International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa SHIPPING ADDRESS: POSTAL ADDRESS: clo HARVARD EPWORTH CHURCH P. 0. Box 17 1555 MASSACHUSETfS AYE. CAMBRIDGE. MA 02138 CAMBRIDGE. MA 02138 TEL (617) 491-8343

BOARD OF TRUSTEES A LETTER FROM DONALD WOODS Willard Johnson, President Margaret Burnham Kenneth N. Carstens John B. Coburn Dear Friend, Jerry Dunfey Richard A. Falk You can save a life ~n South Africa. EXECUTIVE DIRECIDR Kenneth N. E:arstens ..:yOtl- e-an-he-l--p -ave-a h-i-l cl adul-t ~rom the herre-I"s- af a South African prison cell. ASSISTANT DIRECIDR Geoffrey B. Wisner You can do this--and much more--by supporting the SPONSORS International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa--IDAF. John C. Bennett Lerone Bennett, Jr. Leonard Bernstein How do I know this? Mary F. Berry Edward W. Brooke I have seen the many ways in which IDAF defends political Robert McAfee Brown prisoners and their families in Southern Africa. Indeed, Shirley Chisholm I myself helped to deliver the vital services it provides. Dorothy Cotton Harvey Cox C. Edward Crowther You can be sure that repression in South Africa will not Ronald V. DeHums end until freedom has been won. That means more brutality Ralph E. Dodge by the South African Police--more interrogations, more torture, Gordon Fairweather more beatings, and even more deaths. Frances T. Farenthold Richard G. Hatcher Dorothy 1. Height IDAF is one of the most effective organizations now Barbara Jordan working to protect those who are imprisoned and brutally Kay Macpherson ill-treated because of their belief in a free South Africa. Frank Mankiewicz Benjamin E. Mays If you've seen Sir Richard Attenborough's film Elizabeth McAlister Paul-N~cCloskey; Cry Freedom, or read about it, you know my story. As a Jr. kn~all George McGovern newspaper editor in South -Africa,-I about apartheid. R. Cranford Pratt But it took my friendship with the black activist Steve Biko Charles B. Rangel to bring the stark realities of apartheid home to me. Donald W. Riegle, Jr. Randall Robinson Apartheid is the vicious system of racial oppression Jefferson P. Rogers Metz Rollins that has been denounced around the world as a crime against Charles Shelby Rooks humanity. President Reagan himself has denounced it as Leslie Rubin . "abhorrent." Clyde Sanger Scott Spencer Apartheid has caused countless deaths--not only at the Gloria Steinem Krister Stendahl hands of police and soldiers in the prisons and in the streets, Louis Stokes but through the disease and malnutrition created by enforced J Randolph Taylor Paul E. Tsongas John T. Walker Woodie White (over, please) Junius W. Williams Leonard Woodcock

The international office of the Fund is in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations poverty.

Among the many lives apartheid has destroyed, it was the life it destroyed in September 1977 that changed~ life. Steve Biko, my friend, was detained and savagely beaten by security police who inflicted severe brain damage and left him to die.

Steve Biko was a brave and compassionate man, and one of the greatest leaders it has been my privilege to know. He worked to give his fellow South Africans a sense of pride, and to end the apartheid system that denied his people voting rights, decent jobs and housing, and the freedom to speak Gut and assemble freely.

When I tried to let the world know that it was the South African Police who were responsible for my friend's gruesome death, I was banned--placed under virtual house arrest, banned from meeting with more than one person at a time, banned from writing anything at all.

It didn't stop there. The security police fired bullets at my home. They telephoned my wife with death threats. They even sent us a child's T-shirt poisoned with a chemical that caused intense pain when my small daughter put it on.

But it was primarily the restrictions that compelled us to leave South Africa in order to continue the fight.

My story as told in Cry Freedom does not mention my work for IDAF. For fear that the people "inside" who benefit from IDAF's work, and the people who carry it out, may be further victimized, I can't name names as I would like to.

I ~ tell you that I worked with attorneys on IDAF's behalf, to help provide legal defense for those detained because of their opposition to apartheid. And I was one of many people who--at some risk to themselves-­ help distribute IDAF funds to the dependents of those detained or imprisoned.

