Women and Children: Repression and Resistance to in

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Alternative title Notes and Documents - United Nations Centre Against ApartheidNo. 8/87 Author/Creator United Nations Centre against Apartheid; Pierson-Mathy, Paulette Publisher United Nations, New York Date 1987-06-00 Resource type Reports Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa Coverage (temporal) 1987 Source Northwestern University Libraries Description This issue, which is being published at the request of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid, contains the text of a paper presented to a seminar held at Brussels (Belgium) on 16 December 1986 in solidarity with women struggling against apartheid in South Africa. Ms. Pierson-Mathy is an Assistant Lecturer at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles and Chairperson of the Comite contre le Colonialisme et l'Apartheid (Belgium). Format extent 15 page(s) (length/size)

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http://www.aluka.org NOTES AND DOCUMENTS*

NOTES AND DOCUMENTS* June 1987 AUG 2 8 1987 WOMEN AND CHILDREN: REPRESSION AND RESISTANCE TO APARTHEID IN SOUTH AFRICA by Paulette Pierson-Mathy [Note: This issue, which is being published at the request of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid, contains the text of a paper presented to a seminar held at Brussels (Belgium) on 16 December 1986 in solidarity with women struggling against apartheid in South Africa. Ms Pierson-Mathy is an Assistant Lecturer at the Universiti Libre de Bruxelles and Chairperson of the Comit4 contre le Colonialisme et l'Apartheio (Belgium). The views expressed in this paper are those of the author.] UNITED NATIONS CENTRE AGAINST APARTHEID 8/87 A11 material in them Notes and Documents may be freely reprinted. *All material in these Notes and Documents may be freely reprinted. Acknowledgement, together with a copy of the publication containing the reprint, would be appreciated. 8T-15422 2586c (E United NatiornLNew York 10017 ...

INTRODUCTION Since the May 1982 International Conference on Women and Apartheid, the situation of women and children in South Africa, Namibia and several other southern African countries has deteriorated considerably. We have seen an escalation of repressive violence and the growing use of armed force by the apartheid r6gime in an attempt not only to remain in power in South Africa and pursue its illegal occupation of Namibia but also, by a systematic policy of destabilization and aggression, to maintain its hegemony in southern Africa. Throughout southern Africa, women and children are the direct victims of this racist system of repression, terror and war. This situation will change only when the apartheid r6gime is abolished, a democratic, non-racial society is established in South Africa and Namibia is liberated from.th-e illegal occupation of the apartheid r6gime, in accordance with Security Council resolutions. l/ The struggle waged by the South African people on many fronts to exercise their most elementary rights and assume power entered a new phase in October 1984 in terms of both its extent and its radicalism and strength. This struggle is now irreversible. International solidarity with this struggle has also expanded and grown stronger, including in countries which are South Africa's allies and traditional partners. In the United States of America, for instance, the anti-apartheid movement has already scored significant victories, forcing the Reagan Administration to change its policy of constructive engagement and take certain steps to pressure the apartheid r6gime. In Western Europe, the Nordic countries, including Denmark, a member of the European Communities, are resolutely embarked on a policy of isolating the apartheid r6gime economically and supporting the ANC and SWAPO liberation forces and other democratic movements in South Africa and Namibia. While in the other EEC member States, with the possible exception of the Netherlands, all progressive forces have now rallied to the anti-apartheid struggle, the latter is still confronted with major obstacles. The close historical ties between many European countries and South Africa, the presence in that country of a large European immigrant population who in many cases have retained their nationality of origin while acquiring that of the host country and the important economic and strategic interests at stake on a continent where Western Europe has always played a dominant role explain the obstacles still encountered by the anti-apartheid movements in most EEC countries, including Belgium, in trying to persuade their Governments to break off relations with this criminal r6gime and support the forces of resistance and liberation. By publicizing here today the crimes perpetrated by the apartheid r6gime against the women and children of South Africa, Namibia and other southern African countries, we hope to convince still more organizations and individuals to I... themselves adopt a policy of isolating the apartheid regime and supporting the forces struggling to put an end to this r4gime, while putting pressure on their Governments and the European Communities to take the necessary economic measures to press for an end to the apartheid rigime's reign of terror in South Africa, its colonial war in Namibia and its campaign of aggression and destabilization against the Front-line States, particularly and Mozambique. SOUTH AFRICA A. CHILDREN - DELIBERATE TARGETS OF STATE VIOLENCE Since October 1984, when the popular uprising against the apartheid r6gime began, not a day has passed without State violence being unleashed on the South African population. Women and young people are the main targets of this armed police repression. Over 2,200 people, most of them Africans, have been killed since the uprising of the black townships began in September 1984. 2/ (a) The thousands of people killed by the apartheid rigime's repressive forces include many children The dead include hundreds of children. According to South African parliamentary sources, 209 children were killed by the security forces between 1 January 1985 and 10 February 1986 and a further 703 young people were wounded. 3/ In June 1986, the University of Cape Town revealed that over half of those killed in the black townships in 1985 were shot in the back and that one in every eight victims was aged under 15. 4/ In Soweto, on 16 June 1976 and during the disturbances which followed, nearly a thousand children and adolescents were shot by the apartheid r6gime's security forces. (b) Of the 8,000 children imprisoned by the apartheid regime, 4,000 are still detained today According to recent figures published by the Detainees' Parents Support Committee (DPSC), 5/ some 22,000 people, 8,200 of them children, have been arrested and detained by the apartheid r6gime since the state of emergency was declared throughout the country on 12 June 1986. 6/ These children have been thrown into prison without charge or trial at a rate of some 250 a week since 12 June 1986. Four thousand of them are apparently still in detention. According to the same source, of the 415 children still detained in Witwatersrand, 57 per cent are under 16 years of age and 15 per cent are aged 14 and under. A little girl of 11, Fannie Guduka, was detained without trial for 57 days. 7/ According to the same source, 27 per cent of these children had been detained for nearly five months and I...

