Democracy is the breeding ground in which the bacilli of the Marxist world pest can grow and spread.
HITLER in Mein Kampf.
From the very inception of their rule in 1948, the Nationalists have held it as a faith that those who are not with them are against them AND MUST BE TREATED AS DEADLY ENEMIES. The basis of their power has always been far too narrow for them to practice tolerance towards their opponents. And the nature of their objective has made it impossible for them ever to make concessions to those who differed from them without endangering their whole apartheid programme. The result has been the adoption of the rigid and uncompromising 'granite wall ' approach which their critics have found to be one of the most objectionable features of their regime.
The Cape Times on 18 November 1948 reported a speech by J.G. Strijdom:
Before the Nationalist Party could reach its ultimate goal - a republic - it would have to solve the colour problem. Anybody who purposely tried to upset the government's plans to put into operation its apartheid policy or who failed to do their duty towards the realization of that aim would be guilty of treason, just as those who refused to take up arms in defence of their country would be guilty of such a crime. The main principle of apartheid as he saw it was the continuation of European supremacy (baasskap).
Those who challenged White supremacy would be guilty of treason. And they have been legion. The implementation of apartheid has caused such manifest injustices, led to such brutality and suffering, that the years since 1948 have been years of mighty and swelling protest in which at one stage or another all sections of the population have joined except those directly under Nationalist influence. The growing frustration of parliamentary politics has driven one section of the people after another into extra-parliamentary political activity, some in the hope of strengthening the hand of the parliamentary opposition, others with a view to substituting for it the mass action of the voteless masses themselves. To all the Nationalists have turned a deaf ear. Criticism has been acceptable only from those who have shown themselves prepared to accept apartheid in the first place. All others have been ignored, unless their protest contained within it seeds of rebellion, when they have been ruthlessly crushed.
Outstanding among the movements of protest have been the Torch Commando, formed in 1951 to defend the constitution against the threat of the Separate Representation of Voters Bill; the Black Sash, formed in 1955 to defend the constitution against the Senate Act; the Churches, especially the Anglican Church which has given the country outstanding figures like Bishop Reeves and Father Huddleston and which openly defied the State on the issue of the 'church clause'. These and other bodies have done valuable work in keeping alive the spirit of conscience, especially among the White section of the population. But their protest has been limited because they are not political parties and have therefore proposed no real alternative to apartheid, mapped out no programme for the achievement of political power. (The Torch Commando did, it is true, enter into a United Front alliance with the United Party and Labour before the 1953 election, but this move proved to be its undoing, and it did not survive electoral defeat.)
The main threat to Nationalist rule in the extra-parliamentary sphere has come from those who have consciously worked out an alternative to apartheid and who have organized the people to implement it. Where the Nationalists have preached apartheid, they have accepted integration; to discrimination they have opposed equality; to White supremacy, the doctrine of democratic rule. Ranging from the Communists on the left through the national organizations of the non-White people right up to the Progressive Party, these have constituted the real traitors to apartheid in Nationalist eyes. And the vials of Nationalist wrath have been poured upon their heads in increasingly massive doses.
Even the United Party has not been excluded from the list of undermining organizations in South Africa. In his maiden speech to Parliament on 19 August 1948, Dr Diederichs, now Minister of Finance, declared:
What is at issue (between the United and Nationalist Parties) is two outlooks on life, fundamentally so divergent that a compromise is entirely unthinkable. ... On the one hand we have nationalism, which believes in the existence, in the necessary existence, of distinct peoples, distinct languages, nations, and cultures, and which regards the fact of the existence of these peoples and these cultures as the basis of its conduct. On the other hand we have liberalism, and the basis of its political struggle is the individual with his so-called rights and liberties. ... This doctrine of liberalism that stands for equal rights for all civilized human beings ... is almost the same as the ideal of communism.
From the very outset the Nationalists have tended to lump all their opponents together, and to smear the one with the alleged crimes of the other.
The Cape Argus on 15 March 1952 reported a speech by Dr Malan: 'All six members of the Labour Party in the House of Assembly were "liberalistic". Some of them came very close to Communism. The Native Representatives wanted equal rights for Natives in all ways and they were also not far from Communism.' It has been in the mounting tension of the last year or so, however, that the Nationalists have launched their most unbridled propaganda assault against the integrationists - even imposing administrative restrictions on some leading members of the Liberal Party.
In a speech reported in the newspaper Dagbreek on 18 November 1962, the Minister of Justice, B. J. Vorster, who on coming to office had fathered the memorable phrase 'rights are getting out of hand', stated: 'United Party policy held the same future for South Africa as that of Progressives and Liberals: total destruction of White leadership.' The Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, Dr Albert Hertzog, in a speech reported in Die Transvaler on 3 November 1962, declared that the recent sabotage in the Republic had been the work of liberalist agitators. Liberalism, which was the precursor of Communism, constituted the greatest danger threatening South Africa, even more dangerous than Communism for its methods were much more subtle.
The real case of the Nationalists against the Liberals was most succinctly voiced by the Cape Town Nationalist newspaper Die Burger in a series of editorials during February 1963, which defended the banning of Liberal Party leaders. 'The simple truth is', proclaimed the paper, 'that the Liberal Party is the bearer of a policy (one man, one vote) the outcome of which, so far as we can judge, differs so little from Communism as to make precious little difference to the minority groups in South Africa. The party's whole line of thinking is subversive of civilization and order in South Africa.' A similar and even more sinister attack was made on Mrs Helen Suzman, the lone Progressive Party Member of Parliament, after she had dared to criticize the inhumanity of the pass laws in the debate on the Bantu Administration vote in the House of Assembly on 29 May 1963. Nationalist back-benchers were stung to fury. Accusing her of being unpatriotic, of smearing South Africa and inciting the non-Whites, they predicted that her days in Parliament were numbered.
P.J. Coetzee, Nationalist M.P. for Langlaagte, said: ' She is a danger for us in the Assembly.' G.P.van den Berg, Nationalist M.P. for Wolmaransstad, addressed her directly: 'You are the greatest political enemy of this country.' Even the Minister himself, de Wet Nel, said Mrs Suzman was being advised by voices that were trying to destroy South Africa. She was not doing her fatherland a service.
So the United Party, Progressives, Liberals, Communists - all aimed at the destruction of White supremacy, all were the enemies of Afrikaner Nationalism. Yet, taking a leaf from Hitler's book, it was with the Communists that the Nationalists began because the Communists were more vulnerable on account of the cold war, and because the Communist Party in 1948 was the only political party in South Africa, and had been for a generation, which stood for full and complete equality between all sections of the South African population and which made no distinction in its membership on grounds of race or colour.
While in opposition the Nationalists had long campaigned against Communism in South Africa. In 1937 the Cape Province Congress of the Nationalist Party had called for the combating of the Communist menace by (a) stricter immigration laws; (b) the penalizing of undesirable propaganda, through deportation and otherwise; and (c) stricter application of the Riotous Assemblies Act.
In 1943 Eric Louw had written a pamphlet on The Communist Danger which preferred as the main charge against Communism that it 'recognizes no distinction of colour or race....
'At meetings of the Communist Party, White, Black, and Brown persons sit together. At socials they drink tea together and at dances the Black native whirls with his arms around the waist of the White girl, and what follows? Louw didn't lift the curtain, but he concluded: 'Joe Stalin becomes the comrade of Jan Smuts. ... The effect of such (Communist) inflammatory propaganda was quickly visible in the impertinent and even challenging attitudes of natives towards Europeans.' This was the essence of the Nationalist charge against Communism - that it undermined 'traditional' race attitudes in South Africa. As soon as the Nationalists themselves came to power, therefore, they appointed a departmental committee to 'investigate' Communism. On the eve of the 1949 provincial elections the Minister of Justice, C. R. Swart, told the House of Assembly that the committee's report disclosed 'a national danger' which made it imperative to combat 'the dangerous undermining' by the Communists of 'our national life, our democratic institutions, and our Western philosophy'.
Early in 1950 the Dutch Reformed Church urged the government to close the Soviet Consulate in Pretoria and to tighten the law punishing incitement of non-Whites against Whites. On 6 March its Church Congress called for State action against Communism, and the Nationalist government obliged by bringing before the 1950 session of Parliament an Unlawful Organizations Bill which barely mentioned Communism and raised a storm of protest from the public because its terms of reference were so wide. The government had started with too much too soon and was forced to withdraw, but it returned before the same session with a Suppression of Communism Bill which eventually became law and has since formed the spearhead of the Nationalist attack on the civil liberties of all sections of the population, Communist and non Communist alike.
Communism, according to the definitions clause of the Act:
means the doctrine of Marxian socialism as expounded by Lenin or Trotsky, the Third Communist International (the Comintern) or the Communist Information Bureau (the Cominform) or any related form of that doctrine expounded or advocated in the Union for the promotion of the fundamental principles of that doctrine and includes, in particular, any doctrine or scheme -
(a) which aims at the establishment of a despotic system of government based on the dictatorship of the proletariat under which one political organization only is recognized and all other political organizations are suppressed or eliminated; or
(b) which aims at bringing about any political, industrial, social, or economic change within the Union by the promotion of disturbance or disorder, by unlawful acts or omissions or by the threat of such acts or omissions or by means which include the promotion of disturbance or disorder, or such acts or omissions or threat; or
(c) which aims at bringing about any political, industrial, social, or economic change within the Union in accordance with the directions or under the guidance of or in cooperation with any foreign government or any foreign or international institution whose purpose or one of whose purposes (professed or otherwise) is to promote the establishment within the Union of any political, industrial, social, or economic system identical with or similar to any system in operation in any country which has adopted a system of government such as is described in paragraph (a); or
(d) which aims at the encouragement of feelings of hostility between the European and non-European races of the Union the consequences of which are calculated to further the achievement of any object referred to in paragraph (a) or (b).
The ludicrous nature of these definitions of Communism is best shown by the fact that they have only rarely formed the basis of prosecutions under the Suppression of Communism Act. Of the thousands of people convicted under the Act since 1950, only a handful have been found by the courts to have propagated what Mr Justice Rumpff, in a case arising from the Defiance Campaign, described as a 'statutory Communism ' The bringing of prosecutions in a court of law was not, however, the primary purpose of the Act, which equipped the government with a formidable battery of administrative weapons for striking down its political opponents. The Act declared the Communist Party to be unlawful (the party had, in fact, anticipated this by dissolving itself a month before the Bill became law) and gave the Governor-General the power to outlaw any other organization which professed itself to be promoting the spread of Communism or which engaged in activities calculated to further the achievement of any of the objects of Communism as set out in the definitions clause.
