Sechaba, Jan. 1984

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/.

Page 1 of 38 Alternative title Sechaba Author/Creator African National Congress (Lusaka, Zambia) Publisher African National Congress (Lusaka, Zambia) Date 1984-01 Resource type Journals (Periodicals) Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa Coverage (temporal) 1984 Source Digital Imaging South Africa (DISA) Rights By kind permission of the African National Congress (ANC). Format extent 36 page(s) (length/size)

Page 2 of 38 SECHABA JANUARY 1984official organ of the african national congress south africaTHE YEAR OF THE WOMENAlbertina Sisulu

Page 3 of 38 ALGERIA5 rue Ben M'hidi LarbiALGIERSINDIAFlat 68 - Bhagat Singh Market.NEW DELHI - 1ANGOLAPO Box 3523.LUANDAITALYVio S. Prisco 15o00153 ROMEBELGIUM9c Rue de Russie. 1060BRUXELLESMADAGASCARPO Box 80TANANARIVECANADAPO Box 302. Adelaide PostalStation, TORONTO.Ontario M5C-2J4CUBACalle 21a NR 20617Esquina 214 Atabey.HAVANAEGYPT5 Ahmad Hishmat Street.Zamalek,CAIROETHIOPIAPO Box 7483.ADDIS ABABAGERMAN DEM. REP.Angerweg 2. Wilhelmsruh, 1106BERLINGERMAN FED. REP.Postfach 1901405300 BONN 1NIGERIAFederal Government SpecialGuest House. Victoria Island.LAGOSSENEGAL26 Avenue Albert Sarraut.DAKAR, Box 34 20SWEDENPO Box 2073. S - 103 12.STOCKHOLM 2TANZANIAPO Box 2239 DAR ES SALAAMPO Box 680 MOROGOROUNITED KINGDOMPO Box 38. 28 Penton Street.LONDON NI9PRUNITED STATES801 Second Avenue. Apt. 405NEW YORK. NYC 10017ZAMBIAPO Box 31791, LUSAKAPublished by the African National Congress of South Africa, P. O. box 317" LUSAKA, ZAM111APrinted a the Druckorel 'Erich Woinort', 70011 Noubrandenbur,, O.D.R.

Page 4 of 38 Oscar Mpetha with Zinzi MandelaZINZI AND OSCARYOUNG AND OLD COME TOGETHER

Page 5 of 38 P. O. BOX 38, 28 PENTON STREETLONDON N1 9PR UNITED KINGDOMTELEGRAMS: MAYIBUYE - TELEX: 2"555ANCSAG - TELEPHONE: 01-837-2012SEND YOUR ORDERS NOW TOSECHABA PUBLICATIONSP.O. Box 38, 28 Penton Street, London N1 9PRCONTENTSALL ORDERS OF TEN OR MORE COPIES50% DISCOUNTKINDLY INCLUDE A DONATION WITH YOURORDER IF POSSIBLESAMPLE COPIES OF SECHABA AVAILABLE ONREQUEST IF ACCOMPANIED BY A POSTAL ORDER(OR IN THE UNITED KINGDOM WITH STAMPS)TO DEFRAY POSTAL COSTSANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONSUSA and CANADA )airmail only) $12,00ELSEWHERE E 6,00SINGLE COPIESUSA and CANADA tairmad only) $ 3,00ELSEWHERE f 0,50EDITORIAL: THE YEAR OFTHE WOMEN 1ZEMK' INKOMOMAGWALANDINI! - THE LIFE ANDTIMES OF W.B.RUBUSANA(1858-1936)By Pallo Jordan 4PEACE AND NATIONAL LIBERATIONBy V.W. 14LISTEN TORADIO FREEDOMVOICE OF THE AFRICAN NATIONALCONGRESS AND UMKHONTO WESIZWE, THE PEOPLE'S ARMYRADIO LUANDAshortwave, 40 & 30 m bands;medium wave 27,6 m band-7,30 pm dailyRADIO LUSAKAshortwave 31 m band, 9580 KHz, 7,15-8 pm,Monday - Friday10,05-10,35 pm Wednesday, 10,30-11 pm Friday7-8 pm Saturday - Sunday, 8-8,45 pm, 19 mb,17895 KHzANC INTERNATIONAL 20MURDERS IN GAOL - THE CASEOF BABERTONBy Jean Middleton 22INVASIONS OF ANGOLA:A REVIEW ARTICLEBy J.M. 30RADIO MADAGASCARshortwave 49 m band, 6135 KHz-8-9 pm dailyRADIO ETHOPIAshortwave 31 m band, 9545 KHz - 9,30-10,00 pmdailyRADIO TANZANIAshortwave 19 m band, 15.435 KHz8,15 pm - Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday;31 m band-6,15 am Tuesday, Thursday andSaturday

Page 6 of 38 EDITORIALTHE YEAR Of THE WOMENThe ANC has declared 1984 The Year of theWomen. There is ample reason for this. Tiledeclaration of 198-3 as The Year of theWomen is a tribute to the militant struggleswaged by the \vonlen of South Africa thatmighty detachment of our re\olutionarwstruggle for national liberation and socialemancipation.The year also marks the 70th anniversaryof the founding of the Federation of SouthAfrican Women on April 17th. 1914. "riteFederation heralded the beginning ot a unitedfront of democratic \women's oreanisationsof the oppressed black women and demo-cratic white vonlen. a front that cuts throuellartificial barriers created b\ a1lartheid.Who are these womlctt"They constitute more than #0 per centof the population. lhe\ earn less than theirmen. The black then carts less than the \\hiremen and there are different %wa:e scales forblack then of different nationalities Col-oured, Indian and African. It is thereforeobvious that the African \\omen are paid theleast. They are the most o%cr%\orked and themost underpaid section of the society.They suffer triple oppression. as tnetn-bers of the national]\ oppressed black major-ity, as members of the \workin_ class and aswomen. Therefore, their sttw_;ele for 'cyualrights' is closelw intcrlinke,l with the strugglefor national liberation atld social entancil1at-ion. It is an aspect of it. sir. if %~,it like. it is'subordinate' to it. \\e hasten to sa\ that h\'subordinate' \we do not ttlean it ha. It, \%aitfor freedom da\. \\'e must start nt#\ Its %-ehave not started) to tree oursekes from 'tiialechauvinism' and its coutuerpatt. 'tcntinism.'Women do all sorts of menial and de-grading jobs such as taking care of childrenof white \vonlen, while nobody looks aftertheir own children. Tlle\, work on the whitefarms. while their children are being snatchedto \work as child labourers on other whitefarms. Their husbands work on the mines infile bowels of the earth, while they remain atluttne. Phyllis Ntantala has described the lot(+t these women in these moving words:"It is the tragic story of thousands ofyoung women who are widows long be-fore the\ reach the age of thirty; youngmarried - \vonlen who have never beentnotllers: young women whose life hasbeen one long song of sorrow - buryingone baby after another and lastly bury-ing the husband that lover she hasnewer known as husband and father. Tothem both men and women - adult-hood means the end of life; it meansloneliness. sorrow, tears and death; itmeans a life without a future becausethere is tit) present."What about the v nnen political prisoners?I'lle banned ;~ banished? And those'widowws' whose husbands have been forcedinto exile" Those women and girls whosehusbands and fathers are either in gaol -some serving life sentences - or have beenmurdered,There are scores of women who are dailyharassed by the racist regime. If there is one\\ otnan \we have to single out - as an exampleof man\ it is Albertina Nontsikelelo Sisulu(tit our front co\er picture).Faith in the inevitable destruction ofapartheid has given Albertina Nontsikelelo

