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South Africa's First Citizens South Africa's First Citizens http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.nuun1969_14 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org South Africa's First Citizens Alternative title Notes and Documents - United Nations Centre Against ApartheidNo. 19/69 Author/Creator United Nations Centre against Apartheid; Benson, Mary Publisher Department of Political and Security Council Affairs Date 1969-11-00 Resource type Reports Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa Coverage (temporal) 1969 Source Northwestern University Libraries Description In resolution 2396 (XXIIl) of 2 December 1968, the General Assembly requested the Secretary-General to establish and publicize a "register of persons executed, imprisoned, placed under house arrest or banning orders or deported for their opposition to apartheid." In response to this provision and related requests by the Special Committee on Apartheid, the Unit has initiated a series of "Notes and Documents" giving particulars concerning such persons. This issue contains an article prepared by Miss Mary Benson, at the request of the Unit on Apartheid, on some of the political prisoners in South Africa. Format extent 8 page(s) (length/size) http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.nuun1969_14 http://www.aluka.org UNIT ON APARTHEID UNIT ON APARTHEID DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL AND SECURITY COUNCIL AFFAIRS No. 19/69 November 1969 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS* SOUTH AFRICA'S FINEST CITIZENS by Mary Benson (In resolution 2396 (XXIII) of 2 December 1968, the General Assembly requested the Secretary-General to establish and publicize a "register of persons executed, imprisoned, placed under house arrest or banning orders or deported for their opposition to Uartheid." In response to this provision and related requests by the Special Committee on Anartbeid, the Unit has initiated a series of "Notes and Documents" giving particulars concerning such persons. This issue contains an article prepared by Miss Mary Benson, at the request of the Unit on Apartheid, on some of the political prisoners in South Africa. Miss Benson, a journalist and author born in South written numerous books and articles on the movement against Africa and its leaders. She has appeared thrice before the Special Committee on Apartheid. Africa, has apartheid in South United Nations The South African Government withdrew her passport in 1962. In February 1966, the Government placed her under house arrest in Jchannesburg and prohibited her from writing. The te..t of the banning order was reproduced in No. 18/69 of the "Notes and Documents". She left South Africa later in 1966 on an exit permit which prohibits her return.) 69-26061 *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. SOUTH A',ICA'S FINEST CITIZENS by Mary Benson Robben Island: In the South African Government's glossy brochure on prisons, the Island appears smothered in yellow daisies with a romantic view of Table Mountain in the distance; only by chance does one notice the grey mass of the maximum security jail in a corner of the picture. Indeed, another photograph is entirely devoted to deer alert among the daisies. Fauna and flora are cherished by the South African authorities. And what of the hundreds of men - the Black Indian and Coloured political prisoners incarcerated there? Men who have stiuggled for ideals which the United Nations regards as the noblest a man can serve, men that any civilized country would be proud to have as its citizens. These men are driven forth each weekday in work gangs as if they were spans of o):en, men such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada and the other fLivonia trialists, as well as the Pan Africanist schoolboys from Pretoria, who have heard a Jurdge declare: "I sentence you to hard labour fo:' the rest of your na ;ural life..." Men who were lawyers, teachers, garage attendants, trade uxiioiists, shop workers, messengers. Now, as they break stone and rock in the quarries or along the shore, the squeak of wheelbarrows can be heard, the yells aid cu -ces cf -ward-rs, the cry of sea gulls, and sometimes - tantalizingly - the hooters of passing ships. Nelson Mandela, leader of Umkonto We Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation"), the underground movement, might, as one of the royal family of the Tembu people, have gone along with his cousin, Kaiser Matanzima, the "Prime Minister" of the Transkei, and been a puppet of the Government, with an assured incone, high- powered motorcars, and sycophantic followers. Or he might simply have remained a successful lawyer, content to function within the framework of apartheid, living in a black middleclass home and finding an outlet for humiliation in sport or jazz, religion or drink. He might have - but for his strong character, his independence of mind and his responsiveness to people's sufferings and to the imperative need for justice. And so, after studying in Johannesburg where he learned the bitter facts of life for Africans in the overcrowded, poverty-stricken townships of the 1940's, he joined with other intensely nationalist young men and galvanized the African National Congress into militant action. Undeterred by repeated arrests and police harassment, he was National Volunteer-in-Chief of the Defiance Campaign of 1952, when 8,500 volunteers went cheerfully to jail; he was one of the accused in the Treason Trial of 1956-60, when all were found "not guilty"; he was underground Organizer of the countrywide protest stay-at-home in 1961; and, in 1962, he left South Africa illegally to address the PAFMECSA Conference, and to make an historic tour of Africa during which he met ERperor Haile Sellassie and Presidents Nyerere, Bourguiba, Senghor, Sekou Tour4, Tubman, Obote and Ben Bella. On his return to South Africa, he was betrayed, arrested, and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. It was while in prison that he was again brought to court in the Rivonia Trial. After decades of non-violent action had proved ineffectual in face of Government -2- violence, but "as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that >tad arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the Whites." Whilst abroad, he underwent a course in military training because if there were to be guerrilla warfare, he wanted to be able to fight with his people and share the hazards of war with them. He had studied various authorities, from the Fast and from the West, from Clausewitz to Mao Tse-Tung and Che Guevara, even writings on the A3.o--Boer war. He concluded his moving statement to the court: "During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against White domination, and I have fought against Black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." Mandela was 46 years old when he began to serve the life sentence. He is now 51. Recently, he suffered three grievous personal blows: his mother died in the Transkei, his eldest son was killed in an accident in Cape Town and his wife, Winnie, in Johannesburg, was arrested and imprisoned in solitary confinement. Walter Sisulu, Mandela's friend and comrade, throughout nearly thirty years of ANC activity, labours alongside him on the Island. Dogged, determined from his childhood in the Transkei, Sisulu had a grain of rebelliousness, of refusing to lie down and accept injustice, which made him an indomitable fighter. Yet he was the most unassuming of leaders, and probably knew better than any other just what it means to be a "native", for he was a miner, and a kitchenboy, and when he was a baker's assistant he led a modest strike and was promptly fired. He was first imprisoned when he protested against a white railway ticket-collector bullying an African child. Thus he found our early in life that most of the whites Africans encounter are the policemen raiding locations for passes or tax receipts, or officials dealing with queues of so-called "boys" like cattle, or jailers who beat up prisoners, and all these things aroused in him not fear, but contempt. For all that, he was no racialist, though, as with Mandela, it was his experience of working with Indians in organizing the Defiance Campaign in 1952 - when he was Secretary-General of the AUC - which enabled him to outgrow exclusiveness.
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