Furthermore, the Act provided for the appointment of a liquidator who was authorized to compile a list of former members and supporters of the Communist Party. Once on the list, an individual became subject to a number of restrictions, including an order to resign from any organization or public body, even Parliament.
The Governor General was empowered to ban any periodical or other publication which promoted the spread of Communism or 'serves mainly (later amended to "inter alia") as a means for expressing views or conveying information, the publication of which is calculated to further the achievements of any of the objects of Communism'.
The penalties laid down under the Act were not confined to listed Communists. Under section 9 of the Act, anybody, whether listed or not, could be banned from attending gatherings; and under section 10, prohibited from being within defined areas. The Minister was also given the power to ban gatherings.
The Bill provoked a storm of opposition throughout the country. The Johannesburg Bar, in a considered statement, declared:
The objects of Communism as defined in the Act are very wide indeed. They include many liberal and humanitarian objects which are advocated and cherished by persons who are very far from being Communists. These provisions have no legal bounds and, coupled with the denial of any right of access to the courts, are a complete negation of the liberty of the subject as guaranteed by the rule of law. The United Party's approach to the Bill was typical of its methods of opposition. It proposed to make Communism a treasonable offence, punishable in certain circumstances by the death penalty; but opposed the provisions of the Act which bypassed the courts. In this way it was enabled to go through the motions of opposition while at the same time making it impossible for the government to charge it with lending aid and succour to the Communists.
The main opposition to the Bill came from outside Parliament. The African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress, the African People's Organization and the Communist Party entered into an alliance for the purpose of staging a one-day strike in protest against the Bill on 26 June 1950. After the dissolution of the Communist Party had been dramatically announced in Parliament by Communist M.P. Sam Kahn, preparations for the protest strike were carried forward by the other organizations to culminate in the first of those mass demonstrations which were to be so prominent a feature of politics in the ensuing decade. From this year onwards 26 June became known as Freedom Day and was observed by all the people's organizations, later to be welded together in the Congress Alliance.
Along with the passage of restrictive legislation, the government expanded the scope of the Special Branch of the police. Not a public meeting was held by the Congress organizations without the presence of a battery of note-taking policemen. Telephones were tapped and correspondence tampered with, while the latest electronic devices used in detection were imported from the United States. One police chief announced that the special Branch no longer relied on informers because other means of obtaining information were now available to it.
All these measures, however, far from producing the result desired by the government, further excited opposition. Towards the end of 1951 a Joint Planning Council of the African National Congress and the South African Indian Congress was set up to organize a campaign for the repeal of discriminatory legislation. The African National Congress considered the proposals of this Council in December 1951 and then sent a letter to the Prime Minister, reiterating the demand for direct representation of the Africans in Parliament and warning the government that, if certain laws were not repealed by 29 February 1952, 'mass action' would be taken. The laws specifically objected to were the pass laws, the Group Areas Act, the Separate Representation of Voters Act, the Suppression of Communism Act, the Bantu Authorities Act, and the so-called 'rehabilitation scheme' in the Reserves.
Unlike Verwoerd, who boasted that he threw such letters into the waste-paper basket, Dr Malan had the courtesy to reply.
'While the government is not prepared to grant the Bantu political equality within the European community,' he said. 'it is only too willing to encourage Bantu initiative, Bantu services, and Bantu administration within the Bantu community.' He advised the Congress to reconsider its decision and warned that the government would use all its powers to deal with any infringements of the law.
On 11 February the Congress replied to the Prime Minister. Nothing contained in the Bantu Authorities Act was a substitute for direct representation in the Councils of State. As a defenceless and voteless people, the Africans had explored other channels without success and now had no alternative but to embark on a concerted defiance of unjust laws. Nelson Mandela was appointed National Volunteer-in-Chief and the recruiting of volunteers began. On 26 June, Freedom Day, the campaign was launched.
Within the first fortnight over 500 non-Whites, mainly Africans and Indians, had been arrested in the Eastern Province and another 100 on the Witwatersrand for such offences as contravening curfew regulations, ignoring apartheid notices at stations or post offices, and entering African townships without permits. The campaign spread rapidly to other centres and by 30 September the number of arrests totalled 5,000. The volunteers defended their cases in court but, when convicted, refused to pay fines and went to jail instead. It was the most impressive protest demonstration ever conducted by non-White organizations in South Africa. By the end of the campaign over 8,000 people, including a handful of Whites, had gone to jail.
The government's reply was to wield the big stick. Even before the campaign got under way, the Minister of Justice began to issue notices under the Suppression of Communism Act. The liquidator had by this time placed between 500 and 600 names on his list of former members and supporters of the Communist Party. In May the Minister dispatched notices to a number of prominent trade unionists and leaders of the African and Indian Congresses -ordering them to resign from various organizations, prohibiting them from attending any gatherings other than church services or purely social and recreational functions, and, in some cases, confining them to the provinces in which they lived. Several of the leaders chose to disregard these orders as their own contribution to the Defiance Campaign and were sentenced to between four and six months' imprisonment.
In May, too, the weekly newspaper Guardian was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act. One week later a paper called the Clarion (later named Advance) appeared with the same management and staff as the Guardian.
On 25 May the Minister of Justice notified Sam Kahn M.P. and Fred Carneson M.P.C. that, since they had been found by a Select Committee to be Communists, their membership of Parliament and the Provincial Council respectively was terminated.
Kahn's place in Parliament was taken by B. P. Bunting, also a listed Communist, who in turn was ejected under the Suppression Act in 1953. The election to fill the vacancy was again won by a listed Communist, Ray Alexander, banned Secretary of the Food and Canning Workers' Union. In the meantime, however, the government had amended the law to make listed Communists ineligible for election to Parliament or the Provincial Council, and Miss Alexander was forcibly prevented from taking her seat.
The 1953 session of Parliament saw the introduction of two further laws designed to prevent future campaigns of passive resistance and to equip the government with sweeping powers to deal with any emergency which might arise. The Criminal Laws Amendment Act made it a serious offence, punishable by a fine of ú300 and/or three years' imprisonment and/or ten lashes, to break any law by way of protest or as part of a campaign against any law. Furthermore, the leaders of any future defiance campaign, i.e. those who 'incited' or 'procured' others to commit an offence by way of protest or as part of a campaign against any law, could be punished with a fine of ú500 and/or five years' imprisonment and/or fifteen lashes.
During the course of the debate, United Party member Dr Smit pointed out that under the Magistrates' Courts Act the maximum number of strokes which could be imposed was ten. The Minister of Justice, Mr C. R. Swart, replied: 'What are five strokes between friends? I accept the Hon. Member's amendment.' The second measure was the Public Safety Act, which gave the government the power to proclaim a state of emergency for a period of up to twelve months and to rule by decree. At the end of any period of twelve months, the state of emergency could be extended if the government thought fit, and decrees could be issued on any subject except the Defence Act, the Industrial Conciliation Act, and the rights and duties of Parliament and its members.
The United Party decided to support both measures, fearing, if they did not, that they would be accused of supporting riot and insurrection, and that this would damage their chances in the general election due in less than two months' time. Only the handful of Labour members and the Natives' Representatives voted against the new tyrannical laws.
The pattern established by the Defiance Campaign has been repeated ever since. Each time that the non-White organizations have voiced their grievances or demonstrated their demands, the police have moved into action. Forms of public protest which are regarded as normal in other countries are subject in South Africa to massive police surveillance and intimidation with the ever-present threat of criminal sanctions. Loopholes in the law have been closed and new laws imposed to meet new situations. Steadily the extra-parliamentary struggle has been driven underground.
In December 1953, the African National Congress, at a meeting in Queenstown, declared that only a national convention representative of all racial groups could improve the deteriorating state of race relations. Then, in March 1954, the executives of the A.N.C., the S.A. Indian Congress, the S.A. Coloured People's Organization*, and the S.A. Congress of Democrats met in Natal under the chairmanship of Chief A. J. Lutuli and decided to hold a Congress of the People at which a Freedom Charter would be adopted. (* Later called the S.A. Coloured People's Congress.)
It was resolved that the people themselves should declare how they would like to be governed in a democratic South Africa. Hundreds of meetings were accordingly arranged in town and township, in factories, mines, shops, farms, and in the Reserves, while a network of local committees were formed through which the people transmitted their demands and grievances. Eventually the Congress itself was held at Kliptown, a small village near Johannesburg, on 25 and 26 June 1955, and three thousand delegates from all over the country adopted the Freedom Charter by acclaim.
The preamble to the Charter announced:
We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and White, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people; that our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty, and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality; that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities; that only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex, or belief; and therefore, we, the people of South Africa, Black and White together - equals, countrymen, and brothers - adopt this Freedom Charter. And we pledge ourselves to strive together, sparing nothing of our strength and courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won.
The main demands would have been unnecessary in any civilized democratic state.
The People shall govern. All National Groups shall have Equal Rights. The People shall share in the Country's Wealth. The land shall be shared among those who work it. All shall be Equal before the Law. All shall enjoy Equal Human Rights. There shall be Work and Security. The Doors of Learning and Culture shall be Opened. There shall be Houses, Security and Comfort. There shall be Peace and Friendship.
From the outset, however, the government of South Africa chose to regard the plan for a Congress of the People as treasonable. Preliminary meetings were raided by the police and documents confiscated, with the warrants used for the raids disclosing investigations into a charge of treason. The Congress itself was invaded by a large force of armed policemen who took down the names and addresses of all present and impounded a large quantity of literature.
Then, in September, the homes of over 400 people were raided and searched by the police, still investigating their allegation of treason. One year and three months later, on 6 December, the birthday of the Minister of Justice, C.R. Swart, the police swooped at dawn on 156 people in all corners of South Africa and brought them before court in Johannesburg on a charge of high treason.
In the dock were the principal leaders of the people's organizations and those cadres who had taken the most active part in the preparations for the Congress. It was undoubtedly the government's hope in one fell swoop to decapitate the resistance movement, either by securing a mass conviction or by immobilizing the accused for the duration of the trial. The details of the treason trial are by now too well known to require repetition. It is sufficient to say that after dragging through the courts for four years the case ignominiously collapsed and all the accused were acquitted.