Page 7 of 38 Women in South Africa Jet4-h water Jrmn a communal tapSisulu strength and courage for forty dears.No person could be said to have sufferedmore persecution for their political viewsand activities than this inspiring woman.Albertina Sisulu was banned for IS_vears- longer than any other person. Site has beendetained and gaoled several tithes. her husband has been in gaol for twenty years,sentenced to life imprisonment, tw() of herfamily have fled into exile while others limebeen detained and banned. !how she faces im-prisonment for trumped-up charges becausethe apartheid authorities have been unableto silence her by other means.Albertina was born in the Transkei andtrained as a nurse and midwife. Her politicalactivity began in 1944 after she marriedWalter Sisulu. In 1948 she joined the ANCWomen's League and became active in thisand the Federation of South African Women.In 1963 she was elected Provincial Presidentof the Transvaal branch of the Federation ofSouth African Women.

Page 8 of 38 A queue of unenrplv.ved women workers inCape TownIn 1964 she received her first banningorder. This was renewed in 1969, 1974 and1979. The terms of her orders have changed,but all the time she could not be quoted norenter a school or factory or take part in anysocial gathering without special permission.She was also required to apply for permissionto visit her husband, Walter, on R )bbenIsland.Despite the attempts of the regime tominimise her influence. when her ban waslifted in July 1983 she had become one ofthe best-known anti-apartheid campaigners.Within a month she assumed a leading posit-ion in the Transvaal section of the UnitedDemocratic Front, and in August 1983 waselected one of the three presidents of thenational United Democratic Front.The regime's latest attempt to silenceher will be about as successful as previousones. Albertina will not be cowed by a prisonsentence - no matter how long. Neither willher influence wane: she has become one ofthe martyrs of our revolution.In this Year of the Women, let ushighlight the situation of the women underapartheid.CALENDAR1984 - YEAR OF THE WOMENAfrican National CongressA3 illustrated monthly calendar3-colour graphic description of the womens strugglein South Africa with commemorative datesAvailable from African National Congress Womens Section,PO Box 38, 28 Penton Street, London N 1ORDER FORMName _Address -Please send (number) at f;2.50 each (includes p&p) enclosed E___Please make cheque&IPOs payable to ANC Womens Section (address above)

Page 9 of 38 Page 10 of 38 On the occasion of the 72nd anniversarr ()fthe ANC, PaUo Jordan cornntcmorates thisevent with an article on one of his heroes, DrW B Rubusana, a founder-member of theANC. In the light of the massacres, torturesand arrests in Mdantsane, the tribute is afitting one.The 21st September 1910 will long beremembered in the annals of the ('ape Prov-incial Council. On that day. the first and thelast African ever to be elected to serve as amember of the Provincial Council won thecontest for the Thembuland constitutency.The event, which in most other countrieswould have been unremarkable. caused quitea stir in South Africa.To the diehard white bigots it was tilerealisation of their worst fears. One Africanin the seats of a legislative body, even on theprovincial level, promised hundreds more to-morrow. Ironically, it was precisely the sameline of reasoning that excited jubilationamong the African communities in all fourof the recently unified provinces of SouthAfrica. Newspaper articles celebrated theevent in bold-type headlines, lengthy editor-ials were written either in approbation or dis-approval, praise poems were composed tomemorialise the name of the successful blackcandidate -- Dr Walter Benson Rubusana. afifty-two-year-old minister of tile Congregat-ional Church, living and working in LastLondon.Walter Rubusana's candidacy in tileProvincial Council elections of 1910 was cor-rectly considered by all observers as a boldstep indeed. Two years previously, in alleditorial written by John Tengo Jabavu. theAfrican electors of the Cape had assured thewhite electorate that they felt no need toput forward African candidates in electionsbecause of their faith in the fairmindedtlcssof their white counterparts. Such faith hadbeen found to be misplaced when the Con-stitution for the Union of South Africa wasdrawn up with its notorious 'colour bar'clauses. Rubusana's candidacy was a responseto this affront, as well as an act of politicalself-assertion oil the part of the African elec-torate of the ('ape who had too long allowedthemselves to live in tile shadow of the whiteliberal political establishment. Rubusana waschosen as tile instrument for these purposesbecause of the prestige he enjoyed within theblack community and in recognition of hispersonal contribution to the political strug-struggles of that community.Rubusana's CareerRubusana was born on 21st February188 at N1nandi in the Somerset East districtof the then ('ape Colony. His father, Rubus-ana kaMbonjana. was a senior councillor (um-pllakathi ) to tile Paramount Chief, Sandileka\ggika. Like many of his peers RubusanakaMbonjana had been influenced by the pres-ence of Christian missionaries in the midst ofthe Xhosa people. lie sent his sons to thenearby mission school, where he hoped theywould learn and master the skills which thewilite colomialists were applying with suchgreat effect against the African people. Afteracquiring a primary school education, WalterBenson Rubusana was admitted to Lovedale,the Free Church of Scotland mission schoolon tile banks of tile Tyhunle River. Here, un-der the tutorship of Dr James Stewart, hestudied for the Cape Teachers' Certificate,passing tile final examination with a distinc-tion in 1878. Rather than going out to teach,he remained at Lovedale to study theologyunder the guidance of Dr Stewart and theReverend Andrew Smith.In 1880 Walter B. Rubusana left Love-dale to take up a teaching post at the Peeltonmission station, where lie also worked as assistant pastor. It was at this post, in 1883,that lie married Deena Nzanzana, his firstwife. who bore him five daughters and a son.lie remained at Peelton until his ordinationas a minister of the Congregational Churchin 1884, at which time he transferred to EastLondon, which was to be his residence forthe rest of his life.The 'Red' and~School' PeopleTile decade during which Rubusana wasborn witnessed tile military defeat and econ-