19 per cent had been in detention for four months. These statistics were put together by the DPSC in the very difficult circumstances of the state of emergency, under which the security forces can, inter alia, make secret arrests. 8/ The Detainees' Parents Support Committee views this situation as unprecedented and describes it as a war on children. In February 1986, the Minister of Law and Order, Louis La Grange, replying to a parliamentary question, admitted that 2,016 children under 16 years of age were being detained. La Grange also confirmed that 71 per cent of the people arrested in 1985 for offences relating to the disturbances - 13,556 out of a total of 18,966 - had been under 20 years of age. 2/ On 7 December 1986, for the first time since 12 June 1986, Major-General Johann P. Coetze, Chief of Police, released information on children aged under 16 detained under the state of emergency. The figures he gave are far lower than the estimates made by the DPSC or the Black Sash and have since been challenged by these organizations. Even so, they are damning for the r6gime: One child aged 11 years; Six children aged 12 years; 21 children aged 13 years; 88 children aged 14 years; 140 children aged 15 years. Let us remember that, in more than 90 per cent of these cases, children are being held in preventive detention without charge or trial. Under the internal security laws and the regulations in force under the state of emergency, these children are being held at the Government's discretion and can be kept in prison for interrogation for an indefinite period. 10/ The new Minister of Law and Order, Adrian Vlok, has not indicated the offences for which these children are being detained. (c) Children: cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, Whatever their age, these children escape neither ill treatment nor even torture. Not only is detention in itself traumatic, but there are frequent cases of brutality and maltreatment. Such cases most often occur on the security forces own premises, where arrested children are first detained and where they are subjected to the cruelty and irresponsibility of members of these forces who are trained to treat opponents, even young opponents, of apartheid as enemies and are almost assured of impunity under the regulations governing the state of emergency. I.. .

