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International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa POSTAL ADDRESS: P. O. Box 17 C\MBI\IDGE. MA 021 38 TEL (617) 491-8343 Dear Friend of IDAF, We don't like to ask our supporters for contributions more than once a year, and if we had our way we wouldn't. Unfortunately, the continuing crlS1S in Southern Africa--the detentions, the "treason" trials, the imprisonment and torture of children--all this forces us to use the "hard sell." Many of you send us contributions without any prompting, or are reminded of the need by reading our newsletter. But some of you have told us they need "reminder" letters like this one. And our figures support this view. In 1985, when we mailed only one of these letters, it brought in $5,899. In 1986, when we sent out three of them, the response was $24,353. Although we get occasional grants from private foundations, we depend most heavily on individual donors like you. You have outgiven the foundations every year. So that we can use your gifts more effectively to save lives and free imprisoned people in Southern Africa, we don't hire expensive professional copywriters and consultants. We are enclosing this letter in News Notes to save costs. Professional fund-raisers have told us we should be sending at least six of these letters each year, but we still shrink from sending that many. This is our third appeal this year, and we expect to do one more by the end of 1987. On the back of this letter we are printing recent articles from a South African newspaper, one describing a "rehabilitation" camp for child detainees, and the other reporting the detention and torture of a community organizer. They are the best explanation of why we continue to ask you for contributions. Please help us once again to provide legal defense for opponents of apartheid, and humanitarian aid for their dependents. Yours sincerely, Kenneth N. Carstens Executive Director (over, please) P.S. We sometimes cast our net wider by sending large mailings to lists we borrow from other organizations. These mailings are costly. If we're lucky, they break even. We do them simply to find new supporters.' You can help save us this expense by sending us the names and addresses of anyone you know who might become an IDAF supporter. The articles below appeared in the New Nation, whose editor, Zwelakhe Sisulu, a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, is still being held under detention without trial. No charges have been even hinted at. The New Nation is under even more immediate threat from the new pre-publication censorship. Special camp for child detainees? A SPECIALLY-DESIGNED However. although other of the plaDDers, who wished designed as a mllximum The "cells", which will nol milliOD-raDd "rehabilitatioD buildings - such as schools to remaiD ItCODymoUS. security hostel for childreD have conventional doors, will UDtre for child detainees is - have previously beeD PlaDners were told the up to 18 years old. be 20 square metres iD size believed to be iD the pipeline adapted to functioD as these centre was Deeded imme­ aDd each will hold four It will appareDtly have a children. for the Eastern Cape. uDtres, this is believed to be diately, aDd no limit was capacity of 72 children. ADd more could be planned the first ceDtre planDed placed OD the budget. Also included in the plans for other parts of the COUDtry. specifically for chi Id Costs aDd plaDs for the The cos"! works· out at are sports facilities and a If plaDS are given the go­ detaiDees. camp were appareDtly R24 000 per child - a total tlatlet for the "housemislIess" ahead, cODstructioD could It is Dot yet kDowD who iDvestigated after other of Rl 728000. aDd "housemasters" swt by the beginniDg of next authorised the plaDDing of buildings in Port Elizabeth As a maximum security Plans are likely to be year. the camp, but welfare were rejected as uDsuitable deteDtioD centre, specifica­ completed by the end of the News of the uDtre follows departmeDts in Port Elizabeth for reDovatioD for the tioDs iDclude high fences, year, making it pOSSIble to earlier exposures tllis year of are believed to be involved. purpose. wire mesh covering ope D start construction at the special "rehabilitatioD camps" News of the unlIe came to The UDtre, which will be areas and solid concrete beginning of next year al the for child delainees. the NEW NAnON from one built Dear Stullerheim, is uiliDgs in the rooms. earliest. 