliance and arrested them. One hundred and fifty-six people - 104 Africans, 23 Whites, 21 Indians and 8 Coloureds - were charged with high treason, a capital offence in South Africa. While the case was remanded against most of the accused, 30 of them sat in court almost daily for four-and-a-half years, their normal lives disrupted, and had to listen to an endless recital of long documents, garbled reports of ANC meetings and fabrications by bought informers. The Treason Trial was the main attack on the Freedom Charter, but in the end the court acquitted and discharged all the accused.

• Nelson Mandela's Testimony at the Treason Trial 1956-60
• Speech by A.M. Kathrada at a Meeting of People's Defence Committee held after the Arrests of Leaders on
  Charges of High Treason, December 1956
• Evidence of Molvi Ismail Ahmad Cachalia in the South African Treason Trial, 21-28 June 1960
• The Treason Trial. Forward by Chief Albert Luthuli to a book by Helen Joseph, 1963
• Where Freedom is Treason. Article on the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Treason Trial by E.S.Reddy, 1987

Rivonia Trial 1963-1964

The Rivonia Trial was the outcome of a raid by the South African Police on the farm Lilliesleaf at Rivonia, near Johannesburg, on 11 July 1963. The trial was the most famous in the history of South African political resistance. Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and others were sentenced to life imprisonment on 12 June 1964.

• Nelson Mandela's Statement from the Dock at the Rivonia Trial, 20 April 1964
• Statement by Chief Albert Luthuli on June 12, 1964, when Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and six other leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment
• Statement by Oliver Tambo at a Press Conference in Dar Es Salaam Concerning Sentences in the Rivonia Trial, 12 June 1964
• Toward Robben Island. The Rivonia Trial. By Thomas Karis and Gail M. Gerhart in From Protest to Challenge, Vol. 3, 1977
• Rivonia: Telling how it was, by Lionel Bernstein, Sechaba July 1988

Other Trials

• 'Black Man in a White Court'. Nelson Mandela's First Court Statement, 15 October - 7 November 1962
• Judgment in the trial of Moumbaris, Cholo, Mpanza, Mtembu, Sijaka and Hosey, 1973
  1. Part 1
  2. Part 2
  3. Part 3

[Back] [Historical documents] [Home] [Index]