According to testimony given by children, such maltreatment most often consists of punching, kicking, whipping (with a sjambock), and beating with rifle butts. Children claim to have been threatened with suffocation either directly by a member of the security forces with his bare hands or by having their heads covered with a kind of hood. 11/ Other children have even been tortured using electricity. 12/ After the initial interrogation period, children are imprisoned in adult prisons where they are subject to the same deplorable conditions as other inmates, namely, overcrowded cells most of which do not have minimum sanitary facilities. All children complain of not getting enough to eat. The press has reported cases of children having sex with adult prisoners in return for extra food. 13/ Doctors have drawn attention to the traumatic psychological effects of such arrests and detention, saying that conditions for children in preventive detention are such that a week in some prisons is enough to do lasting psychological damage, engender deep-seated resentment, create criminal habits and lead to rejection of the legal system. 14/ (d) Emergency campaign for the release of children The Black Sash, an organization of women who come from the ruling minority but are waging a tireless battle for recognition of the civil rights of the oppressed majority, has just launched a campaign in South Africa for children to be released by Christmas. 15/ We call on people to denounce these preventive detentions, which run counter to all rules of international humanitarian law, and to make a strong appeal to all women's organizations in the Common Market countries and to women members of Parliament to urgently express their support for this campaign to their own Governments, the EEC authorities and Mr. P. W. Botha himself in South Africa, in order to bring the preventive detention of children to an immediate end. (e) "Re-orientation" camps run by regional security for children released from prison In prison, black children are subjected to various kinds of pressure to make them agree to enter so-called "re-orientation" camps to undergo rehabilitation, which may last one month, before they return to their communities. The hitherto secret existence of these camps was revealed to the South African Parliament on 11 September 1986 by the Progressive Federal Party (PFP). The Detainee's Parents Support Committee claims to have received alarming reports and often shocking information about the conditions and treatment of detainees in these camps. 16/ When questioned about this, the Government did not deny the camps' existence but tried to play down their coercive aspects. I...

These camps are linked to the minority racist rigime's national security apparatus. They are apparently run by Joint Management Committees, some 500 of which exist throughout the country. The more important committees are run by officers of the armed forces and security forces who play a major role at all levels, including the local committee level. Their network forms the basis of the National Security Management System set up by the apartheid rigime after it adopted its strategy of all-out war in 1977. The system is headed by the State Security Council, presided over by P. W. Botha and composed of the main police and army chiefs and of ministers occupying posts considered to be of strategic importance. 17/ PFP has denounced the use of these "re-orientation" camps for recruiting spies and informers for the police. 18/ B. WOMEN - DELIBERATE TARGETS OF THE APARTHEID REGIME'S VIOLENCE (a) Imprisonment, bannings, house arrest and police harassment Women, even the foremost figures in the anti-apartheid struggle, are still subject to police repression and harassment. Winnie Mandela, Albertina Sisulu and Helen Joseph have all suffered imprisonment and police detention, bannings, house arrest and deprivation of fundamental freedoms on more than one occasion, and are not allowed to leave the country. Even today, many women and adolescent girls are among the thousands being detained without charge under the rules governing the state of emergency. They include Sister Ncube, a popular figure in the anti-apartheid struggle in the Transvaal and well-known to the women from all over the world who came together at Nairobi in the summer of 1985, where she had gone to deliver her searing testimony and her urgent appeal for solidarity. (b) Murders of women political activists Women have also been the victims of cowardly murders for their unswerving commitment to the struggle for their country's dignity and freedom. They include women who were from the privileged minority but had long identified with the struggle of the oppressed majority. We should like to pay special tribute to: , 57, mother of three, world-renowned academic, Co-Director of the Centre for African Studies of Eduardo Mondlane University of Mozambique, author of several important publications on southern Africa and an active member of ANC, who was killed on 17 August 1982 at Maputo by a letter-bomb; I... Marion Schoon-Curtis, 37, former Vice-President of the National Union of South African Students, who, together with her daughter, Katryn, 6, was killed by a letter-bomb at Lubango (Angola) where she was a teacher; Victoria Nonyamezelo Mxenge, 43, lawyer, mother of three, member of the UDF leadership in the province of Natal, who was murdered on 1 August 1985 while on her way home. Her husband, lawyer Mlungisi Griffiths Mxenge, well known for his commitment to the struggle for civil rights, had been brutally murdered in 1981 by a death squad which vanished without trace. Alongside these names we must mention the hundreds of women and young girls, nameless to us but dear to the hearts of their families and their struggling compatriots, who have given their lives to free their people. (c) Women freedom fighters illegally sentenced by apartheid courts Other women, fighting shoulder to shoulder with, or within, ANC in the resistance against the apartheid rigime, have recently been given heavy prison sentences. They include: Helen Passtoors, 43, a South African of Dutch origin, university lecturer in languages and mother of four, who on 19 May 1986 was sentenced by the courts of the apartheid rigime to 10 years in prison under the Treason Act; Marion Sparg, 28, journalist, member of ANC, charged with treason, who on 7 November 1986 was sentenced to 25 years in prison for her participation in acts of sabotage; Theresa Ramoshamola, 24, who on 16 December 1985 was sentenced with five other South Africans (the Sharpeville Six) to death by hanging. (d) Let us save the life of Theresa Ramoshamola International humanitarian law of armed conflicts is applicable to the situation prevailing in South Africa. The legitimacy of the South African people's struggle against the apartheid r4gime is recognized by numerous resolutions of both the General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations. This legitimacy is based on the right of self-determination of the South African people, who have been excluded from political power by the racist minority, and on the criminal nature of the apartheid r~gime. People captured or arrested by the South African armed forces and security forces and who claim allegiance to the resistance movement against apartheid are therefore entitled to prisoner-of-war status as defined by the Third Geneva Convention, 1949, as amended by the Additional Protocols of 1979. We therefore call upon women's organizations to denounce the sentences against these women as totally illegal, and to campaign to: ...