'I was detained, tortured, released and redetained' AN executive member court two days later. Jordaan. other people being When I came to, I was of the Duncan Village 'This week he told the "As I was trying to assaulted at the police assaulted by a big Residents Association court that accusations get up I was hit on my station the following security policeman who this week described in that he had led a group back with a gun. I tried dav. said I was going to tell court how he was of people who chanted to ask the policemen "That night I was the truth." assaulted and tortured and threw stones at the what I had done, but I taken to a certain office Jordaan sllid he was in detention in 1985. police before he was was not answered. in which there were laken to hospital after Thethinene Joe Jor­ detained were "a bunch "Vuyisile was told to two policemen," he the assault, and that he daan. who has been in of lies". go home, and I was said. had to be carried to emergency detention He said he had been forced to go to the "I was told to court during their first since June last year. is detained while he and a hippos a few metres undress and lie on my appearance because he appearing in the East neighbour. Vuyisile away," he said. stomach on the bench. could not walk. London Regional Court Mabeka, were on the "When I reached the I was then asked if I "Even now, I cannot with seven others on Douglas Smith High­ hippo, I saw other knew Steve Tshwete. stand for more than 30 charges of public way, waiting for a taxi. people inside. They When I said yes, one of minutes because of the violence. arson and Mabeka also testi­ were lying on their the policemen asked assaults," he said. throwing stones at the fied. stomachs. I was also me if I could take them The seven others, police. "While we were told to lie on my to Tshwete. I told them Ben Xebe, Allem Man­ They' have pleaded waiting for a taxi to stomach." I did not know where yema, Daniel Nyenge. not gUIlty. town. we were app­ He said they were he was. Solomon Mali. Mbu­ The accused were roached by heavily subsequently taken to "They then started yiselo Woni, Mzwan­ arrested on September armed polIce. They Du~can Village police assaultmg me. I lost dile Gweya and Nya­ 2 1985 and released on pulled me by my jersey staUon. consciousness after nisile Mgithi are out on ~llil after appearing in and I fell," said Jordaan said he saw getting electric shocks. bail. i. d. a.! news notes Published by the United States Committee of the International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa p.o. Box 17, Cambridge, MA 02138 August 1987, Issue No. 32 Telephone (617) 491-8343 Apartheid's Assault on Health On June 4, 1987, Dr. Diliza Mji, Dr. Wendy Orr, and Ms. Mapule confidentiality and refused to hand the names ofgunshot victims to the Khanye, RN spoke at a benefit held at the Harvard Faculty Club for police. You have to realize that in South Africa anyone shot during a medical relief in South Africa. Dr. Mji is the leader of NAMDA, the period of"unrest" in the townships is immediately assumed to be guilty National Medical and Dental Association of South Africa, a group of"public violence" or taking part in a demonstration. The assumption established in 1982 as an altemative to the white-dominated Medical is that the police do not shoot innocent people, so anyone who is shot Association ofSouth Africa. Dr. Orr is a staffdoctorat the Health Centre is guilty of something, and they are guilty until proved innocent. in the Alexandra ghetto in Johannesburg. In 1985 she exposed the We were again in the public eye in June 1986when a polio epidemic systematic torture of detainees in Port Elizabeth. Ms. Khanye is a pri­ (continued on page 2) mary health care nurse and midwife, and has worked at the Alexandra Health Centre for eight years. New Books Available from IDAF We thank lOAF's co-sponsors for making this event possible: Physicians for Human Rights, the Committee for Health in Southern The Child is Not Dead: Youth Resistance in South Africa 1976-86 compiled by Ann Harries, Roger Diski, and Alasdair Brown. (British Defense and Aid Fund-Inner Africa (CHISA), and the South African Townships Health Fund. London Education Authority, 64 pp., iIIus.) $6.70 paper. Designed as a classroom study guide, this large-format paperback covers the Dr. Wendy Orr: South Africa is a country divided and a society Soweto uprising of 1976, "Bantu education'; and government repression in South segmented by apartheid and a Constitution which strictly compart­ Africa through photos, interviews, news clippings, government documents, poems, and more. mentalizes people on the basis of racial classification only. This com­ The Rise ofthe South African Reich by Brian Bunting.
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