12 October 1981
The Ad Hoc Group of Experts of the Commission on Human Rights was set up in 1967 to investigate the torture and maltreatment inflicted on prisoners, detainees and persons arrested by the police in the Republic of South Africa. Its mandate has been renewed and expanded every year. Today the Group has six members acting in their personal capacity. Its mandate is to collect information on the violation of human rights in South Africa and Namibia. It holds meetings during which it hears witnesses and collects evidence relating to human rights violations in South Africa and Namibia.
The Ad Hoc Group of Experts is currently working on a preliminary draft on the establishment of an international criminal court, as provided for in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Thanks to your predecessors and to you, Sir, the Ad Hoc Group of Experts has collaborated closely with the Special Committee against Apartheid for many years. Your Committee sends to each of our meetings a member of the Committee who always makes a very special contribution.
Also, the Centre against Apartheid spares no effort in order to increase the collaboration whereby we exchange information in order to better organize our struggle against one of the most heinous evils of our times, apartheid.
When we speak about prisoners in South Africa, we must not think only of those who are serving a prison sentence. South Africa is a country unlike any other. It is the country of apartheid. When we talk about political prisoners we have to think about all who are detained and held without trial under many laws. These are mainly the General Laws Amendments Act, the Criminal Procedures Act of 1977 and the Internal Security Act, particularly article 10 thereof. We have to add to this arsenal of legislation special proclamations that are in force in the homelands under which anyone can be held without trial.
Secondly, we have to think of all of those who are under the Bantu Urban Areas Consolidation Act of 1945, amended in 1964 and in 1977, whereby an African cannot remain more than 72 hours in a white urban area unless he meets certain strict conditions. Even so, he may be obliged at any moment to provide proof under a very strict control system, that he is entitled to be there. There are also extremely gross, humiliating and brutal methods for applying these laws. There is also a Group Areas Act which applies to Coloured and Asians.
Thirdly, there are all of those who are for reasons of sex, age, health or other reasons not able to remain in the white areas and are transferred by force to reserves without consideration of their family situation. They live in abject poverty in those reserves. All of those who saw the film entitled "Last Grave at Dimbaza" werestruck by the terrible situation of that population, of old people, women, children and the sick, who often live in extremely crowded quarters and in very wretched conditions.
Fourthly, there are also those who are displaced in large numbers, and usually by force, for political reasons. They are moved from one region to another in order to deal with some social or political problem or to make land available for future use for the sole benefit of the white population. The Ad Hoc Group of Experts noted that last year around 4 million people were displaced for that reason. Their houses were demolished under the Prevention of Illegal Squatters Act of 1951. They were sent to dormitory towns or resettlement camps where the living conditions are extremely precarious. Miss Rogers, who was heard at some length by the Ad Hoc Group of Experts, quite simply and rightly called them concentration camps.
It is also necessary to count as prisoners those who have been banned or are under home arrest. The former are forced to leave their homeland, family and property.
The latter are forced to remain at home in jeopardy of their own vital interests.
Therefore, every black person in South Africa is a prisoner or is about to become a prisoner. That is why this Day of Solidarity with South African Political Prisoners and those of Namibia is also a day on which we should give thought to the situation of all the black, Coloured and Asian peoples of South Africa and Namibia who are prisoners of apartheid.
As for those who are actually in prison, the first thing that strikes one is the numbers, and that is something that has been confessed to by the South African regime. The report of the South African Commissioner for Prisons published in 1980 showed that 67,146 persons had been sentenced. Such a figure causes one to pause, particularly when it is noted that the number of those condemned to death was 194 in 1978 and there were 133 executions in 1979.
When one thinks of the citizens dragged before the courts in South Africa it is necessary to remember that the words crime and offence do not have the same meaning in South Africa as elsewhere. Criminal laws trample under foot most basic principles making anything into an offence. For example, under amendments to the Inquest Act and the Police Act even publishing, without express and explicit authorization from the police, information relating to persons who are detained or arrested under the anti-terrorist operations or under the terrorism law is an offence. Moreover, there are relatively recent South African laws that violate the principle that a person is innocent until proved guilty; it is to the contrary now.
That is why I have said that in South Africa every black person is a prisoner or about to become a prisoner.
Under the influence of the liberation movement the people have become aware of their responsibilities. Many who are arrested and detained are imprisoned and their families have no knowledge of their whereabouts. International and non-governmental organizations have often protested against that. Much evidence has been collected by the Ad Hoc Group of Experts indicating that people arrested in South Africa are being tortured. A white lawyer, John David Jackson, testified to that effect before the Ad Hoc Group of Experts at its 520th meeting. According to Mr. Jackson, the legal system in South Africa authorizes the police to torture and brutalize those detained. He said, "Until the inhabitants of South Africa, black and white, are equal before the law, and until the courts themselves take action to end the brutalities of the police and the violations of human rights, there is no hope that the situation will change or improve”. He said to us that on many occasions he saw the scars of whiplashes and torture inflicted by the police on his clients, and that he had frequently complained about the matter in the courts but no account was taken of it.