(a) Save the life of Theresa Ramoshamola, who is threatened with hanging, and that of her five fellow freedom fighters who are all entitled to prisoner-of-war treatment under the Geneva Conventions; (b) Publicize the plight of other women in the resistance movement who have been illegally sentenced to imprisonment; (c) Obtain the release of Helen Passtoors, Marion Sparg and all political prisoners. C. DAY-TO-DAY MISERY AND SUFFERING HAVE INCREASED (a) Forced removal and separation of families In addition to the tragic effects of this violent repressive policy on the lives of women and children, family life in general among the oppressed majority continues to be seriously affected by the continued application of aprtheid's vilest social policies. Tens of thousands of families have continued to be dispersed and split up by the inhuman policy of deportation and removal and by the draconian control measures which bar the jobless African population, most of whom are women, access to urban centres. Direct victims of this inhuman policy, women also make up the bulk of the resistance to these forced removals. (b) Malnutrition, starvation and unemployment Malnutrition and food deficiency diseases are still rife among the population of the black townships and bantustans, affecting children in particular 19/ and resulting in a very high infant mortality rate among the African population: children under five account for 55 per cent of deaths among the black population, as against 7 per cent among the white population. 20/ The population of some bantustans are even threatened with starvation. According to the organizers of Operation Hunger, which was set up by South African non-governmental organizations in 1980, food needs in Lebowa have increased steadily. In 1985, Operation Hunger spent six and a half million rand on supplying supplementary food aid to some 662,000 people. In 1986, 12 million rand will be required to meet the food needs of one million people most of them in the bantustans. 21/ Unlike in most African countries, in South Africa only 8 per cent of the rural population live off subsistence farming. Virtually all the population confined to the bantustans, most of whom are women and children, are dependent on the wages of workers employed in the white urban and industrial areas. These wages are totally inadequate to support a rural African family, however, representing barely half the vital minimum needed for a South African family of five. 22/ Moreover, between 4 and 6 million black South Africans in both the black townships and the bantustans are unemployed. 23/ I...