IDAF was called into existence by the black opponents of apartheid, to provide legal defense for those arrested in the nonviolent Defiance of Unjust Laws campaign in the 1950s, and to aid their families.

IDAF went on to defend Nelson Mandela and 155 other defendants ~n the great Treason Trial of 1956-1961. All were acquitted.

IDAF has defended literally thousands of political prisoners--not only in South Africa but in South Africa's captive territory of Namibia, and in Rhodesia before it became the independent state of Zimbabwe.

IDAF 'continues to provide legal defense to political prisoners, and on an unprecedented scale. In addition to all the trials already under way, there were over 20,000 prisoners awaiting trial at the end of 1987. Have you ever thought of a political prisoner being a child?

Incredibly, among the innocent people detained are children as young as eight years old. Children are detained for weeks on end in overcrowded cells with hardened criminals--beaten, tortured, and denied bail and access to family and friends.

In some cases, it takes no more than the routine intervention of an independent lawyer to secure the release of a detainee, especially when a child detainee is involved. Your support of IDAF makes this possible.

South Africa is a police state--a brutal racist regime that maintains its power by the armed might of the army and police. The State of Emergency imposed in June 1986 has made it even easier for the regime to ban organi­ zations and individuals. imprison innocent people, and murder with impunity.

Here are some examples:

* Well over 10,000 children have been detained by the security forces since the Emergency was declared. Children are whipped, tear-gassed, tortured with electric shock, and even immersed in sewage. Such treatment leaves them with severe psychological as well as physical damage.

* South Africa leads the world in its use of capital punishment. In 1987 the regime hanged some 160 people, almost all of them black. The world was outraged when the regime condemned the "Sharpeville Six" to hang for the murder of a ghetto official--even though it had not been proved that all of them were even at the scene of the crime.

* In February 1988, Pretoria effectively banned 17 anti-apartheid organizations as well as the Congress of South African Trade Unions. w~en Archbishop Tutu formed the Committee for the Defense of Democracy to carryon the struggle against apartheid, it too was banned--and the regime launched a full-scale attack on the churches.

* Censorship or Lhe--news meu' ha~b~en trghtened~n one crackdown after another, until there is now a ban on all uncensored news' about police violence, boycotts, demonstrations, and all other forms of resistance. Police can ban virtually anything from news to advertisements. In December 1986 the regime detained Zwelakhe Sisulu, the editor of the courageous newspaper New Nation. Sisulu is still behind bars as I write, without charge or trial. His newspaper has been banned for three months.

During one of the many campaigns to free detained children, Archbishop Tutu said, "I hope the world would recognize just how vicious apartheid has become, and that apartheid is prepared to hold children as hostages."

(over, please) Recognizing that children are the most vulnerable of apartheid's victims, IDAF has made the effort to help them its highest priority: seeking them out wherever they may be detained, determining their state of health, and either hastening their release or standing with them in court.

As a writer and editor, I also appreciate IDAF's work to overcome the blanket of silence imposed by South African censorship. Through the accurate, authoritative books, pamphlets, photo exhibits and other materials it publishes, IDAF arouses the public conscience to apartheid's crimes against humanity. Its publications are a rallying point for anti-apartheid activists around the world.

But it is IDAF's work to defend prisoners and aid their families that makes it the foremost organization of its kind in the world.

IDAF cannot promise justice for people detained and prosecuted for "crimes" of conscience. There can be no justice under apartheid. Neither can IDAF promise to prevent more tragedies such as that of my friend Steve Biko.

What I and my friends at IDAF can promise ~s that your contribution will make a real difference in protecting many of the brave people who are working for change in South Africa.

Cry Freedom was filmed in Zimbabwe, South Africa's neighbor, so that it would have the authentic look and feel that Sir Richard Attenborough wanted. I went there to help with the filming. It felt strange to see the places I knew in South Africa recreated here in Zimbabwe, a country which gained its freedom only seven years before. I looked forward to the day when I could really go home, to a truly democratic and nonracial South Africa.

IDAF cannot bring that to pass, but with your help it can and will save both children and adults from months of detention or years of prison that might otherwise be their fate--and they can bring freedom in.

Your support for IDAF will save lives--not only of prisoners but of their families--and will help make sure that the world does not forget those who are suffering for their opposition to an unjust system.

Please support IDAF with your tax-deductible donation today.

Yours sincerely,

Donald Woods