Meanwhile government action under the Suppression of Communism Act was being intensified. Banning orders, which had at first been issued for two years, were now issued for five, while the restrictions imposed by the bans were more severe. Most people banned were also prohibited from playing any part in the affairs of a long list of organizations ranging from the Congresses themselves to Parent-Teacher Associations and the Civil Rights League; many of them were restricted to the city in which they lived. By 1957 the liquidator had placed a total of 608 names on his list of former members and supporters of the Communist Party (235 Whites, sixty-seven Coloureds, forty-seven Asians, and 259 Africans). Of seventy-six trade union officials named, no fewer than fifty-seven had been ordered to resign from their unions and forbidden to play any part in the organization of workers. The refusal of passport facilities to the more outspoken of the government's opponents had become an established practice and was enforced by special legislation.
Yet despite the ever-increasing repression, popular resistance was not in any way diminished. The issuing of reference books (pass books) to African women which started in 1956 led to widespread incidents of pass burning and a mass demonstration of 20,000 women at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, where over 7,000 individually signed protest forms were deposited on the doorstep of the Prime Minister. The treason arrests themselves provoked such massive demonstrations of support for the accused in the streets of Johannesburg that the police were unable to control the situation and the case was later transferred to Pretoria. An increase of a penny in bus fares on certain routes in Johannesburg and Pretoria at the beginning of 1957 led to a bus boycott by the Africans in the townships which lasted for more than three months. Over 50,000 people walked to and from work every day - in some cases a distance of eighteen miles - because their wages were so low that they simply could not afford the increase. The government chose to treat the boycott as a challenge and attempted to smash it by force - thousands of Africans in the affected areas were arrested for technical offences - but such was the discipline and unity of the boycotters that they eventually won widespread support from commerce and industry, and the old fare was restored.
In the Zeerust and Sekhukhuneland Reserves of the Transvaal full-scale revolts broke out in 1958 over government attempts to impose passes on African women and the whole Bantu Authorities scheme. The government immediately unleashed a reign of terror in order to restore control. Behind a close-drawn curtain of secrecy (the Press was excluded from both Reserves) a special police squad went into action and did not hesitate to use the most extreme forms of violence to enforce submission. Hundreds of men, women, and children fled from the Zeerust area across the border into Bechuanaland in search of safety and lived in conditions of considerable want rather than return to the hell which had been their home. Those who did venture to return when the terror seemed to have abated were subjected to heavy penalties by the government-appointed chiefs.
Regulations were promulgated banning the African National Congress in both areas, forbidding entry without a permit, prohibiting any statement 'which has the intention ... of subverting or interfering with the authority of the State or any of its officials or of any chief or headman', and outlawing any propaganda for a boycott. Hundreds of tribesmen were arrested in both Reserves on charges ranging from public violence to murder, and in Sekhukhuneland a number of Africans were sentenced to death.
Similar disturbances occurred in other areas. In Natal, during August 1959 it was estimated that 600 African women were in jail as a result of unrest and rioting throughout the Province. Fines imposed were reported to have totalled £13,000 and alternative jail sentences 228 years. The Secretary for Bantu Administration who toured the area put the blame on A.N.C. agitators. But Chief Lutuli, A.N.C. President-General, who himself lived in Natal, listed the causes as: (1) mass removals and the demolition of homes; (2) influx control, passes for women, and the refusal of permits to seek work in the towns; (3) increases in rents and taxes; (4) forced labour by women without payment; (5) low wages in relation to the ever-increasing cost of living.
The clashes between the people and the authorities both in urban and rural areas reached a climax in 1960. On 21 March the Pan-Africanist Congress, an off-shoot of the A.N.C. opposed to the multi-racial character of the Congress Alliance, launched a non-violent anti-pass campaign at a number of points in the Union. The campaign was met with deliberate violence by the police, and the shootings at Sharpeville and Langa made an impact on the outside world which has not been obliterated to this day. Between 21 March and 9 April a total of eighty-three non White civilians were killed and 365 injured by police bullets. Casualties among the police themselves totalled three Africans killed, and thirty-three Whites, one Coloured, and twenty-five Africans injured.
The killings roused the Africans to fury. In Cape Town the entire population of the African townships went on strike for a period of almost three weeks, while a one day stay-at-home called by the A.N.C. in mourning for the dead of Sharpeville and Langa was successful in all the main centres of the country and marked the start of a new pass-burning campaign. Using its powers under the Public Safety Act, the government declared a state of emergency and issued a set of regulations which gave it virtually limitless powers to deal with the situation. Some 2,000 leading figures in the Congress movement, Pan-Africanists, Liberal Party members, and others were detained without trial for up to five months. Almost 20,000 Africans were arrested under another section of the emergency regulations and thousands of them sent to prisons or work camps after conviction at secret trials held in the jails. In Cape Town, hardest hit by the strike, parties of police roamed the streets openly assaulting Africans and even Coloureds in an attempt to force them back to work. After house to house searches by the police in the townships, many Africans simply disappeared and were not seen by their families again for months. Allegations were also made that police removed valuables and money from several homes. Jails were overcrowded, and numbers of prisoners were reported to have died of 'pneumonia'.
Special legislation was passed by Parliament to outlaw the A.N.C. and the P.A.C., while the newspapers New Age and Torch were banned under the emergency regulations, reappearing only when the emergency ended on 31 August. The underground Communist Party publicly announced its existence for the first time, and both the A.N.C. and P.A.C. made preparations to continue their work outside the law. The disruption caused by the emergency had a catastrophic effect on the economy of the country. The confidence of investors was shaken and large sums of capital fled South Africa. The property market slumped and new construction plans were abandoned. In his 1961 Budget speech, the Minister of Finance reported that in the previous year South Africa's gold and foreign exchange reserves had dropped by ú61 million compared with a rise of ú40 million in 1959. There had been a capital outflow of ú81 million. H.F. Oppenheimer, Chairman of Anglo American Corporation, declared that the quoted holdings of his group had fallen by twenty-three percent in 1960. The market value of the investments controlled by the General Mining and Finance Corporation declined by forty percent in the eighteen month period to June 1961. The government was forced to impose strict financial controls, and only the great economic resources of South Africa -especially her mounting gold production - prevented collapse.
The formal ending of the emergency on 31 August 1960 did not, however, end the state of crisis into which the government's policies had plunged the country. Barely three months later emergency rule had to be imposed in the Transkei following a series of disturbances in the five eastern districts of the territory. Once again the background was widespread popular opposition to the government-run Bantu Authorities and rehabilitation schemes. One of the most serious incidents took place on 6 June, when the police attacked a tribal gathering at Ngqusa Hill leaving eleven Africans dead and thirteen wounded behind them.
Later a mass meeting of 6,000 tribesmen near Bizana, in Pondoland, decided to pay no more taxes as a protest against Bantu Authorities, and to boycott stores run by Whites in Bizana. Rule in the area began to pass into the hands of a revolutionary organization known as 'the Congo', the leadership of which was known as 'the Hill', and which declared that it was working for a programme of democratic reform.
The government's emergency proclamation provided for detention without trial, and massive forces of police and soldiers arrived to restore 'law and order'. Hundreds of tribesmen were arrested for offences ranging from murder to tax and pass offences. Government chiefs and headmen were provided with strong bodyguards and their opponents jailed or deported. But despite the continuing presence of special units of troops and police, the emergency proclamations are still in force throughout the area, while detentions and deportations without trial continue to this day. On 7 February 1967 the Minister of Bantu Administration told the House of Assembly that on I January 1967 sixteen people were under removal orders issued by chiefs in terms of Proclamation 400 (the emergency order providing for removals and detention without trial in the Transkei).
Deportation, or banishment, has proved to be one of the most vicious weapons in the government arsenal. The Nationalists were not, of course, the first to use it - ruthlessness is seldom without precedent in South Africa - but they have resorted to it on a scale far beyond that of any previous regime. Between 1948 and 1966, 150 Africans were banished, mainly from the Reserves. And among the number were three children - one only twelve years old. Of what possible crime could a child of twelve be guilty, to warrant such a punishment? His name is Tlou Matlala, the son of Mokoena Matlala, and he was banished from Matlala's Reserve to King Williams Town in 1954. Police, armed with a banishment order, pulled him out of school and sent him into exile. He was regarded by the tribe as heir to the chieftainship, and the government had other plans. Twenty men and three women were banished from the Reserve between 1952 and 1954. The son and daughter of Maphuti Seopa, aged fifteen and fourteen respectively, were also amongst the exiled. A number of the Matlala people have died in banishment; the first two who were allowed to return to the Matlala reserve died within a few weeks. Sixteen were still in banishment in 1962, after eight years.
The government has withdrawn some banishment orders, and some have lapsed. On 14 October 1966, the Minister said that on 12 February 1966 sixteen banishment orders had been withdrawn, and the names of seven Matlalas were included in his list. On 9 August 1966, the Minister told the House that thirty-nine banishment orders were still in force on that date, but no further details were given.
Banishment without trial is permitted by the Native Administration Act of 1927 which empowers the Governor-General (today the State President), whenever he deems it expedient in the general public interest, to order any tribe, portion of a tribe, or single African to withdraw from one district to any other district and not to return to the district from which he came or move to any other district without the written permission of the Secretary for Native Affairs.
On 23 September 1966 the Minister was again questioned about some of the individuals banished. His answer revealed that the man who has been longest in exile was Mr Paulus Mopeli, who was banished after disturbances in the Witzieschoek reserve in the Orange Free State in 1952. He was joined by his wife in 1954 and the banishment camp of Frenchdale was their home from that time onwards. Another exile of long standing was eighty one-year-old Mr William M. Sekhukhune, who was banished from Sekhukhuneland in 1959 and sent to the barren farm of Driefontein, in the Vryburg district.
The government has cleverly avoided the stigma of classic concentration camps, complete with guards, searchlights, barbed-wire fences, and tracker dogs on the Nazi model. The camps are there - at Frenchdale, and Driefontein - but they are open to the wide world, pathetic clusters of huts in the most desolate parts of the country.
This is one spot, described in a pamphlet issued by the Human Rights Welfare Committee:
Semi-desert, on the edge of the Kalahari, scrub country, dry, barren, and scorchingly hot in summer. There is no shade except that given by the overhang of the roof of the huts - the men sit close up to the wall. The nearest inhabitants are about half a mile away, the nearest store thirteen to fifteen miles away, the nearest bus stop thirty miles away, and the nearest town sixty miles off. There is no school, no post office, no medical facilities, no opportunity for work.