D. WOMEN'S PARTICIPATION IN THE RESISTANCE TO APARTHEID ON ALL FRONTS: BOYCOTTS Women, who are in the forefront of the struggle against evictions from urban centres and forced removals to bantustans, are also one of the driving forces behind the boycott campaigns designed - to quote ANC slogans - to make the apartheid system inoperable in the black townships and to replace the administrative authorities installed by the apartheid r~gime with the help of African collaborators by a system controlled by the African majority. (a) Rent boycott in the black townships women are actively involved in the rent boycott which is now reported to be in effect in some 42 African townships, including Soweto. 24/ Such boycotts have a social and a political purpose. First, they are meant as a protest against rent increases for dwellings which, in a very large number of cases, lack the most basic amenities. These increases are being imposed on people who are faced with increasing unemployment and have often been deprived of any source of income by the policy of police harassment, the breadwinner being either in prison or in the underground. Secondly, by depriving the apartheid r4gime of rental income, which is used to run the administration of the black townships, Africans mean to show that they no longer wish to subsidize residential segregation and their own subjugation. According to estimates made by South African academics in August 1986, some 300,000 African families are no longer paying their rent. The apartheid r4gime is thus estimated to be losing some $500,000 a day. 325/ This is one of the most sustained and best organized forms of peaceful protest against exorbitant rents, the army presence in the black townships and the apartheid regime's oppression in general. In a good many cases, the price paid by the population is eviction, regardless of their possibilities, or otherwise, of finding alternative accommodation. (b) Bus boycott Women are also participating actively in the bus boycott campaigns. Besides being one of the traditional forms of protest used in South Africa to fight the high cost of such means of transport, which are owned by private companies, these campaigns have also been used since the beginning of the popular uprising, to denounce residential segregation. The buses are seen as the lifeline of segregation, 26/ providing transportation to Africans who have to travel long distances between the black townships where they are forced to live and the white cities and industrial centres where they work but are unable to reside. ..

-10- (c) Boycott of white shops Women are also directly involved in the campaigns for a boycott of white shops by African consumers, launched in several black townships since 1984 to protest the declaration of the state of emergency and the deployment of the armed forces and to secure the release of political detainees. Some of these campaigns have had considerable repercussions, particularly in the Port Elizabeth area. Democratic organizations in South Africa have recently adopted the slogan *Black Christmas", i.e. a boycott of Christmas shopping in protest at the terror unleashed by the apartheid r6gime in the black townships and in support of the campaign for the release of detainees arrested under the state of emergency, particularly children. According to one such organization, there is nothing to celebrate. The Government gives every indication of wanting to use more and more force as Christmas approaches. 27/ In solidarity with the women of southern Africa, we call on women's organizations to continue the boycott of South African goods, particularly fruit, and to work together in the Common Market for the adoption, within the framework of European (EEC) political co-operation, of the boycott of South African agricultural produce already in force de facto or de jure in several member States (Ireland, Denmark, Netherlands). (d) Boycott of the bantu education system The bantu education system, against which young people rebelled in Soweto as early as 1976, is in a state of crisis and has remained largely paralysed since the armed forces' occupation of the black townships. Children, adolescents and students in ethnic colleges are rejecting the inferior bantu education, which is intended to perpetuate subjugation and accentuate divisions within the African population. These young people also intend to fight against the armed forces' presence in the townships and to denounce the excessive numbers of deaths of schoolchildren, the arrests and detentions without trial of their fellow students and also of their teachers, some of whom are women. The schools which continue to operate in the black townships often do so under the supervision, even the occupation, of the armed forces. A system of compulsory enrolment for schoolchildren was imposed at the beginning of the school year. One new and very significant element in the determination of those involved in this crucial struggle is the fact that an alternative education system is being established, despite myriad difficulties and risks, in the black townships. This I...