Page 11 of 38 ontic destruction of the Xhosa kingdom. Itwas inaugurated with one of the most bitter-ly fought frontier wars, which coincided withthe so-called 'Second Hottentot Rebellion.'The Xhosa kingdom and its allies, the rebelsof the Kat River Coloured Settlement,proved no match for the powerful BritishEmpire. After three years of war the Xhosasued for peace. In 1857 the remnants of thekingdom were convulsed by the Nongqausemessianic movement, which irrevocably dest-royed the economic base of Xhosa society.In 1858, the year Rubusana was born, morethan 5 000 passes were issued to Africans inthe Eastern Cape to enter the service of whitefarmers as labourers. The division betweenAfrican traditional society and the agrariancapitalism of the Cape Colony was disappear-ing, and thousands of Africans were beingabsorbed into the white-controlled economyas a subordinate class of labourers.Apart from military conquest, other fac-tors conspired to enhance the rapid accultur-ation of the Africans of the Eastern Cape tothe Cape colonial society. Missionaries hadbeen active amongst the Xhosa since the1790s. A small but growing body of Christianconverts living and working amongst theirtraditionalist brethren were carriers of theideas, values and skills of 19th century Eur-ope. The traditionalists saw the converts as apotential source of subversion, whom theydesignated 'amagqoboka' - the penetrableones. The converts in turn regarded them-selves as a community of the elect, callingthemselves the 'school people,' as distinctfrom the 'red people' (derived from the redochre traditionalists used to decorate theirbodies).State policy during the 1850s and 60sdovetailed well with these divisions amongstthe Africans of the Cape. The British governor, George Grey, was intent on destroyingthe political and moral authority of the trad-it Tonal Xhosa leaders, who had been the spear-head of anti-colonialist resistance for the pastseventy years. One means of achieving thiswas to sponsor the converts as an alternativecentre of moral authority. In terms of the newconstitution granting the Cape Colony rep-resentative government, all British subjectswho fulfilled certain property qualificationswere eligible to register as electors. This col-our-blind constitution had as its objective thecreation of a racially mixed agrarian capitalistsociety dominated by a class of well-to-docapitalist farmers. Many of the African con-verts had already been absorbed into thisstratum of colonial society, owning extensivefarms which produced grain, cattle, wool andother cash crops for the market. Walter Ben-son Rubusana naturally found his niche inthis section of the black community, whenhe reached maturity.Imumba Yama NyamaRubusana began his professional lifeduring a period of intense political activity.In 1882 the South African Aborigines' Assoc-iation, known in Xhosa as Imumba YamaNyama, was founded by a group of Africanpeasants. 1884 saw the inauguration of twomore significant movements. the Native Elec-toral Association, led by John Tengo Jabavu,and the Native Education Association, ledby Elijah Makiwane. In November of thatyear the first issue of lnrvo Zabantsundu, thefirst independent African newspaper, rolledoff the presses in Kingwilliamstown.Imbumba, the Native Electoral Associat-ion, the Native Education Association andlmvo were all the creations and institutionsof the growing Christian African elite, madeup of a few rich farmers, hundreds of smallproperty owners, a sprinkling of professionalmen and a number of skilled craftsmen. Mostof them regarded the institutions of the CapeColony as a sound foundation on which tobuild a common society embracing blackand white. Like the liberal white politiciansof the Cape they spoke in terms of 'equalrights for all civilised men,' and had formedpolitical organisations to secure and extendtheir political rights. During the 1880s eventsbeyond their control were destined to reversetheir political fortunes.Gold Mines and Mass Labour ForceThe opening of the Witwatersrand gold-

Page 12 of 38 fields in 1885 was the critical watershed ofSouth African economic history in tile 10thcentury. Within a few nlontlls what had for-merly been bare veld was transformed into ateeming boom town named Johannesburg.Fortune hunters from all over the worldswarmed into the Rand, capital front SouthAfrica and abroad flowed in to exploit thenew-found wealth. After a few years of un-restrained outcrop mining, the scants closeto the surface had been exhausted, and deeplevel mining had to be pursued to get at therich seams of gold-bearing rock locked be-neath the ground. In this situation the snlali-scale operator was unable to compete withthe big mining companies t flat had made theirfortunes in diamond mining. Consequently.within a decade. gold mining was virtualkmonopolised by a handful of big mining ~.or-porations capitalised by local and internat-ional bankers.The mining industry's primary require-ment was a mass labour fierce which couldbe had by the expropriation of the Africanpeasant from the land. The precepts of '('apeliberalism,' elaborated in the context of theCape's agrarian capitalism, had to be replacedwith a comprehensive progranlnle to separatethe African peasants from their land, shacklethem with poll taxes and pass laws. so thatthey could be herded in droves to ministerto the ever-growing needs of the gold miningindustry. To achieve this, the African peasanthad first to be politically disarmed by dilutionof his franchise rights.The first major step was taken in 1897,when the Parliamentary Voters' RegistrationBill was placed before parliament, ostensiblywith a view to preventing 'uncivilised' blacksfrom acquiring the franchise. The annexationof the Transkei to the Cape Colony that yearwould have added some 30 000 Africans tothe electoral register of the Cape. The 1887Act, by excluding communally-field landfrom the terms of qualification for the fran-chise, was clearly aimed at holding dowel thenumbers of African voters. Five years later.in 1892, the Franchise and Ballot Act im-posed a literacy test on all prospective blackvoters. In 1894 the Glen Grey Act establishedthe Bhungtl. or council. system of indirectrule over Africans in the reserves. Tile GlenGrey Act sounded the death knell of ('apeliberalism and ~htit tile door against the idealof a conunon soviet\ . by setting up a specialhods of law's exclusively a,)pllcable to theAfrican people.Jabavu and the LiberalsUp until this time the African electorsin the Cape had employed a simple but ap-paiently effective strategy devised by Johnlengo Jabavll and other leaders of theNative I-lecto:al Association. They realisedthat. being few in numbers and beingconcen-trated in a few pockets of the Lastern ('ape,their host IWI)e WJS to tltlliSC a strategy of enbloc voting to support one parliamentaryCandidate.In I SS Jal)avu had formed a close assoc-iation with niece of the ('ape's leading liber-al politicians: Jalnes Rose [lines, John XMerriman and J 11 Sauer. fee acted as RoseInne;' election agent in 1884, securing thebloc vote of the African constituents. Rosetithes and 1115 friends realised that they owedthese Africans lotels a debt of gratitude, andwere iliereft)Ic atlicnable to political pressurest1oin that . Liaiter. -'lie leaders of the NativeI Iectolal .'Issoclalion (NF-A1 in turn hopedto use the African bloc vote to keep liberalpoliticiaIh 111 parliament as a Ineans of resist-ing the racist pressures of the AfrikanerBond. Jabavu personally tried to convincethe coloured political leaders to join in suchefforts because lie realised that the Bond'spolicies would result in the disfranchisementof all Blacks.Tile NI-A strategy was viable so long astheir aims did not conflict with the commit-nients the liberal politicians had incurred inother quarters. Once having elected a liberalto office, there was little the African voterscould in fact do to hold him to his promises.A case in point was James Rose Innes. In18)4 Rose Innes supported the Glen GreyBill in the full knowledge that its provisionsseriously compromised the interests of hisAfrican constituents.