Here is another:
Twelve round stone huts with thatched roofs, 104 miles from the nearest town. The men are dumped here and told to stay. The huts are empty. There is no furniture, no utensils. They must acquire these out of the ú2 allowance which is sometimes offered (by the government), not always, and not always taken, or out of wages amounting to about ú2 to ú4 a month. Three of the occupants here give their ages as 63, 65 and 72.
One exile wrote: 'My experience of banishment is that you are taken to an empty room and nobody seems to care for you. In other words you are like a person who is buried alive.'
Families of the exiles are left destitute. A teenage daughter, whose mother died while her father was in exile, wrote: ' Tell me in the name of God who it was who banished my father and sentenced me to a living death.'
With the increase of disturbances in the Reserves, such is the fate that has overcome the most militant opponents of the government's policies - chiefs, headmen, people of consequence in their community. Some have been rotting in exile for ten years and more. Some who are old men will never see their homes again. But it is the children who suffer most. One of the fathers wrote: ' The case of my children is a very pathetic one indeed because I hear that they are scattered all over the country like a bird's chickens. The boy is in - as far as my information goes, and what he wants there, young as he is, I cannot tell, except assuming that it must be hunger and poverty that must be moving him about. He has no one to finance his education. This is the heaviest blow that the deportation has meant to me.'
In 1961 the people's organizations prepared for the next assault on the citadel of White supremacy. Over 1,000 delegates attended the All-in African People's Conference held at Pietermaritzburg on 25 and 26 March and heard an inspiring address by Nelson Mandela, whose ban from attending gatherings had only recently expired. The conference called for a national convention of elected representatives of all adult men and women, without regard to race, creed or colour, to be held not later than 31 May - the day on which the new Republic was to be proclaimed - to draw up a new constitution for South Africa. If the government ignored this demand, the people would be called upon to organize mass demonstrations on the eve of the declaration of the Republic. All Africans should refuse to cooperate with the Republic or any other form of government 'which rests on force to perpetuate the tyranny of a minority', while Indians, Coloureds, and democratic Whites should join with the Africans in opposition to 'a regime which is bringing South Africa to disaster '.
They call for a national convention was a reasonable, democratic demand which found support among wide sections of the people, White as well as non-White. But the government's reaction to it was typically intransigent. A special General Law Amendment Act was propelled through the 1961 session of Parliament empowering an Attorney-General, if he considered it necessary in the interests of public safety or the maintenance of public order, to direct that an arrested person be detained in jail for up to twelve days without bail. The Act also tightened up the provisions of the law relating to 'intimidation' and the banning of meetings, and on 19 May all gatherings were banned until 26 June.
Homes and offices were raided by the Special Branch of the police, and all the leaders who could be found were held under the twelve-day no-bail law. Then, between 3 May and the end of the month, thousands of police, conducted large-scale raids all over the country to round up Africans suspected of 'vagrancy', contraventions of the pass laws, tax offences, and the like. Ten thousand or more of what the police referred to as 'the Tsotsi element' were arrested. During the last ten days of May all police leave was cancelled and army units were 'brought to a state of preparedness for service'. The State, railways, several local authorities, and a number of private employers warned their African workers that they would be penalized if they took part in the three-day stay-at-home, from 29 to 31 May, which had been called by the Action Council of the Pietermaritzburg Conference. Distressingly, the Pan-Africanist Congress, by word of mouth and leaflets, assisted the authorities in their attempts to break the strike.
Because of the massive campaign which had been launched to meet it, the three-day stay-at-home, though it constituted the greatest national general strike ever held in the country, with hundreds of thousands staying away from work in the main centres, was acknowledged by Nelson Mandela, Secretary of the National Action Council, to have failed to reach the anticipated proportions. Yet it made an overwhelming impact on the country. The Republican celebrations were completely overshadowed. The people's power had been demonstrated by the very exertions necessary to contain it.
As it turned out, the 29 May campaign proved a watershed in South Africa's political development. During the fifties the entire resistance movement had been based on non-violence, as the treason trial judges themselves acknowledged when they acquitted the accused at the end of the case. The campaigns of 1960 and 1961 had also been non-violent in both conception and execution. Yet more, and more, popular non-violence had been met with violence. The brutality displayed during the 1960 emergency and the 1961 stay-at-home campaign left its mark on the popular movements of opposition. There was more and more talk, particularly among the youth, of the need for 'new methods' of struggle. Every little demonstration, every poster parade, every meeting seemed to result only in more prosecutions and jailings. Was there any point in carrying on in the old way? The government would not be moved by reason or argument. The parliamentary opposition was powerless. Nowhere did the non-White people have a voice in the Councils of State. Was it not time for a change?
How far the national liberatory organizations were permeated with these ideas it is impossible to say. On 26 June, a statement from Nelson Mandela, spokesman for the National Action Council and leader of the May strike, declared that the next phase of the freedom struggle would be a full-scale campaign of non-cooperation, and that he, Mandela, would work 'underground' to lead it.
Mandela, wanted on a charge of incitement, announced that he would not give himself up, but would separate himself from his wife and children, close his business, and abandon his profession as an attorney, to 'live as an outlaw in the land of my birth' and fight the government side by side with his people, 'inch by inch and mile by mile, until victory is won'.
Calling upon the people to join in the fight for freedom, Mandela said: 'I have made my choice. I will not leave South Africa nor will I surrender. Only through hardship, sacrifices, and militant action will freedom be won.' Mandela eluded the police for over a year before he was captured in Natal and sentenced to three years' imprisonment for his part in the 29 May strike and to a further two years - the maximum sentence - for having left the country (briefly, for consultation with African leaders abroad) without a passport. Rumours that Mandela had been 'given away' by Communists can be discounted as pure mischief and were vigorously refuted by Mandela himself in his speech from the dock.
On the night of 16 December 1961 - a public holiday formerly called Dingaan's Day and now known as the Day of the Covenant, celebrating an Afrikaner victory over the Zulu Chief at the Battle of Blood River - ten explosions, five in Johannesburg and five in Port Elizabeth, marked the birth of a new organization, Umkhonto we Sizwe (the Spear of the Nation). During the day Verwoerd had made a speech appealing for 'national unity between the two White races '. A poster distributed by Umkhonto we Sizwe proclaimed:
This is a new, independent body formed by Africans. It includes in its ranks South Africans of all races. ... Umkhonto we Sizwe will carry on the struggle for freedom and democracy by new methods which are necessary to complement the actions of the established national liberation organizations....
We hope that we will bring the government and its supporters to its senses before it is too late, so that both the government and its policies can be changed before matters reach the desperate stage of civil war. We believe our actions to be a blow against Nationalist preparations for civil war and military rule. In these actions we are working in the best interests of all the people of this country, Black, Brown, and White, whose future happiness and well-being cannot be attained without the overthrow of the Nationalists. ...
The people's patience is not endless. The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices - submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa.
South Africa was again face to face with organized sabotage as an instrument of political policy, but this time from a very different source. The 'granite' policy of the Nationalist government was provoking the inevitable response. At the beginning the sabotage attempts were made largely with home-made bombs, and in the first attack one of the saboteurs was killed and another injured when a bomb went off prematurely. But the organization quickly improved and, despite prosecutions and jailings, the number of attacks steadily increased. Questioned in the House of Assembly, the Minister of Justice during the 1962 session of Parliament refused to give the number of sabotage attacks which had occurred, declaring that it was not in the public interest to do so. But since December 1961 nearly 10 instances have been reported in the Press. Attacks have for the most part been confined to government installations, particularly those connected with the policy of apartheid and race discrimination, such as pass offices.
The reply of the Minister of Justice was the General Law Amendment Act of 1962 commonly called the Sabotage Act. Of the twenty-two clauses in the new law, only one is concerned with sabotage as such. The remainder equip the Minister with sweeping powers to administer action against his political opponents.
The sabotage clause is in two parts. The first makes it an offence for anyone to commit any wrongful or wilful act whereby he obstructs, injures, tampers with, or destroys: (a) the health or safety of the public; the maintenance of law and order; (b) the supply of water, light, power, fuel, or foodstuffs, sanitary, medical, or fire extinguishing services; postal, telephone, telegraph, or radio services, or the free movement of traffic; (c) any property; or if he attempts to commit such offence; or if, in contravention of any law, he possesses any explosives, firearm or weapon, or enters or is upon any land or building.
In other words, a person who is guilty of as little as trespass may be successfully prosecuted for sabotage under this Act. Once the trespass alone is proved, he becomes liable to penalties ranging from a minimum of five years' imprisonment to the death sentence, unless he can prove that his offence was not committed with intent: (a) to cause or promote general dislocation, disturbance, or disorder; (b) to cripple any industry or the production and distribution of commodities; (c) to seriously injure or endanger the safety of any person or to cause substantial financial loss to any person or to the State; (d) to further the achievement of any political aim, including the bringing about of any social or economic change in the Republic; (e) to cause or encourage feelings of hostility between different sections of the population; (f) to cause forcible resistance to the government, or to embarrass the administration of the affairs of the State.
The only safeguard possessed by an accused is that his trial must be ordered by the Attorney General and not by an ordinary prosecutor. But once prosecuted an accused is virtually doomed, for to prove innocence of the conditions listed from (a) to (f) is intimidatingly difficult, no matter how able the defence.
The administrative restrictions which may be imposed under the Sabotage Act include the following: (a) anybody who in the opinion of the Minister is furthering the objects of Communism may be subjected to house arrest or prohibited from performing any act; (b) listed and banned persons and former members of banned organizations may be prohibited from belonging to any organization or class of organization; (c) listed or banned persons may be required to report daily to the police and must notify any change of address or occupation to the police; (d) any new newspaper which applies for registration may be required to deposit £10,000 with the Minister of the Interior, and if the newspaper is subsequently banned, the deposit will be forfeit to the State; (e) publication in any form of statements by banned persons is prohibited.
The penalties for breach of these restrictions range from a minimum of one year to a maximum of ten years' imprisonment. Opposition to the Sabotage Act was widespread, and public meetings and demonstrations were held in many centres. The International Commission of Jurists declared that the Bill reduced the liberty of the citizen to a degree not surpassed in the most extreme dictatorship of the Left or Right. The measure was a culmination of determined and ruthless attempts to enforce the doctrine of apartheid, and was not worthy of a civilized jurisprudence. The Christian Council of South Africa stated that it viewed the harsh and extreme terms of the Bill with 'consternation and dismay'.