-11- system, designed "by and for the people" in response to appeals by ANC, is being supported by anti-apartheid organizations inside South Africa and is also beginning to win support abroad. A parallel education system is also being established in Namibia with the support, in this case, of the Namibian churches. (e) The boycotts: soon to be banned on grounds of their "subversiveness" These boycott campaigns, the only alternative left to Africans to demonstrate their non-violent opposition to apartheid, are in danger of being banned. The new regulations governing the state of emergency, which were made public on 11 December 1986 and drastically tighten the censorship already imposed on the South African and foreign press, also extend the definition of subversion and make it illegal to advocate such forms of protest. 28/ This latest repressive measure follows the bans already imposed on public meetings in the black townships and the organization of funerals - moving ceremonies of tribute and mobilization for the African population - and outlawing any kind of meeting for certain organizations including those held on their own premises. The women of South Africa and their children are in the forefront of the resistance on all fronts to apartheid. They are to be found in the liberation army , in the political leadership and rank and file of ANC, both underground and abroad, and among the tens of thousands of refugees living in the Front-line States, most of whom are women and children. These women are also in the forefront of the anti-apartheid forces which have emerged in recent years, for instance, the United Democratic Front, as well as in certain branches of the trade-union movement, where they have always played a major role, in the churches and in a large number of democratic organizations such as the Black Sash, the End Conscription Campaign, 29/ the Detainees' Parents Support Committee and the National Education Crisis Committee, whose leading members are the victims, at both the national and regional levels, of a policy of police harassment designed to paralyse their activities and their growing influence. All these organizations are non-racial in terms of their composition and/or their objectives and are therefore viewed as enemies by the apartheid rigime. NAMIBIA Apartheid and the deadly terror intrinsic to that system also extend to Namibia, which has been occupied illegally by South Africa for the past 20 years and actually colonized by that country since the First World War. This occupation is maintained, in the face of the popular resistance waged under the leadership of SWAPO, only by means of police terror, militarization of the territory and colonial warfare. ...

-12- South Africa has not only extended its system to that country but is also enforcing its repressive laws there and has declared a state of emergency in northern Namibia, which is under arbitrary police and military rule. Unrelenting censorship is enforced with respect to information on the activities of the forces of repression in the region. Namibia also has experience of the Koevoet death squads which spare neither women nor children. A climate of repression and terror of this sort triggers a steady flow of refugees to neighbouring countries, particularly Angola, where the refugee population continues to be the target of attacks by the South African Army, as was shown by the Kassinga massacre in May 1978 when more than 600 women and children were massacred by the apartheid rigime. South Africa uses Namibia's territory as one of the bases for its policy of destabilization and aggression against independent neighbouring States. There too it is women and children who are the deliberate targets of attacks by South African commandos and by armed gangs - UNITA in Angola and MNR in Mozambique - which operate against the population of those countries and try to destroy targets essential to the life and to the normal functioning of their countries. More than once in recent years, we have witnessed in person the tragic consequences of this policy of aggression against the civilian population in Angola and in Mozambique: murders of women and children, maiming of women and children and systematic destruction of schools, clinics and food warehouses in order to terrorize and starve the population and destabilize the country. A recent UNICEF report demonstrated clearly that infant mortality in these two countries has increased dramatically in the last five years as a result of South Africa's policy of destabilization. The percentage of children dying before the age of five is between 10 and 15 per cent higher today than it was in 1980. CONCLUSION It is no longer enough to denounce apartheid. Men, women, adolescents and children are dying daily not only in South Africa and Namibia but also in Angola and Mozambique, the main targets of the apartheid regime's aggression. Thousands of children have been orphaned and thousands of women and children have been maimed by the MNR armed gangs in Mozambique and those of UNITA in Angola. The economies of those countries have been ravaged by destruction and acts of sabotage. Millions of people are threatened with starvation, in Mozambique in particular, but also in Angola. This situation is largely the result of South Africa's policy of destabilization and aggression towards neighbouring countries which refuse to accept the status quo and subjugation in southern Africa. ...