Page 13 of 38 These experiences had a profoundly dis-illusioning effect on Rubusana and his peers.They began to question the wisdom of Jabavu's strategy of alliance with the liberal pol-iticians. and sought to devise a new one basedon independent African organisations. Thisgroup coalesced around Nathaniel ('yrilMhala. and founded a second newspaper.llizwi Lahantit. in 1898. While tile 11i:%vigroup necessarily also had to einplo% a par-liamentary strategy. tile% refused to be con-strained by considerations of persons andpast association. They insisted oil judgingthe white politicians on their deeds ratherthan the fine words pronounced on tire hust-ings. In many quarters their paper was greetedwith enthusiasm by African voters will) wiretired of Jabavu's highly personalised stNle ofleadership.Despite their radicalism. Rubusana andhis associates could not see beyond Britishimperialism. During the Anglo-Boer Nat tile,all threw their support behind Britain. Rtrbu-sana and other ministers of religion lent theirmoral authority to enlisting African labour-ers. wagon drivers. scouts and Inindieds ofother nun-combatants to contribute towardsthe British victory. which fnal1% cattle ill1902.Rubusana never knew that tile pioini%ct,made by the imperial government and itsmouthpieces in South Africa would anuomato little inure than hot air unless the Atii, anelectors could exert organised pressure ti,hold them to their words. Thus in 1902 Irewas instrumental in calling together a numberof African leaders in the ('ape. to found tireSouth African Native Congress. Though tileSouth African Native Congress ISA\('I hadcountrywide ambitions. it was in fact con-fined mainly to the ('ape. Amongst its tintactions was a petition addressed to JosephChamberlain. Prime Minister of (;real Brit-ain, reminding him of the tine promises hispredecessors had made to (lie black Biiti,hsubjects in South Africa.Chamberlain and his liberal Part% min-istry were however colninitted to doing agreat deal with the &hers. A tidy stint of threenlilli,m p,uinds was voted towards the rehab-ilitation tit tire Cornier Boer republics. andh\ 140- both the 'fransvaal and the FreeState \\ere granted responsible government.wllh their old racist constitutions unchanged.-I hat year the SANC again took up the issueof black political rights. in a petition addres-sed t# the hint. In it tire% pleaded the loyaltyof file d\er:aee black South African to theBritish O#\\n and I inpile. and called for thelelentloll #1 tile illlpellalist connection. asthis ttlle% hoped) \c,nlltl he a moderating in-fluence on the rdcisru tit tire South Africanwhite population. Neither of these appealsbore an% fruit. and tire nto\enlent towardsthe political unification tit the four colonies]teadll\ wined nionierltuni during that firstdecade tit the t\\eniietll century. despite thevocal protest, of tile African and colouredpolitical organisations.Zelnk' Inkomo Mag%alandiniThe other un11#11ant ti,lmati\e influence-ill Rubusana cad, Iii, leli>#ion. Ire was a tied-lcated minister of the ( ongregational Church.participating ill its councils and actively in-vol, ed in 1,11Iselviisulg it, message to the Af-rican People. lie translated a number of Cong-reltatlmial text, into Xho-.a. and was also act-[\e in the \ati\e I-ducation Association. ledh\ I lijah %lakiwdne. As the descendant of arespected traditional statesman. Rubtisanawas ill a position to pei,liade many of tireChiefs in the Ciskei and I ranskei to open upschool, and cinirclles in their districts.A, a Iecognised authority (in the Urosalanguage. he was appointed to serve on tire\1111%a Bible Revision Coninlittee. set up torefine the translation supervised by Tiyo Sogain the lh#0,. lie personally supervised itspublication in Britain when he accompaniedthe 7'Itenibu king. Dalindyebo. to attend thecolonatioll of king Edward VII in 1904.During his sla\ in I ondon lie also publishedhis first hook. Zcmk' hikopno Magrcalandini(Defend Your heritage). all anthology oftiaditi,,nal epic poets\. didactic Christian es-sa\ % and Church history. (haris and Carter,in Volume -3 of their Documentary History.Inrstakenl\ iefer to it as a collection of prov.

Page 14 of 38 .(f ':!CV. ., ~. e..The AA'C delegation to Britain in /91-1. I.c.1i to right, 1)r It' B Ruhusana, T tllapikela,the Reverend .l I. Duhe, Sol Plaatie and S jtlsaneerbs.) As one of the earliest collectionsof theoral poetic tradition, the book was a remainsof inestimable historical and literary value.Zernk' Inkonio Alagscalandini reflectsthe two dimensions of Rubusana's politicalthinking. He was a committed modernist.represented by his espousal of Christianityand western education. while at the sametime recognising that there were a number ofabiding values in traditional African society.By reaffirming the aesthetic validity of trad-itional modes of literary expression. Ruhus-ana was also performing a patriotic taskemancipating the African intellectual fromthe cultural and psychic enslavement imposedby servile imitation of western canons.By the end of the decade Rubusana wasuniversally recognised as one of the leadingblack politicians in South Africa. AmongstAfricans his status was second only to thatof John Thengo Jabavu. Thus. when Jabavuwithheld his support from the South AfricanNative Convention, which met in Bloenifon-tein in 1909, it was natural that Rubusanawas chosen as its President. In this capacitylie led the black deputation to London inJune of that year in an attempt to have the'colour bar clauses' expunged from the draftconstitution.The 1909 deputation to London was anhistoric landmark, being the first occasionduring this century that African and Colouredformed a united front in pursuance of com-mon objectives. Besides Rubusana, the depu-tation was composed of Dr A. Abdurahman,leader of the African People's Organisation(AM), D Dwanfa,Matthew Fredeiicks,JohnT JabaV'U. D J Lenders, Thomas Mapikela andone white parliamentarian, W P Schreiner. Itwas joined by Alfred Mangena, who was thenresident in London.The Independent Labour Party was theonly Biitisli political party to support thedeputation in London. The Aborigines' Protection and Anti-Slavery Society, long assoc-iated with lobbies for more humane colonialpolicies. assisted in obtaining access to mem-bers of parliament, and later an interview with

Page 15 of 38 the Secretary for Colonies.The deputation had two main objectives- reversal of the 'colour bar clauses' and pre-venting the incorporation of the three Britishterritories (Lesotho, Botswana and Swazi-land) into the Union until the white publicforswore racism. Everyone they met listenedpolitely to their arguments. but at the end ofthe day the Act of Union was passed, withthe 'colour bar clauses' intact. The deputationdid succeed however in preventing the ab-sorption of the High Commission territories.Rubusana returned home with his dep-utation in September 1909 to report thatthey had been unsuccessful. White South Africa duly marked the unification of the fourcolonies with great pomp and ceremony inMay 1910.Rubusana announced his candidacy forthe Thentbuland constituency in the CapeProvincial Council as soon as the electionswere announced. Many who had mouthedsentiments of racial equality now joined theranks of the arch-racists to denounce Rubu-sana for daring to contest the seat. RichardRose Innes. the Independent Liberal politic-ian and a long-time backer of Jabavu's, recor-ded his disapproval in the Last London Dis-patch. Even Jabavu was less than fulsome inhis support. All these impediments notwith-standing. W B Rubusana ran a most effectivecampaign. His contacts in the church and itsrelated organisations provided a ready-madenetwork to mobilise the voters; the SANCbranches throughout the Cape and the news-paper lliztci Labantu provided rallying pointsfor his supporters. When the results were an-nounced on September 21st. Rubusana hadwon the seat. fle had won as a champion ofAfrican rights. and it was this more than hisblack face that frightened the racists.In 1911 Rubusana made his third voyageoverseas to attend the Universal Races ('ong-ress in London. Two other black South Africans attended the congress: John ThengoJabavu and King Dalindyebo of the Thenrbu.The conference, organised by the Ethical (-ul-ture Society to discuss race relations throuOi-](~ out the world. had attracted numerous part-icipants from the United States, Asia andother parts of Africa. Among the Americanparticipants was Dr W E B du Bois, the fatherof Pan-Africanism, and at the time engagedin setting up the National Association forthe Advancement of Coloured People in theUnited States. Here Rubusana had the oppor-tunity to rub shoulders with many of theleading black po!itical figures of the world,exchange experiences, and broaden the inter-national contacts of the South Africanmovement.The conference itself proved disappoint-ing to the colonial delegates who attended.The Ethical Culture Society was practicallyapolitical in its approach to racism and nat-ional oppression. It was seemingly unawareof or unconcerned with the realities of imper-ialism - the immense profits being squeezedout of the colonies. the material stake impor-tant sections of the population in the metro-politan countries had acquired in colonialopprcsssion. They seemed to regard racism.racial discrimination and national oppressionas ethical problems which could be resolvedby polite dialogue between its perpetratorsand its victims. Rubusana. Du Bois and theothers knew from experience that racism wassustained by a complex of institutions, back-ed up by armed force and grounded in theeconomic realities of mines, huge plantations,and a lucrative trade in raw materials. Onlythe organised power of the oppressed couldeffect change.Rubusana and the Formation of the ANCRubusana returned home more than everconvinced of the need for a national organis-ation lie and his colleagues had attemptedto create such a movement in 1902, but hadn(it been able to extend beyond the bound-aries of the ('ape. The idea of setting up a nat-tonal organisation had been placed before thedeputation to London in 1909 by Pixley ka-Isaka Sente. The time was obviously ripe toimplement it in later 1911. Thus it cameabout that Rubusana was one of the hundredstrong body of delegates who converged oilBleomfontein oil 8th January 1912 to attend