Introducing the second reading of the Bill, the Minister proclaimed that the country was calm and peaceful despite the ' artificial agitation made outside '. He wanted to keep it that way. It was not the government's intention to restrict freedom of speech as a whole. The Bill was designed purely and simply to render subversive elements and Communists harmless and to punish saboteurs.
It is not generally realized that the Sabotage Act consists largely of amendments to the Suppression of Communism Act and that to some extent Vorster won acceptance for it with his argument that it was only the Communists who would get hit. The wide powers granted under the Act, however, have been used by the Minister indiscriminately against Communists and non-Communists alike. The first person to be placed under house arrest, Mrs Helen Joseph, is not and has never been a Communist; indeed, she made this so clear in her evidence during the treason trial that the accusation was not even levelled against her by the prosecution. Of the twenty persons placed under house arrest up to 15 February 1963, thirteen were listed Communists, but seven were not. The overwhelming majority of people banned from attending gatherings were not listed Communists. A government notice published on 6 November 1964 gave the names of 303 persons on whom banning notices had been served up to 30 April 1964. Of that total, 68 were listed Communists, but 235 were not, and amongst these last have been Liberal Party members as avowedly Anti-Communist as the Minister of Justice himself.
The penalty of house arrest has in most instances been imposed for a period of five years, during which the victims are forbidden to leave their homes except for the hours specified in the Minister's notice, and may not receive any visitors at home except for a lawyer or a doctor - provided that neither is listed or banned. Some of the twenty people house-arrested have been prohibited from leaving their homes for twenty-four hours a day, on the assumption that they had 'private means' and so had no cause to leave their homes. The Minister announced, however, that if they found 'bona fide' jobs, their orders would be varied so as to enable them to take up employment, and those under twenty-four-hour house arrest have generally been allowed three hours a day in which to seek work. If allowed out to work at all, anyone under house arrest must report daily to a police station.
Banning notices have also been greatly tightened up since the passing of the Sabotage Act. Those banned are prohibited from attending not only all political gatherings, but also any gathering where people have social intercourse with one another, are forbidden to enter any non-White area, location, or hostel, are forbidden to enter the premises of any factory, are forbidden to communicate in any manner whatsoever with any other named or banned person, are confined to a single magisterial district or sometimes even a single township, and are ordered to report once a week to a specified police station.
It has been estimated, on the basis of official records, that about 720 banning orders were issued between 1950 and 1 December 1966. Judging by the lists of names published in the government Gazette from time to time, the present total of banning orders issued since the Suppression of Communism Act came into force could be in the region of 1,000. In response to representations from some of the victims, by the end of 1966 about sixty banning orders had been withdrawn, while an equivalent number had had their names removed from the list of named Communists.
Action has also been taken against the Press. In November 1962 the newspaper New Age (successor to the banned Advance, itself successor to the banned Guardian) was banned. The staff of the paper, anticipating the ban, had registered another newspaper Spark, before the Sabotage Act became law and thus avoided the need to pay the £10,000 deposit which would undoubtedly have been demanded of them had they attempted to register a new paper. Spark came out weekly after New Age was banned, but the Minister, in response, then resorted to other of his new powers under the Sabotage Act. On 22 February 1963, a notice was gazetted prohibiting any named or banned person or anyone formerly a member of a banned organization from belonging to any organization 'which in any manner prepares, compiles, prints, publishes, or disseminates any publication'. Finally, individual notices were served on the editor and other leading staff members of Spark forbidding them from being in any place 'which constitutes the premises on which any publication ... is prepared, compiled, printed, or published and in addition prohibiting them from 'preparing, compiling, printing, publishing, or disseminating in any manner whatsoever any publication' or preparing any matter for publication. Men and women who had spent a lifetime in journalism were prohibited by a stroke of the ministerial pen from continuing with their profession, even as free-lance journalists for local or overseas papers. Deprived of its existing, and any potential, new staff, Spark published its last issue on 28 March 1963. A weekly paper which had been published for over twenty-five years without ever having fallen foul of the law was done to death by a government which never dared to challenge it in a court of law.
In February 1963 the government also banned the monthly magazine Fighting Talk, which had had an equally blameless career but which had been an equally staunch opponent of apartheid. The Minister might claim that both Spark and Fighting Talk were edited by listed Communists, but in demanding a deposit of £5,000 from the magazine, The New African, a mildly liberal, somewhat academic monthly which had applied for registration, he was taking a free swing at those who had never betrayed any love for Communism and showing again that behind the screen of anti-Communism the government would attack the liberties of all who opposed its policies.
Similar methods of banning and intimidation combined were used in subsequent years to silence the remaining journals of dissent in South Africa. In 1963 editors and staff members of The Torch, the Cape Town journal of the Non-European Unity Movement, were banned and restricted until at last the paper was forced to suspend publication. Five editors of the Liberal Party journal Contact were banned, one after the other, and though the paper never formally ceased publication, by the end of 1966 its appearances were so infrequent as to render its public impact ineffective. Forward, once the mouthpiece of the South African Labour Party, with a circulation of tens of thousands, was by 1964 confined to publishing purely factual news of injustices, without comment, in a bid to ensure survival; but it too, in the end, found itself unable to continue. Perhaps most significant of all was that Forum, a liberal journal founded in 1938 to support the stand of Mr Jan Hofmeyr when he left the United Party government in protest against General Hertzog's Native Bills, found itself by 1965, though quite without any taint of Communism or rebellion, equally without any public interest in its moderation. In his last editorial Mr Ralph Horwitz, the economist, wrote that, in the prevailing climate of South Africa, 'there is little place for the independent small periodical of protest'.
A further administrative punishment meted out by the government under the Sabotage Act was a notice gazetted on 28 December 1962, prohibiting any named or banned person or anyone formerly a member of a banned organization from taking part in the affairs of 'any organization which in any manner propagates, defends, attacks, criticizes or discusses any form of State or any principle or policy of the government of a State, or which in any manner undermines the authority of the government of a State.' In other words, no person falling under any of the three categories listed could belong to any organization which ever at any time discussed politics. Registered trade unions or employers' organizations were exempted from the ban, but the unregistered South African Congress of Trade Unions and other unions lost their leading personnel as a result.
In September 1962, the government issued a proclamation under the Suppression of Communism Act declaring the Congress of Democrats, one of the constituent members of the original Congress Alliance headed by the African National Congress, an unlawful organization. The C.O.D. had been formed during the Defiance Campaign of 1952 to enlist support among Whites for the resistance campaign launched by the African and Indian Congresses. As a consequence of the banning a number of White democrats found themselves listed as Communists by virtue of their membership of C.O.D., quite irrespective of their actual political outlook.
Despite the torrent of repression, peace, for some strange reason, refused to return to South Africa. The most daring and spectacular acts of sabotage were committed after the Sabotage Act came into force, including the dynamiting of electricity pylons and sub-stations, of the Pretoria office of a Cabinet Minister, and of the offices of a Nationalist newspaper in Durban. Saboteurs trained in various African states and even as far afield as Cuba were reported to have slipped back into the country and reinforced the ranks of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
The close of 1962 also witnessed the emergence of a new menace to White South Africa - the organization known as Poqo, believed to be an outcrop of the banned Pan-Africanist Congress. According to its acting chief, P.K. Leballo, in a statement issued from Basutoland in March 1963, Poqo consisted of an army of 150,000 men throughout South Africa which was preparing for a final assault on white supremacy during 1963. South African police hold it responsible for the murder of three policemen in Langa location, Cape Town, eight murders of African and Coloured 'informers' in Paarl, the murder of a headman in the Transkei, the attempted murder of the government stooge chief Kaiser Matanzima in the Transkei, and, worst of all, a series of attacks on Whites.
On the night of 21 November 1962 a body of Africans marched out of the township of Mbekweni near Paarl and, after an unsuccessful attack on the police station, went on the rampage in the neighbourhood, sacking and looting shops, attacking private homes, and murdering a young man and a young woman who had been roused from their beds. Other Whites were hacked with pangas. Five Africans were reported killed in the riot, and afterwards several hundred were arrested on a charge of murder.
On the night of 2 February 1963, about fifty Africans descended on a road camp near Bashee River Bridge in the Transkei and, using petrol bombs and firearms, murdered five Whites who were sleeping in caravans.
On the night of 8 February 1963, a White businessman making his weekly debt collections in Langa location was set upon at night and murdered.
All these crimes and a number of others were placed at the door of Poqo and sent a shiver of fear through White South Africa. The police themselves pointed out that, whereas the banned A.N.C. (acknowledged by its leaders abroad to be responsible for the birth of Umkhonto we Sizwe) went in for finely-planned acts of sabotage in which the object was not the taking of lives, Poqo directed its attack against the White community as a whole. In an interim report the judge who was appointed to investigate the Paarl riot recommended that new legislation be placed on the statute book to deal with the 'Poqo menace', and the minister of Justice hastened to oblige.
Barely a year after the Passage of the Sabotage Act, another General Law Amendment Bill was presented to Parliament and inevitably passed, placing the most drastic powers in the hands of the Nationalist government. Here are its main provisions:
(a) Any person serving a sentence under the Suppression of Communism Act, the Public Safety Act, the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1953, the Riotous Assemblies Act, or the Sabotage Act may be kept in jail after the expiry of his sentence if the Minister is satisfied that he is likely to advocate, advise, defend, or encourage the achievement of any of the objects of Communism. The Minister admitted that this clause was specifically aimed in the first place at the continued detention of Robert Sobukwe, P.A.C. leader, who was due to be released from prison after the expiry of a three-year sentence for incitement arising from the P.A.C. campaign in 1960. Nelson Mandela and other political leaders would also be affected.
(b) A minimum of five years' imprisonment and a maximum of death shall be imposed on: (i) any person who since July 1950 has advocated, advised, defended, or encouraged the achievement by violent or forcible means of any object directed at bringing about any political, industrial, social, or economic change in the Republic with the cooperation or assistance of any foreign government or body; (ii) any person who since July 1950 has undergone any training outside the Republic or obtained any information from a source outside the Republic which could be of use in furthering the achievement of any of the objects of Communism or of any body or organization which has been declared to be an unlawful organization ... and who fails to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did not undergo any such training or obtain any such information for the purpose of using it or causing it to be used in furthering the achievement of any such object.