Mr. Murugai Naidoo, an eminent South African lawyer, also reported to the Ad Hoc Group of Experts on revelations showing the same situation. Blacks, victims of the police, do not have recourse to an impartial court.
We also have to deplore in particular the maltreatment accorded to women and children.
The detention of women in South Africa is symbolized today by the cases of Dorothy Nyembe and Amina Desai, who were condemned for political actions; but there are many women who are locked up every day for various reasons and then tortured. Several black women came to bear witness before us about the ill treatment they had received. Some of them preferred to remain anonymous, but others appeared in public and gave the horrified Ad Hoc Group of Experts evidence of the torture - I shall not go into detail - that they had been subjected to.
The case of children is a matter for particular concern. The Sabotage Act has nullified the protection for minors afforded by South African common law.
Mr. Jackson showed that children as young as seven years old were sentenced just like adults. Distressed by this situation, the Ad Hoc Group of Experts met in London on 25 August 1980 and, under paragraph 6 of resolution 9 (XXXVI), sent a telegram to the Chairman of the Human Rights Commission drawing attention to the fact that the sentencing of young children was in violation of the elementary principles of penal responsibility, which are based on international instruments relating to human rights.
The fate of political prisoners is indeed tragic, in particular those who are locked up on Robben Island because of their "intellectual isolation". Nelson Mandela, who has become a national hero in the struggle against apartheid and a living symbol for all those opposing the racist policy of South Africa, represents in his fate all those prisoners.
Here I should also like to draw attention to the deaths of detainees. There has been an increase in such deaths, and the conditions are indeed very suspicious. Information collected by the Ad Hoc Group of Experts shows that 308 deaths occurred between 1 July 1978 and 30 June 1979, and their causes were supposedly aggression by other prisoners, "suicide", being shot while attempting to escape and natural causes. Investigations directed at police wardens never led to any prosecution.
I could not end without making special mention of Namibian prisoners, in particular those captured in the Kassinga camp in Angola. When the Ad Hoc Group of Experts was informed that about 120 members of the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) arrested in Angolan territory had been detained at Hardap Dam near Mariental, south of Windhoek in Namibia, it immediately informed the Chairman of the Human Rights Commission of the fate of those prisoners whom, unfortunately we had good reason to think were being maltreated. We immediately suggested that the provisions of the Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949 relating to treatment of prisoners of war should be applied to them pending their release, which we felt should be immediately called for. We feared, in fact, that those persons were critically ill. Unfortunately, our fears were confirmed when we heard the Chairman of SWAPO, Mr. Sam Nujoma, in Luanda, speak. In a moving statement, he told us of the conditions in which the prisoners were found, mostly having suffered mutilation, and more like skeletons than human beings.
And recently, once again flouting all the warnings of the international community, the South Africans invaded the territory of an independent State, Angola, thus threatening peace and security in that region, taking advantage of the situation to take prisoner SWAPO fighters, who were then subjected to inhuman treatment.
Following our condemnatory statement, the Chairman of the Human Rights Commission brought the matter to the attention of the South African authorities and held a press conference to inform the world about the situation of the Kassinga prisoners. However, in reply the Chairman of the Human Rights Commission received only a few sarcastic words from South Africa.
How long must we wait for the situation to change? To be free is not to deny the existence of others; as long as there are people who believe in the superiority of their race, the freedom of the world will be mortgaged. Tolerating apartheid means justifying slavery and forced labour; but it is also providing grist to the mill of the racists, and accepting the Roehm purge, the night trains passing through the mist to the camps at Treblinka, Dachau and Auschwitz. We must not forget that apartheid and Nazism have the same approach and are based on the same principles. Nazism could never have existed had there not first been tolerance of the slavery and forced labour of blacks. Let us beware; racist bodies fostered by apartheid have been proliferating for some time. Nobody can guess what will happen. There was a universal crusade against nazism, and indeed Africa participated in that crusade and shed the blood of its sons. We also need a crusade against apartheid. Believe me,the cost is nothing compared to the evils that would otherwise inevitably result from that policy, which is indeed ashame to all mankind.
The nineteenth century retreated into a very narrow positivism, and the twentieth century followed along the same lines. What was needed was the horrors of the Second World War to make mankind aware of the fact that the selfishness of men and States was the surest way to devastate human society.
What came out of all that was our universal Organization. Let us recall this. Let us act today; tomorrow will be too late.
On August 4, 1981, Glasgow honoured Nelson Mandela by making him a freeman of the city.