Page 16 of 38 the inaugural conference of the African Nat-ional Congress. As an experienced politicalcampaigner, he was appointed on to the con-stitutional commission chaired by RichardMsimang, and elected as one of the Vice-Presidents of the ANC.The newly founded ANC was the brain-child of two-generations of African politi-cians. The older group, amongst whom wereRubusana and his contemporaries, had ac-quired practically all their political experiencein South Africa and had been reared in thetraditions of Cape liberalism. The youngergroup, amongst whom were the young bar-risters, Serne, Mangena. Montsioa and Msi-mang, had trained abroad and were moti-vated by ideas of a continental emancipationmovement which would enable the Africanpeoples to make their unique contributionto world civilisation. Both groups howeverwere adherents to the principles of 19th cen-tury British liberalism and appealed to thattradition when addressing the British govern-ment or its local off-shoot the all-White SouthAfrican parliament.The first test of strength for the ANCwas the Natives Land Bill then being discuss-ed by the South African parliament. The billwas yet another chapter in the hot housedevelopment of South African capitalism atthe expense of the African peasant. Powerfuleconomic interest groups in minting and Whiteagriculture had agitated for the bill and therewas complete consensus among all the parlia-mentary parties about its desirability. Thebill sailed through three readings in the I louseof Assembly, piloted by the erstwhile 'friendof the Natives' Sauer and became law inJune 1913.The ANC launched a wide-ranging polit-ical campaign against the bill, including pub-lic meetings, letters to the press, memorandato politicians and deputations to the PrinceMinister. When all these yielded no resultsthey resolved to send a deputation to Britainto persuade the British monarch to witholdhis assenting signature which would makethe act law. Rubusana was involved in everyaspect of the Anti-Land Act Campaign andfeatured prominently in every stage of its de-velopment. When the deputation to Londonwas chosen it was inevitable that lie wouldbe amongst them.This first ANC deputation to Londonwas led by President Dr John L. Dube andbesides Rubusana included Thomas klapikela,Saul Msane and Sol T. Plaatje. As in 1909the deputation lobbied MPs ;.t Westminsterreceiving support from the Labour Partyalone. It was finally granted an interviewwith the Secretary for Colonies on '_'4thJune 1914. In his response the British Colon-ial Secretary offered the deputation no com-fort and advised them that since the Act ofUnion the British parliament no longer hadany jurisdiction over South African internalaffairs. That being the case they should ad-dress themselves to the South African govern-ment.The reverses of 1914 for Rubusana werecrowned by a personal political defeat. Whenhis terra of office in the Cape Provincialcouncil expired that year he decided to con-test the seat once more. However on this oc-casion an old colleague with whom he hadstruggled shoulder to shoulder in many acampaign but with whom he had over theyears had numerous differences took the fieldagainst him. This was John Tengo Jabavu. inthe eyes of many the doyen amongst Blackpolitical leaders in the Cape. Jabavu hadkept his distance from the South AfricanNative Convention and withheld his supportfrom the ANC. lie had in fact tried to organ-ise his own South African Races Congress inopposition to it. All these actions had costhim dearly in terms of his former prestigebut he stubbornly refused to recognise thatthe movement of the African people had out-grown both his leadership and his politics.Obviously piqued by the stature Rubusanahad acquired, Jabavu decided to run as acandidate in the 1914 election.Some have suggested that Jabavu at thistime was not acting in his own behalf butwas the stalking horse of White politicianswho resented Rubusana's incumbency.Whether this is true or not tile consequences I 1

Page 17 of 38 of his action was that tile bloc African votewas split between himself arid Rubusana:294 and 852 respectively. This allowed aWhite candidate who received every whitevote in the constituency to take tile seatwith 1004 votes. This practically ended Ja-bavu's political career. He died seven yearslater, a lonely figure remembered more forhis shortcomings than his strengths. Rubusananever sought to re-enter tile lists for tile pro-vincial council seat after his defeat.Rubusana and others arrived back inSouth Africa shortly before tile outbreak ofthe First World War. They received tile newswhile attending a special ANC conferenceconvened to hear their report. The conferenceadjourned in order to enable the leadershipto entrain for Pretoria where they offeredthe unequivocal support of tile ANC and theAfrican people for tile war effort.Rubusana personally offered his servicesto recruit 5,000 men provided tile govern-ment was prepared to train them in modernwarfare. The ANC leaders undertook to sus-pend all their campaigns and mass agitationfor the duration of tile war as a dennonstra-tion of loyalty. Smuts, on behalf of the gov-ernment, thanked them for their declarationsof loyalty but declined Rubusana's offerwith words to tile effect that since this was a"White man's war" lie saw no reason whythe Africans should take a hand in the fight-ing.Rubusana was as much responsible forthe decision to declare a moratorium onmass agitation during tile war as the otherANC leaders. This was probably the biggesttactical error they committed. The govern-ment did not reciprocate their action by sus-pending the provisions of the Land Act. In-stead it pursued them vigourously unimpededby ANC agitation or organised opposition.After four years of ruthless application theLand Act became a fait accompli and by1918 its social and economic consequenceswere irreversible. Having thrown away a tact-ical advantage the ANC was unable to pickthe threads of the campaign when tile warended.Rubusana and his colleagues in the ANCleadership viewed the war as an opportunityto demonstrate in practice their loyalty totile institutions of empire. Loyal service dur-ing tile empire's hours of crisis, they thought,would not go unrewarded when better timesreturned. What happened after the war end-ed was an object lesson in the realities of im-perialist politics.In 1918 two South African delegations,one led by Sol T. Plaatje for the ANC, theother by J.B. Hertzog for tile Afrikaaner Nationalists, departed for Europe to presenttheir respective cases to the British govern-ment and the allied powers at Versailles. Thedelegations represented divergent streams ofpolitical thought. The African nationalistdelegation identified strongly with liberaldemocratic values equality before the law,representative government, civil liberty --the ideals which the allied powers had pur-portly waged the war to preserve. The Afri-kaaner nationalists were not only historical-ly linked to tile defeated central powers butrejected ever, precept of the liberal demo-cratic tradition. What is more while the ANCleaders, quite misguidedly it is true. rushedto Pretoria to declare their loyalty, Afrikaan-er nationalist officers in the South AfricanDefence Force seized tile opportunity to raisea rebellion against Britain with a view to re-surrecting the defeated Boer Republics. How-ever, when tile two delegations arrived inBritain it was Hertzog who received a sympa-thetic hearing. The ANC delegation returnedempty handed while Hertzog returned bear-ing firm promises and an undertaking thatSouth Africa would be granted greater auton-omy within tile imperial framework to ac-commodate the demands of the Afrikaanernationalists. The 1918 delegation to Londonwas the last time that African political leadersappealed to Britain to intercede on their be-half.In 1919 Rubusana was 61 years old.The constitutional commission on which hehad served finally reported to the ANC conference that year. After an animated discus-sion the lengthy constitution they had draft-