It is to be noted that under this clause the death penalty can be imposed for crimes which were not crimes at the time that they were committed. A law passed in 1963 has been made retrospective to July 1950, the month in which the Suppression of Communism Act came into force.
(c) Accused persons may be tried summarily before a superior court without the benefit of a preparatory examination.
(d) Mail may be opened if suspected of having been sent to further the commission of an offence.
(e) The State President may by proclamation deem any organization which existed after 7 April 1960, to be the same as an unlawful organization. This provision was intended as authority to equate Poqo with the banned P.A.C., but could in fact be applied to any other organization, the members of which would immediately become subject to severe criminal penalties.
(f) Any commissioned police officer may without warrant arrest or cause to be arrested any person whom he suspects upon reasonable grounds of having committed or having intended to commit any offence under the Suppression of Communism Act, or the Unlawful Organizations Act (outlawing the A.N.C. and P.A.C.), or the offence of sabotage, and cause him to be detained for interrogation in any place for up to ninety days ' on any particular occasion when he is so arrested'. No person save a magistrate shall have access to such person and no court shall have jurisdiction to order his release.
(g) Entry to certain places or areas without a permit may be prohibited, and any unauthorized person who enters such place or area will be liable to imprisonment for fifteen years.
So disappeared the rule of law and habeas corpus from the South African scene. To its shame the United Party opposition voted for the second reading of the Bill, though it opposed certain of its provisions in the committee stage. Only the lone Progressive, Mrs Helen Suzman, voted against the Bill in all its stages. With her honourable exception, the parliamentary representatives of White South Africa presented a solid front against the 'Black peril'.
Mrs Suzman warned that the panic legislation which the government was rushing through the House at unprecedented speed would do nothing to end the South African emergency. For emergency it had now become. In the period between 1952 and 1963, some 500 people had been killed and more than 2,000 injured in clashes between the people and the police. Of this total, only nineteen of the dead and seventy of the injured were White.
Introducing his 1963 General Law Amendment Bill, the Minister of Justice announced on 24 April that there were 894 cases pending against 1,155 alleged Poqo members, and that recently a further 200 to 300 had been arrested. In twenty-six Poqo cases the accused had been indicted for murder; 124 accused had already been found guilty and seventy-seven had been committed for trial after preparatory examination. Since the enactment of the Sabotage Act, 2,994 persons had been prosecuted under its provisions. Up to the end of March 1963, three death sentences and eighty jail sentences totalling over 1,200 years had been passed for sabotage.
Further details of government reprisals were given by the Minister in a speech to Parliament on 13 June, 1963. Under the Sabotage Act, 126 people had been convicted, while 511 were still to appear. A total of 3,246 Poqo members had been arrested, with 124 found guilty of murder and seventy-seven still awaiting trial. More than 100 had appeared charged with attempted murder, and fifty-three had been detained for the Bashee River murder of five Whites. Action had been taken against 690 people for furthering the work of banned organizations, and cases against 1,357 were still pending.
The main purpose of the ninety-day Law was to provide the South African security police with a weapon for breaking down the resistance of political prisoners far from the prying eyes of press and public and outside the jurisdiction of the courts. The police were made omnipotent. Any citizen whom they chose to arrest was entirely at their mercy, and had no legal means of redress, no means even of making his predicament known to the outside world.
Vorster knew quite well that he was opening the way to torture when he introduced the Bill in Parliament. 'It is not a very nice thing to see a human being broken,' he said. 'I have seen it.... The man taking these powers must take the responsibility for them.' By the time the ninety-day clause was suspended on 11 January 1965, a total of 1,095 people had been arrested under its provisions - 857 Africans, 102 Whites, 78 Indians and 58 Coloureds. In terms of the law, only those people suspected 'on reasonable grounds' of having committed or intended to commit an offence were supposed to be liable to arrest. But of the 1,095 arrested, only 575 were eventually charged with specific offences, and of these only 272 were convicted, while 210 were discharged and 93 were still on trial or awaiting trial on 29 January 1965 the day that the Minister gave the above details to Parliament in answer to a question.
The term 'ninety-day detention' is in fact a misnomer, because many detainees were immediately rearrested on the expiry of the first ninety days, and the courts upheld the right of the police to detain them indefinitely. According to the Minister in his reply quoted above, 287 people were held for less than thirty days, but 147 people were held for ninety days or more and thirteen for more than 180 days. One man, Alfred Nzo, was held for 247 days before being released unconditionally. He was by this time gravely ill, with a heart complaint and nervous disorders, and had to have hospital treatment for several months before he was able to resume work.
The right of the police to hold detainees in this way was confirmed in a court judgement on 14 August 1964, after the wife of a detainee, Ivan Schermbrucker, had applied to have her husband brought to court to verify a message, smuggled out of prison, about his treatment. Dismissing the application, Mr Justice Snyman said that the interruption of detention, by giving detainees access to the courts, could frustrate the purpose of the law. The Act specifically excluded access by detainees to the courts and transferred the power of protecting citizens normally the province of the courts - to the Minister of Justice, Commissioner of Police and commissioned officers (Star, Johannesburg, 14 August 1964).
In terms of the law, a magistrate visits detainees once a week, but these visits afford detainees no protection whatsoever against ill-treatment. All complaints are automatically referred back to the Security Police, who in some cases use them as an excuse for further ill-treatment. The magistrates themselves are powerless - and some not even willing - to alleviate conditions.
Political detainees have, ever since the introduction of the ninety-day law, been subjected to mental torture in the form of solitary confinement, with only half an hour a day for exercise, day after day, week after week, denied any writing material or books except the Bible; deprived of all human contact. Left alone in their cells with nothing to do, they have been subjected to interrogation by the Special Branch at irregular intervals. If they refuse to answer questions, or do not answer to the satisfaction of the police, they are left alone again, sometimes for weeks on end. Many detainees have been kept not in prisons, but in cells at police stations, and denied a change of clothing or facilities for washing the clothes they had. Some prisoners have been kept in cells where the lights remain burning day and night. In other cells the walls have been painted black.
Nor have the police shrunk from the use of outright torture. The following are extracts from statements made by ninety-day detainees, each telling the same story of torture and beatings, of unchecked police violence:
Prisoner A, aged 55:
This prisoner was questioned about his relationship with some other men. He refused to answer, saying that he would make his statement in open court. He was then beaten, but refused to answer police questions. This is what happened next:
'A canvas bag was put over my head and tied around my neck. I felt something put on both my small fingers and I then felt shock in my arms....'
This treatment was repeated until the prisoner said he was prepared to talk.
Prisoner B:
I was handcuffed and a canvas bag was put over my head and this made breathing difficult. I was ordered to sit down with my knees up in between my arms, and a stick was put through so that I could not move. Then I felt something like wire tied to my little fingers on both hands. Then I felt electric shocks which were applied occasionally. Then I would be lifted with the stick and while applying electricity I would be left to drop down on my back . . . I was whipped with a hose pipe and also applied judo chops on my kidneys and on the back of my neck.
I was handcuffed for the second time and told that they were going to kill me and that nobody would ever ask them anything. I was put to the same treatment of electric shocks.... The pressure was so high that I messed myself up. Then I was released to go to the lavatory. On my return from the lavatory the same treatment was applied and I messed myself again....
The wounds made by the handcuffs can still be observed on the right and left wrists of my arms and the scorches made by the electric wires on the fingers.
Prisoner C, aged 33:
I was seated between two European police and the third one opposite me. Immediately I finished replying to their questions, the one sitting on my right hand knocked me with his fist on my right ear. I fell on the ground and they said 'Stand up'. As I got up, the same policeman knocked me on my stomach, and I again fell. Whilst I was on the ground, the same policeman picked up a tubeless motor tyre and threw it on me. I got up from the ground, and the other policeman who was sitting on my left before the beating started also helped the other one to beat me, and I was beaten all over my body with fists. I was then crying, and they kept on saying ' Keep quiet'....
Thereafter a canvas bag was put over my head and tied round my neck. I then felt something put on both of my small fingers and I then felt shock on my arms. I again started to cry. As I was crying they kept on saying 'Talk'. After a while I said, All right, I will talk.
Prisoner D:
After being tortured, this prisoner complained to the magistrate who visited him once a week to ensure that he was not being ill-treated. The magistrate replied 'You also wanted to go to Tanganyika to learn and come back and kill the Whites, so they are also doing what they like on you.'
Prisoner E:
He was beaten, given the electric shock treatment and kicked under the armpit while wearing the canvas bag over his head. He, too, complained to the magistrate and was told that the police were only doing to him what he was going to do to them after his military training.
(The originals of these affidavits are in the possession of Christian Action, London, together with many other statements by detainees. Further details of police torture and brutality in South Africa are contained in the two Christian Action pamphlets Witness in the Dark and Prisoners of Apartheid; the African National Congress Pamphlet Brute Force; the pamphlet South African Prisons and the Red Cross Investigation, published by the International Defence and Aid Fund in July 1967; and the United Nations publication Apartheid and the Treatment of Prisoners in South Africa, published in 1967.)
Four political detainees were driven to suicide as a result of the tortures to which they were subjected. Looksmart Solwandle, an African National Congress leader in Cape Town, died in his prison cell in September 1963. His death was not made public for two weeks, and after his death he was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act, so that no statement ever made by him, either before or after he was arrested, could be published. In January 1964 Sipho James Tyitya hanged himself in his cell to end the tortures to which he had been subjected. Ebrahim Siyanvala, a former ninety-day detainee, was arrested for a traffic offence; terrified at the prospect of again being detained under the ninety-day law, he escaped from his captors and was later found drowned in a river. On 9 September, 1964, Suliman (Babla) Salojee threw himself to his death from the seventh floor of the Security Police headquarters in Johannesburg. The police reacted to criticism of this case not by altering their techniques of interrogation, but by placing bars across the windows so that it would be impossible for future victims to jump out!
Many other prisoners became mentally deranged and had to be treated in mental hospitals. The Cape Times reported on 18 November 1963 that some prisoners 'could be suffering from a catatonic stupor which is described by (medical) authorities as a negative attitude in which the patients will respond automatically, having lost their will. For instance, they will eat if told to do so and given food, and in extreme cases would raise a hand and keep it raised until told to lower it. They lose interest in their surroundings, and suffer from a most severe grade of mental depression.'