-13- A choice must now be made between maintaining relations with a ruthless, sinister, aggressive and criminal racist police State and supporting the forces in southern Africa which are struggling for freedom, justice and peace. Common Market Europe can no longer allow the crimes of the apartheid r6gime to be committed in the name of Western and Christian values and on the pretext of protecting our countries' economic and strategic interests. Notes 1/ Resolution 435 (1978) of 29 September 1978. 2/ Figure quoted by The International Herald Tribune, 29 September 1986. 3/ Figures provided by Minister La Grange, Hansard, 11, 18 and 25 February 1986, quoted by The Guardian of 24 October 1986. 4/ The Guardian, 17 June 1986. 5/ Figures drawn from a 213-page memorandum "Children under repression" made public on 27 November 1986 at by DPSC and quoted in The Guardian of 28 November 1986. DPSC is an independent group which, inter alia, compiles data on political arrests and detentions. 6/ Under South African law, any one under 18 years of age is considered a child. 7/ Her photo was published by The Guardian of 15 August 1986. 8/ The Prison Act of 1959 considerably restricts the possibility of disseminating information on the South African prison system. These restrictions have now been joined by those decreed under the state of emergency. 9/ The Guardian, 24 October 1986, quoting a document made public by the South African civil rights movement Black Sash. 10/ The International Herald Tribune, 8 December 1986. 11/ The Guardian, 28 November 1986. 12/ Ibid., 24 October 1986; Cape Times, 12 June 1986. 13/ The Sunday Tribune, 9 September 1985. ... -14- Notes (continued) 14/ Report by Dr. Margaret Elsworth and Professor Norma Saxe who, in 1986, visited four prisons also serving as detention centres for children arrested under the state of emergency. The report focuses on the situation in St. Alban's prison, near Port Elizabeth, in the Western Cape where the resistance to apartheid on all fronts is particularly active. Fiona McLachlan, in "Children in Prison: South Africa", United Nations Centre against Apartheid, No. 2/85, January 1985, describes the situation of children detained in adult prisons prior to the declaration of the state of emergency. 15/ The International Herald Tribune, 8 December 1986; The Guardian, 3 December 1986. 16/ The International Herald Tribune, 13-14 September 1986. 17/ This body is responsible for elaborating and co-ordinating the implementation of the all-out war strategy adopted by the apartheid r6gime in 1977 in response to the growth of the liberation struggle in South Africa and Namibia and the achievement of independence by Angola and Mozambique. 18/ The Guardian, 15 September 1986. 19/ In 1980-81, 43 per cent of all black children showed symptoms of malnutrition, such as blotches on the skin, sparse and yellowish hair and muscular debilities. Forty-five per cent of African adults also suffered from malnutrition. Study by the University of Stellenbosch, quoted by The Guardian, 26 November 1986. 20/ Ibid., and Fatima Meer in "Women in the Apartheid Society", United Nations Centre against Apartheid, No. 4/85, April 1985, p. 5, states that the country has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, the overall rate for Africans being 80 per 1,000 live births. 21/ The value of the rand, which has fallen sharply over the past two years, is equivalent to approximately 22 Belgian francs. 22/ Mike Saunders, The Guardian, 26 November 1986. 23/ Press release by the South African Catholic Bishops, issued at Brussels on 25 November 1986 following a meeting with the Vice-President of the Commission of the European Communities, Mr. Natali, CIDSE document, Brussels. 24/ The International Herald Tribune, 29 August 1986. 25/ Figures published by the Research Group of the University of Witwatersrand. Quoted in ibid. 26/ Alan Cowell, The International Herald Tribune, 29 August 1986. 27/ Statement made by Ethel Walt on behalf of the Black Sash. ...

-15 Notes (continued) 28/ The International Herald Tribune, 15 December 1986. 29/ Members of this organization, basically white students, were again recently the object of repressive measures. Thirteen activists were arrested on 3 December and 12 others were subjected to administrative restrictions. This action aroused very vigorous protests from the South African churches and leaders of the parliamentary opposition. The International Herald Tribune, 4 December 1986.