Page 18 of 38 ed was adopted with a few amendments.Though the constitution was couched in theaccents of the liberal constitutionalist tradi-tion the pest seven years had drastically trans-formed South Africa and with it the Africanpeople. During those seven years the ANChad been steeled in a lengthy political exper-ience. In and around the growing urban areasclusters of permanent urban African com-munities had sprung up composed of peasantsdriven off the land by the 1913 land Act.These were to become the battalions of thenational and class struggles that eruptedacross the length and breadth of the countryin the subsequent decades.Rubusana Inspires Us AllRubusana spent the last 17 years of hislife in relative quiescence. Most of his notablecontemporaries, Jabavu. Bokwe, Makiwaneand others passed away during the early1920s. After a lifetime of political strugglehe was allowed to live out his last years as allelder statesman. occasionally consulted onimportant matters, but away from the cutand thrust of day-to-day politics. Ilis namehardly features during the stormy years ofthe 1920s and 30s. lie died on 17th April1936 in East London at the age of 78.Walter Benson Rubusana's life storyspans the most crucial years in the shapingof modern South Africa. For nearly forty ofthose years he was actively engaged in themost important political and social strugglesof his country. As a man of the cloth, awriter and political leader he was in the fore-front of the battles waged by his people pro-viding leadership. Though we may, with thewisdom of hindsight. fault his judgement onoccasion, there can be no doubt that he wasa man of immense personal courage and in-tegrity committed to the democratic ideal ofa free South Africa. Like many of his con-temporaries lie experienced the decades lead-ing up to and including Union as a period ofshattered illusions. Rubusana's greatness layin the fact that lie did not for a moment al-low these setbacks to demoralise him. Hedrew the appropriate lessons from each. de-feat, picked himself up and fought on. Un-like Jabavu lie was willing to grow with thetimes and even learn from the younger menlike Settle and Dube whom he joined in found-ing the ANC. The life and work of WalterBenson Rubusana are an important part ofour democratic heritage from which we drawinspiration for the battles that still lie aheadof its.Sources:ti'Bunti buka Walter Benson Rubusana, byRev. S.W.T. Luzipho, unpublished manu-script, SOAS Library, London.African Yearlr Register, T.D. Mweli Skota,Johannesburg, 1930.

Page 19 of 38 HEATIONALLIBERATIONSTRUGGLEANDWORLD PEACEBy v w.When the historic Appeal for Peace and LifeAgainst Nuclear War was adopted at the WorldAssembly for Peace and Life at Prague inCzechoslovakia in June 1983, by over 3 000delegates from 132 countries, it was certainlythe most outstandingly successful condem-nation of the nuclear arms iace ever since theAmericans dropped the first atomic bombon Hiroshima.The delegates were drawn from 1 84314 national organisations, trade unions, peace,women's, youth and student movements,political parties, churches and 108 inter-national non-governmental organisations. Theoverwhelming majority clearly identified USimperialism as directly responsible for thearms race, especially the nuclear arms racewhich has reached such threatening proport-ions today.The delegates expressed their gravestconcern at the US and NATO decision to de-ploy new 'first strike' nuclear missiles in Eur-

Page 20 of 38 ope, and of the frenzied attempts by themto impose on people the idea of the 'accept-ability' of nuclear weapons, and of the poss-ibility of carrying out a 'limited' or 'protract-ed' nuclear war.The Appeal to the WorldThe Appeal adopted declared:"Preparation of a nuclear war is the mostserious crime against humanity. But waris not inevitable. It is not yet too late toprevent a nuclear holocaust. Salvation isin the hands of the people themselves, ofeach man and woman, resolutely stand-ing together for peace."The mass movement for peace is apowerful force, a determining factor inthe international situation, capable ofinfluencing the practical policies of gov-ernments in the direction of peace."The strength of this broad and divers-ified peace movement lies in its abilityto act together. Whatever differences onother issues exist between us, we arestrongly convinced that nothing mustdivide us in the face of our common pur-pose - to save peace and life, to preventnuclear war."The Final Appeal to All Peoples was in thefollowing words:"Let us not allow 1983 to become yetanother springboard to a new and mort-ally dangerous round of the arms race:to further intensification of confrontat-ion! Let us concentrate our efforts toachieve the most urgent demands of thepeoples of the world."5. Stop the arms race, nuclear and convent-ional!6. Yes to nuclear weapon free zones!7. For general and complete disarmament!8. Peaceful political negotiations, not mili-tary confrontation!9. The world's resources for peace and life!10. Peace, freedom, independence and pros-perity for all nations!The nuclear 'first strike' doctrine of the pre-vious and present US administration is basedon the wholly erroneous and insane idea of a'winnable' nuclear war in Europe. The NATOdecision to deploy Cruise and Pershing IIintermediate ballistic missiles in Western Eur-ope would guarantee a pre-emptive first strikeagainst the USSR, and the USA would be theultimate victor.It was the weakening of imperialism'sgeneral position, especially in the last fewyears, that brought about a sharp shift in themilitary and political strategy of the imperial-ist camp. Those who run military industrialmonopolies and eventually determine thestrategic policy of the Western powers, theUSA first and foremost, find peaceful co-operation among peoples and states with dif-ferent social systems unacceptable, andchoose to thwart all national and social prog-ress on the international scene.Sheer MadnessThe sheer madness of advocating a nuclearwar, irrespective of its form, be it limited,protracted, universal and so on, has been re-peatedly confirmed by many research estab-lishments since at least 1959.As the recent report of the Swedish Ac-ademy of Sciences points out:Specifically ten appeals are made:1. No to new missiles in Europe!2. Yes to real negotiations on the reductionof all types of nuclear weapons in Europe!3. Freeze all nuclear arsenals now!4. No to nuclear weapons in the West or inthe East, around. the world!"The use of even a fraction of the estim-ated 60 000 nuclear weapons now in ex-istence would result in the immediatedeath of 750 million people, with 340million seriously injured. The atmos-phere will be veiled by debris, whichwill hinder sunlight for weeks, possiblymonths. This will be followed by reduc- 15