A few weeks later, on 8 December, 1963, sixty leading psychiatrists, psychologists and medical specialists in the Cape and Natal appealed to the Minister to abolish the system of detention m solitary confinement. Experimental studies in various countries of political prisoners subjected to this form of detention had indicated that the experience was associated with intense distress and the impairment of certain mental functions, they said. The exposure of individuals to this suffering for indefinite periods of time was no less abhorrent than physical torture. Scientific evidence existed which suggested that prolonged isolation might cause a disturbance of judgement to the point where the individuals' testimony could no longer be relied upon as accurate.
There were also consistent protests from the public in South Africa and abroad against the ninety-day clause. At the national congress of the Progressive Party in Cape Town on 25 November 1963 Mr Hamilton Russell, a former United Party M.P. who resigned in protest against his party's support of the ninety-day Bill, cited cases of detainees being subjected to the 'water treatment' (prolonged immersion in cold water), the 'gas mask treatment' (suffocation to unconsciousness), and the 'electric treatment' (during which a man is tied down, sprayed with salt water and then electrically massaged in an agonizing way).
A Ninety-day Detention Protest Committee, headed by Mr Hamilton Russell and the Hon. A. van de Sandt Centlivres, former Chief Justice, was formed to campaign for the repeal of the law, and won the support of many religious leaders, the National Council of Women, the Black Sash, the Civil Rights League and most liberal-minded persons and organizations in South Africa. A booklet entitled Tyranny 90, outlining the case against the Act, was circulated in thousands of copies throughout the country.
But to all these protests the government turned a deaf ear. In November 1963 the Commissioner of Police described the complaints of torture as 'utter nonsense ... deliberately spread by neo-Communists'. On 22 January 1964 the then Minister of Justice, Mr Vorster, told Parliament: ' We have no facts whatsoever before us; we have no shred of evidence before us about people who were tortured.' The matter was raised again during the early months of the 1964 session of Parliament, but Vorster remained unmoved. Pressed to appoint a judicial inquiry, the Minister said on 11 March 1964: 'I refuse to do so for the simple reason that no case has been made out for one at all.' Of the 686 persons detained up to that time, he said, only forty-eight had complained of assaults. 'I had each one of these forty-eight complaints investigated, and the papers were laid before the Attorney General and, with the exception of four which are pending, the Attorneys-General decided that there was no case at all to prosecute.'
During May 1964, the Minister of Justice allowed a Red Cross representative, Mr George Hoffman, to visit a number of prisons and detention centres in South Africa, including Robben Island. Mr Hoffman then submitted his report to the South African government on 18 June 1964. The refusal of the South African Government to publish the findings only added to the general suspicion of torture, and when the report was finally issued two and a half years later, in November 1966, it appeared that Mr Hoffman had, in some cases, received complaints of assaults on prisoners. The reply of the South African government was: ' The allegation that prisoners were beaten and smacked and that bad language was used by the younger warders was thoroughly investigated but could not be substantiated. It is consequently the considered opinion of the Department (of Prisons) that these complainants made such allegations deliberately with malicious intent.'
The belief that the use of torture was widespread in South African jails was confirmed by the notorious Bultfontein case, in which four policemen and a clerk of the court were charged with murder and assault with intent to murder, arising from the death of a prisoner while under interrogation at the Bultfontein police station. The evidence of police torture in the case bore a remarkable similarity to that contained in the numerous affidavits and statements of political detainees. It was alleged in court that the African who died had been sjambokked, given electric shocks while trussed in a seated position, partially choked and suffocated when his head was tied in a plastic bag. Another African gave evidence that he had been punched, kicked and whipped with a sjambok.
Giving evidence in his own defence, one police officer testified: 'I don't think there is a police station in the country that does not use violence during questioning.' Tying a plastic bag around a prisoner's head 'is common in investigations'.
Two of the accused were found guilty of culpable homicide; two, of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm; and the fifth, with defeating the ends of justice. The sentences ranged from nine years' imprisonment with six strokes to three years and six strokes. (Court reports of these cases are to be found in various issues of the Rand Daily Mail and Star during the period of the hearing in March and April 1964.)
The public agitation seemed to have been effective, however, when on 11 January 1965 the Minister suspended the ninety day clause of the Sabotage Act, though not without warning that he would have no hesitation whatsoever in reintroducing it should it ever become necessary. In explanation of its suspension, the Minister claimed that it had been effective in smashing all underground opposition to the government; but further restrictive laws passed by him during 1964 and subsequent years suggested, if one is to judge by their increasing severity, that the threat to the State was growing rather than subsiding.
1964 saw the passage of a General Law Amendment Act containing the following main provisions;
(1) A witness who refused to give evidence for the State, who under previous law was liable to successive periods of simple imprisonment for eight days, could now be sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour for twelve months, and to further such periods if, at the end of his sentence, he still persisted in his refusal.
(2) Any person regarded by the prosecution as an accomplice of an accused could be compelled to give evidence, even if such should incriminate him. Under previous law, an accomplice was given the choice of testifying or remaining silent.
(3) The provisions of the 1963 Act relating to training for sabotage were extended. It now became an offence not only to undergo any form of training outside the Republic, but to assist or advise anybody else to that end. Furthermore, training within the Republic was also made an offence.
(4) The powers of Attorneys General to refuse bail for twelve days to accused on any charge was extended for a further twelve months.
1965 saw the passage of the Criminal Procedure Amendment Act, providing for:
(1) The detention without trial of 'any person likely to give material evidence for the State' in any criminal proceedings where the accused are charged with political offences or the more serious category of criminal offences (the offences listed in Part II bis of the Second Schedule of the Act as amended). Such witness may be detained on the authority of an Attorney General for the duration of any case in which he is required to give evidence or for a period of six months, whichever may be the shorter period. Such person may be held incommunicado, and no court has any right to intervene.
In effect, this meant the reintroduction of ninety-day detention; only this time it was not a temporary measure requiring renewal by Parliament every year, but a permanent part of the law. In terms of the law, any person could be detained whether or not the case in which he was supposed to give evidence had been started; and he could be rearrested at the end of the 180-day period, just as detainees were arrested at the end of their ninety-day detention. Moreover, the licence to arrest was greatly widened because, whereas only persons suspected of an offence could be detained under the ninety-day clause, under the 180-day law an Attorney General may issue a warrant for the arrest and detention of a witness 'if he deems it to be in the interest of such person or of the administration of justice ' .
During the debate in June 1965, the Minister of Justice declared that there were three types of witnesses who might be detained; those who were afraid to testify because they had been threatened; those who might abscond; and accomplices.
(2) The power of an Attorney General to refuse bail to any accused until sentence has been passed in his case or until he has been discharged. The Minister said during the debate that this clause was essential to end the increasing tendency of political accused to abscond while on bail, and the danger of criminals committing further offences while on bail.
(3) The addition of kidnapping and child-stealing to the list of capital crimes. This followed the alleged interception of instructions from P.A.C. leaders abroad to their followers in South Africa, ordering them to take part in such activities at a given signal. So far it would appear that no political figure has ever been prosecuted or convicted of any such offence.
In 1966 a General Law Amendment Act was passed providing for:
(1) The extension to South-West Africa of the Suppression of Communism Act and all other security legislation operative in South Africa.
(2) The assumption in any trial, if it is proved that the accused left the Republic without proper travel documents, that he did so for the purpose of undergoing training for sabotage or to further the aims of an illegal organization.
(3) The detention without trial or warrant for a period of up to fourteen days of any person suspected of being a 'terrorist' or having information about 'terrorism'.
(4) Any person (and not only an accomplice as laid down in the General Law Amendment Act of 1964 - see page 234) may be compelled by the prosecution to give evidence, even if such evidence should incriminate him in respect of an offence mentioned by the prosecutor.
In 1967, the most sweeping Act of all, the Terrorism Act, was passed, providing for:
(1) The death penalty, or a minimum sentence of five years, for the crime of terrorism. An accused shall be deemed to have committed terrorism if he is found guilty of committing certain acts with the intention of endangering law and order - such as undergoing training or encouraging or helping others to do so, possessing weapons, ammunition or explosives - unless he can prove that these were not intended for use in endangering law and order.
It will be assumed that he had such intent if the act of which he was convicted was likely to have the effect of encouraging an insurrection or forcible resistance to the government; causing general dislocation or disturbance; furthering the achievement of any political aim by forcible means; embarrassing the administration of the affairs of the State; causing feelings of hostility between Whites and non-Whites; seriously injuring anyone or causing substantial financial loss to any person or to the State; promoting the achievement of any object by intimidation; or prejudicing any undertaking or industry or the production or distribution of commodities or essential services or the free movement of traffic.
Not only was the onus of proving innocence thus placed on the accused, but the Act was backdated to 27 June 1962, the day on which the Sabotage Act came into operation, thus providing the death penalty for offences which were not capital offences at the time they were committed. This brought within the ambit of the Act the first persons charged under it, the thirty-seven members of the South-West Africa People's Organization, arrested in South-West Africa, but transported to Pretoria and charged there on 11 September 1967, shortly after the Terrorism Act was gazetted. One of the accused died in hospital while the case was being heard; two were found not guilty; three pleaded guilty to alternative charges under the Suppression of Communism Act; and one was too ill to appear in court for sentence. The remaining thirty were convicted under an Act which was not on the Statute Book at the time that the crimes with which they were charged were alleged to have been committed. Nineteen were sentenced to life imprisonment, nine to twenty years, and two to five years.
(2) The Act also provided for the indefinite detention without trial and in solitary confinement of any persons suspected of terrorism or having information about terrorism. No court shall have any right to intervene, and no one - not even the next of kin - shall have access to a detained person or be entitled to official information about him. A detainee may, however, at any time make written representations to the Minister.
Following the scandal created by the physical torture of detainees under the ninety-day clause, the police interrogators were compelled to adopt new methods whose effects were less easy to detect. One of these methods, which has been employed against many political detainees in recent years, has been the so called 'statue torture', allegedly adopted from the Portuguese secret police, PIDE. Prisoners are made to stand indefinitely until they answer questions; if they try to sit or lie down, they are hauled to their feet again; they are not allowed to rest or sleep. The first person to be arrested under the 180-day law, businessman and Communist Isaac Heymann, was subjected to the standing treatment and attempted to commit suicide in his cell twenty-four days after his arrest On recovery, he was first sentenced to a year's imprisonment for refusing to testify against his colleagues, and finally sentenced to five years for furthering the aims of the Communist Party.