Page 21 of 38 The people of Moscow dentonstrate f )r peace: demonstrators in Gorki Park.tion of the ozone layers. which will in-crease ultra-violet radiation and seriouslyaffect humans. plants and animals.Cockroaches, carrion birds and rats willmultiply."The only sane and logical conclusion to bedrawn from the various studies and reports isthat the third world war would be the last.However, despite the overwhelming sci-entific evidence on the catastrophic conse-quences of a thermonuclear conflict, a strategic group in Washington. headed by Lieut-enant-General Daniel O'Graham, who wasmilitary adviser to President Reagan duringthe presidential campaign, has the stated aim"to shift the current nuclear strategy basedon mutual assured destruction to mutual as-sured survival." It visualises space-borne bal-1 ti listic missiles and a space defence system.able to attack anywhere with advanced tech-nology. There would also be a manned milit-ary space control. This would be achieved intwelve years at a cost of 40 billion dollars.The report says that this would confront theUSSR with an armaments competition whichwould tax its industrial and technological re-sources to the point of disruption.Imperialism's aggressive actions in Leb-anon. Nicaragua. El Salvador. Chad and Af-ghanistan. the new dangerous round of thearms race, and growing subversion againstsocialist countries and liberation movementsand newly independent progressive states,must be firmly rebuffed by all peace fightersin the world.World Peace and National LiberationThe development of the nuclear weapon cap-ability by Pretoria, despite the imposition of

Page 22 of 38 .. MENa mandatory arms sanction by the UN Secur-ity Council in 1977, is attributed to the ass-istance given to the regime by the UnitedStates, Britain, Israel and other Westerncountries. This criminal collaboration withthe apartheid regime jeopardizes internation-al peace and security, and is in no smallmeasure due to US imperialism's policy of`constructive engagement' with the apartheidregime. The continuing efforts of the US toestablish SATO, the South Atlantic TreatyOrganisation, which would include SouthAfrica, is a further danger to independentAfrica and Latin America.The dilatory strategy and machinationsof the so-called Western Contact Group invol-ved in the Namibian independence negotiations have further heightened internationaltensions and increased the likelihood of thenotorious `linkage' policy of Washington andPretoria, which stipulates that Namibian in-dependence be linked with the withdrawalo!' Cuban internationalist forces from Angola,thus frustrating the implementation of Sec-urity Council Resolution 435, and so delayingNamibian independence indefinitely.The ANC -has consistently backed therepeated calls for a zone of peace in the In-dian Ocean, ever since the UN decision onthe matter in 1971. As Alfred Nzo has stated,"We offer broad support for the people ofMauritius in their struggle to retrieve DiegoGarcia Island, which American imperialismhas turned into a military base."The call of the OAU and the Africancountries' statement declaring Africa a nuc-lear-free zone is fully endorsed by the ANC.The ANC further backs the call of the PragueAssembly for the immediate dismantling ofUS military bases in all regions of Africa.The Prague Assembly also called for theimmediate imposition by the Security Coun-cil of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions against South Africa under Chapter VIIof the UN Charter. The collaborators withthe apartheid regime, with permanent seatson the Security Council, have consistentlyflouted international opinion by exercisingtheir veto! The rapid militarisation of theSouth African economy, which is on a perm-anent war footing, and its establishing of it-self as a medium-scale arms exporter, is in nosmall measure due to the covert collusion ofthe US and its allies in supplying actual mil-itary hardware, expertise and licences.The recent decisions of the Seventh Non-Aligned Conference in New Delhi demandedthat all nuclear weapon states assume an obligation not to be the first to use these weap-ons, and work towards a comprehensivetreaty banning nuclear weapon tests andfreezing nuclear armaments.Our national liberation movement is insolidarity with SWAPO and the people ofNamibia, the PLO and the Palestinian people,the Polisario Front and the people of theSaharoni Arab Democratic Republic, theFarabundo Marti National Liberation Frontand the people of El Salvador, and FRETILINand the people of East Timor.It is clear that the national liberationstruggle in the world today is an integral partof the world struggle for peace, which in turnis a guarantee for true lasting freedom, inde-pendence and prosperity for all nations.The 1980s will have a special place inthe history of the struggle for national andsocial liberation. In Indochina imperialismsuffered its biggest setback since the secondworld war in its attempts to destroy the nat-ional liberation revolution.The victories of the peoples of Vietnam,Laos and Kampuchea, Ethiopia, Angola,Mozambique, Nicaragua, Afghanistan andZimbabwe, supported by the Soviet Unionand other socialist countries and progressiveforces of the whole world, demonstrated thatimperialism had now less opportunity forobstructing the development of the revolut-ionary process. The elevation of anti-comm-unism to the level of American foreign policyin the 80s is an ill-fated attempt to reverse thegains of the revolutionary forces of the world.But this should not be interpreted tomean that imperialism is not in a position toreverse our gains. The experience of Grenadais an example and a lesson to all of us. 17

Page 23 of 38 Our StandOur national liberation. organisation, theANC, has a proud record of solidarity withthe real forces for peace and freedom in theworld. The Congress movement played amajor part in the activities of the South Afri-can Peace Council which was set up in 1953,at the height of the cold war. Chief AlbertLutuli, President-General of the ANC, putthe question of peace and war in its properperspective in his Oslo speech when he receiv-ed the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961. And Nel-son Mandela said in his Presidential speechof the Transvaal ANC Annual Conference in1953 -- it was read because he was banned:"We have been banned because we cham-pion the freedom of the oppressed peo-ple of our country and because we con-stantly fought against the policy of racialdiscrimination in favour of a policywhich accords fundamental human rightsto all, irrespective of race, colour, sex orlanguage. We are exiled from our ownpeople, for we uncompromisingly resist-ed the efforts of imperialist America andher satellites to drag the world into therule of violence and brutal force, intothe rule of the napalm, hydrogen andcobalt bombs where millions of peoplewill be wiped out to satisfy the criminaland greedy appetites of the imperialistpowers. We have been gagged becausewe emphatically and openly condemnedthe criminal attacks by the imperialistpowers. We have been gagged becausewe emphatically and openly condemnedthe criminal attacks by the imperialistsagainst the people of Malaya, Vietnam,Indonesia, Tunisia and Tanganyika andcalled upon our people to identify them-selves unreservedly with the cause ofworld peace, and to fight against thewar policies of America and her satel-lites."In this passage Mandela clearly points outthe inter-connection between the strugglefor national liberation, international solidar-ity and world peace. The three go togetherbecause world peace is threatened by theexistence of apartheid and our struggle istherefore a struggle to preserve world peace.This makes utter nonsense of Reagan's dema-gogy which portrays us as 'international ter-rorists'.The ANC has been a consistent championof the cause of world peace, and "voices itsfull support for recent Soviet peace initiativeswhich are aimed at making this planet a se-cure place" (Alfred Nzo, 1983). This consis-tent principled internationalist support forthe struggle for peace in the world finds con-crete expression in the many international,regional conferences and meetings on peacein which our fighting vanguard has playedand is playing a significant part.Our leaders, President Oliver Tambo,Secretary General Alfred Nzo and the lateDr. Yusuf Dadoo, are members of the highestorgans of the World Peace Council. in whoseSecretariat the ANC is represented. In today'sworld a freedom fighter has to be a peacefighter for the freedom struggle as well as forthe peace struggle since both are inextricablylinked.Our ANC delegation made a vital contri-bution to the recent Prague World Assemblyparticularly on the topic of "Tile Danger ofWar and the Problems of the Middle East,Asia, Africa and Latin America." On thespecific subject of the "liberation struggle inAfrica and the threat posed by the apartheidregime to independence and peace in South-ern Africa" more than one hundred and fiftvdelegates participated and twenty-nine tookpart in the discussion.In the light of the increasing threatagainst humanity, as a result of the imperial-ist policy of arms race and confrontation,the delegates stressed the inter-connectionbetween Southern Africa and other regionsof the world.They all were unanimous in their assess-ment of apartheid, racism and colonialism asthe bulwark of reaction and militarism inthis region. They were adamant on the factthat the struggle against racism and apart-