Women's leader Mrs Violet Weinberg was made to stand in detention for three full days after her arrest, until 'my ankles were hanging over my shoes and my swollen eyelids had reduced my eyes to slits'. Eventually, she said, she 'cracked', and made a statement. She did not, however, give evidence in court against her comrades, and for this she was sentenced to three months. Later she was sentenced to a further two years for taking part in the activities of the Communist Party. The judge in her case said that he was prepared to accept the evidence which she had given about her jail treatment, but that this did not affect her contravention of the Suppression of Communism Act (Rand Daily Mail 18 and 21 May 1966).
A Cape Town detainee, architect Bernard Gosschalk, said, according to an affidavit submitted in a court action brought on 3 March 1966, that he had not even been allowed to go to the lavatory while under 'statue' interrogation. When, after some days, his wife was allowed to see him, she found him in a 'dishevelled, dirty and insanitary' condition and bordering on a nervous breakdown.
The comments of the judge in the Gosschalk case are worth noting.
Giving an interim verdict on March 24 calling for oral evidence to be heard, the judge conceded that the law gave the police the right to interrogate a person without his consent. But, he added:
The invasion of the rights of the individual necessarily involved in police interrogation must, however, be strictly limited. Obviously they are not entitled, in order to induce a detainee to speak, to subject him to any form of assault or to cause his health or resistance to be impaired by inadequate food, lack of sleep, living conditions or the like. Nor may they resort to methods of interrogation commonly referred to as the 'third degree'. In this context I understand the term 'third degree' to refer to a severe and prolonged cross-questioning designed to overcome the powers of resistance of the person being interrogated.'
As has so often been the case, this judgement merely served to enhance the reputation of the South African bench without having the slightest effect upon the administration of justice.
Nor are torture and brutality confined to detainees under interrogation. The harshest treatment has often been reserved for convicted political prisoners. They are automatically placed in the lowest category on admission to jail, irrespective of their record or behaviour. Whereas the ordinary criminal convicted of murder or rape may expect a one-third remission of his sentence on good behaviour, for political prisoners there is no remission. A life sentence, which means anything up to twenty years for an ordinary criminal, literally means imprisonment until natural death for the political prisoner.
The majority of non-White political prisoners have been sent to Robben Island, South Africa's Alcatraz, just off Cape Town, where they have been put to work in the most dreadful conditions and treated with rigorous severity. The regime to which they are subjected, far from being designed to rehabilitate them, appears to be intended rather to 'break' them and destroy their morale. Many affidavits have been received from prisoners on Robben Island. Three of them, dated respectively 4, 17, and 26 February 1964, refer to an incident described in one of them as follows:
On numerous occasions I saw political prisoners being beaten by warders and non-political prisoners, and very often no notice was taken of their complaints. On one occasion I saw a man being beaten up by warders and thereafter placed up to his neck in a hole. Whilst he was in the hole a warder urinated into his mouth. Other warders stood around and laughed. This man is still on the island.
His name was mentioned in one of the affidavits (Apartheid and the Treatment of Prisoners in South Africa, published by the United Nations, New York, 1967).
After a widespread public outcry about conditions on Robben Island, three warders were dismissed, and eleven transferred. A new Governor was appointed and, according to statements from prisoners released thereafter, there has been a slight improvement. Political prisoners still fear Robben Island, however, and the overall impression of a 'hell camp' still prevails.
By mind-breaking methods such as these, the inquisitors of Verwoerd and Vorster have eventually been able to secure convictions in the courts. According to records kept by the weekly newspaper Forward, between March 1963 and August 1964 there were 111 political trials in which 1,315 persons were charged with various offences arising out of their political activity. Their fate was as follows:
44 sentenced to death (including a number of Poqo members charged with murder);
12 sentenced to life imprisonment;
994 sentenced to a total of 5,713 years imprisonment;
1 sentenced to six lashes;
340 acquitted (The discrepancy in the totals is probably due to the fact that some of the accused received more than one prison sentence.)
In reply to questions in the House of Assembly during the 1966 Parliamentary session, the Minister of Justice said that the total number of persons of all races convicted and sentenced to imprisonment under provisions of the law relating to the safety of the state was 966 for the period from 1 July 1963 to 30 June 1964; and 1,267 in the year ending 30 June 1965.
How many political prisoners there are in South Africa's jails today it is impossible to say. Answering a question in the House of Assembly on 6 February 1968, the Minister of Justice refused to give details of the number detained under the Terrorism Act, declaring - 'It is not in the public interest to make the particulars known.' In answer to other questions, the Minister of Police said that ninety persons had been detained under the fourteen-day detention Act of 1966 during the period 4 November 1966 to 1 June 1967; and that 124 persons had been detained during 1967 in terms of the 180-day detention law. Under the emergency proclamations 400 and 413 introduced in 1960 in the Transkei, 137 persons were detained in 1965 and 109 in 1966, according to information given in the House by the Minister of Police on 21 February and 25 April 1967. At an international conference in Stockholm in 1965, the Commissioner of Prisons, General J.C. Steyn, said that there were about 8,500 political prisoners in South African jails (reported in an article by Professor Julius Lewin in the Rand Daily Mail on 28 August 1965).
Yet in January 1967 the Minister of Justice stated that, with the possible exception of Mr Sobukwe, South Africa had no political prisoners (Rand Daily Mail, 5 January 1967). In the eyes of South African law, all prisoners are criminals, and there is no official category of 'political offences'.
The Nationalist Government brushed aside all objections to its methods by pointing out that they obtained results. However unacceptable the detention laws and the torture might be to 'liberalistic' elements both inside and outside South Africa, they had enabled the government to smash the people's organized opposition to apartheid, and more particularly to put an end to the sabotage campaigns conducted not only by Umkhonto we Sizwe, but by a number of smaller organizations which had followed in its wake, such as the African Resistance Movement (ARM) and the Yui Chui Chan Club. Outstanding people's leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada and Denis Goldberg were jailed for life in the Rivonia trial of 1964. The last centre of Communist Party organization appeared to have been destroyed with the jailing for life of Communist Party leader Abram Fischer in 1965. Those political leaders who escaped arrest were forced to go into exile. The non-racial trade-union movement and other organizations which had not been outlawed were effectively neutralized by the banning or jailing of their officers. Three trade union leaders from the Eastern Cape - Mini, Mkaba and Khayinga - were executed in 1965 for ordering the murder of a police informer; the three men alleged to have carried out the actual murder -Ngondeni, Jonas and Petse - were sentenced to death for the same offence in February 1965. Also executed was John Harris, President of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee, who had done so much in the fight against apartheid in sport, and who was convicted of sabotage in connexion with the Johannesburg station bomb explosion of 1964.
The very fund which provided legal defence for the political accused and financial assistance for their families was attacked by the government, for standing in the way of punitive action in the courts. Proclamation 77 of 1966, dated 18 March, declared the Defence and Aid Fund to be an unlawful organization in terms of the Suppression of Communism Act. In defence of the banning, the Minister of Justice alleged that the Fund was part of an international network of extremist organizations hostile to South Africa, and used by Communists as part of their political conspiracy against the West. The property of the Fund was confiscated, and its office-bearers and supporters became liable to listing and all the concomitant penalties prescribed by the Suppression of Communism Act. The Fund's leading figure, the internationally known scientist Dr R. Hoffenberg, was banned, deprived of his job and his opportunities to do research, and finally hounded from the country in March 1968.
From that time onwards, attorneys and advocates have thought twice before undertaking the defence of political accused. In the more remote districts of the Eastern Cape, members of the A.N.C. and other liberation organizations were rapidly 'processed' through the courts, without any chance of legal defence to check the possibility of abuse.
By mid-1965, South Africa, which since the war had been the scene of mounting popular opposition to apartheid, and which had witnessed the greatest mass struggles on an organized basis since the formation of Union in 1910, seemed shrouded in a mysterious silence. Meetings were almost impossible to hold, and if held merely exposed the organizers to reprisals. Special Branch police and informers swarmed everywhere, harassing, spying and intimidating.
But the superficial calm was deceptive. Beneath the surface, the forces of opposition continued to regroup and reorganize. From time to time the distribution of an A.N.C. or Communist Party leaflet would prove that these organizations had survived the government assault and did not lack adherents. Occasional acts of sabotage still occurred.
But the main force of resistance was gathering elsewhere outside the country. Thousands of South Africans of all races had been driven into exile, or had left voluntarily to receive further training and inaugurate the next stage of resistance guerrilla warfare. In his celebrated statement to the court on 20 April 1964, Nelson Mandela revealed that Umkhonto we Sizwe had been making preparations for guerrilla warfare at the same time it was undertaking sabotage operations in South Africa.
'If war were inevitable,' he said, 'we wanted the fight to be conducted on terms most favourable to our people. The fight which held out prospects best for us and the least risk of life to both sides was guerrilla warfare. We decided, therefore, in our preparations for the future, to make provision for the possibility of guerrilla warfare.... It was in our view essential to build up a nucleus of trained men who would be able to provide the leadership which would be required if guerrilla warfare started.' In August 1967, the first wave of African guerrillas crossed the Zambezi River on their way south. A communique issued on 19 August by J.R.D. Chikerema, the Vice-President of the Zimbabwe African People's Union, and 0.R. Tambo, the Deputy President of the African National Congress of South Africa, announced the formation of a military alliance between the two organizations.
We wish to declare here that the fighting that is presently going on in Wankie area is indeed being carried out by a combined force of Z.A.P.U. and A.N.C. which marched into the country as comrades-in-arms on a common route, each bound to its destination. It is the determination of these combined forces to fight the common settler enemy to the finish, at any point of encounter as they make their way to their respective fighting zones.
In the fighting Front, the enemy has suffered untold casualties, and as the fighting continues, the Fighters are determined to Inflict more harm without surrender. After all, as comrades in arms, we are facing a common enemy, fighting for a common purpose, facing a common fate, hence a combined force for a common onslaught against the enemy at every point of encounter as we march down for the liberation of our respective countries.
Within weeks the Rhodesian security forces had been reinforced by South African police contingents, and the Zambezi had replaced the Limpopo as South Africa's northern border. The first phase of the military struggle for the future of all southern Africa had commenced.