Page 24 of 38 1Vurkers and engineers, writers and sc'ie'ntists, rcterans of the war, students and$chooJchildren demonstrate in peace and J(')r an erul to the arms race.heid is an iate,,ral part o1 the struggle forpeace throughout the world.Participants condemned the 'total warstrategy' of the apartheid regime in the lightof the massacres at Shaipevdle. Soweto, \1atola, Cassinga and Lesotlt0: tts :ontinued il-legal occupation of Namibia: its invasion andoccupation of Angola: its neo-colonialist pol-icy of exporting counter-revolution to thefront-line states. and last but not least itsbrutal fascist enforcement of oppression andsuper-exploitation against the majority ofthe people in South Africa itself. The dele-gates condemttrd the recent execution of theheroes of Untkhonto we Siewe, Jerry \toso-loli, Simon Mogoerane and Marcus 1!otaungand demanded prisoner of war status for allcaptured freedom fighters.The unity of peace forces in the worldtogether with the fighters for national libera-tion will ensure that peace and independencewill he won in this, the decisive decade ofwar and peace. Let us intensify our struggleagainst reaction and militarism.

Page 25 of 38 NAAustrian Solidarity with the ANCIn the Federal Republic of Austria. a solid-arity project called *Cows for Niorogoro' isproviding material aid for the ANC agricult-ural and educational project near Morogoroin Tanzania.The project is being organised by theAnti-Apartheid Movement in Austria, and"'as publicised at a press conference in Viennaon the 24th October. 198?. Comrade ToneSeedat, ANC representative in the FederalRepublic of Germane. was invited to takepart. and he was accompanied be ComradeRliulu Nlbatha.amember of the A\('regionalyouth committee in the German DemocraticRepublic. Television journalists and otherpressmen were at the conference.The State Secretary of Austria. JohannaDonal, member of the Socialist Part' of AUSt-ria, opened the conference. and her presencethere was of great significance.Contributions to the fund have comefrom the President of Austria. the FederalChancellor and some Ministers. from theChairman of the ('onuttunist Party of Austria,and from some trade unions and from solid-arity groups. Tractors. generators and othermaterial have already been bought and sentto hlorogoro. and contributions are stillcoming in.Comrade Seedat told the conference thatthough the racist regime claims that changesare being made in South Africa, there is notalk of eradicating the racist system. He saidthat our school buildings and agriculturalprojects at k1orogoro are part of our struggle.Comrade k1hatha said that the school atNlorogon~ was putting into practice the educ-ational aims of the Freedom Charter.During their stay in Austria, both Com-rade Seedat and Comrade Mbatha had theopportunity of having discussions with someof the people and organisations that havecontributed it) this project.Peace or War?World Peace Council Meets in GreeceFrom November 18th to the '_0th, 1983,Athens was host to a session of the Bureauof the Presidential Committee of the WorldPeace Council. Vice-Presidents of the WorldPeace Council and leading personalities fromnational peace committees all over the worldconverged to discuss problems concerningwar and peace. The Report to the Bureau ofthe World Peace Council stated:

Page 26 of 38 "The world today has entered one of themost dangerous stages of its develop-ment. We have been witnessing that stageduring the whole of 1983 when millionsof people throughout the world weretrying to prevent further escalation ofthe nuclear arms race. The most danger-ous part of this escalation takes place inEurope, where, according it) NATO's1979 decision, new US missiles Persh-ing Its and Cruise missiles - are beingdeployed in a number of West Europeancountries."Since 1979 much water has flowed under thebridge. We have seen American missiles beingstationed in Britain, West European parlia-ments and governments have agreed that theircountries be used for stationing these deadlyweapons - something which is tantamountto colonisation of Western Europe by the US.Who can forget that the Reagan administrat-ion invaded Grenada without consulting any-body? Who can deny that Beirut is being re-duced to rubble with the connivance of theUS or because of its machinations' Whodoubts that Angola is being occupied and in-vaded by the racist South Africans becauseof the support they get from the USA. andthat Kampuchea is being invaded by Pol Potthugs who receive overt and covert supportfrom the USA at times under (lie cover andguise of international organisations?The Government of Afghanistan has hadto delay some of its development plans be-cause of threats from outside. The IndianOcean has been reduced to an American lake,and the British base on the Falkland Islandsis a threat to the Latin American people.These are some of the questions whichwere discussed in Athens. There was a spiritof solidarity and comradeship. The delegateidentified their common enemy. and ntappCLIout a common programme of action. RonreshChandra. President of the World Peace Coun-cil, expressed this spirit when he said thatinternational solidarity makes us all strong.On an optimistic note the Draft Prog-ramme of Action for 1984 stated:"lluntanity faces a crossroads. We mustchoose either the road of disarmamentand peaceful co-existence, or face nuc-lear annihilation. The peace movementpossesses the necessary power to ensurethat the right choice is made. But themaximum power can only be unleashedthrough co-operation and joint actions.The World Peace Council invites evcrv-body who is working for peace to par-ticipate to establishing a united front ofall peace forces. in spite of all differencesin other fields, to secure our commonaint: the preservation of peace."The ANC was represented by Francis Meli,who represented Alfred \io. one of the Vice-Presidents of the World Peace Council.

Page 27 of 38 MUMDEM: in CACL -THE CASEOF OMMOEMTOMBy Jean Middleton ,In January 198; the South African pressreported the death, on the _'9th December1982, of three prisoners at Barberton in theEastern Transvaal. Mayo Khuntalo, FinestMakathini and Alulakaia Xaba were said tohave died of heat exhaustion. having collapsedwhile working in a temperature of over thirtydegrees Centigrade. and 44 other prisonerswere in hospital. Later. the Commissionerfor Prisons, General Otto, announced that liehad sent certain dossiers to the Attorney-General of the Transvaal for possible prose-cutions.The town of Barberton. in a Lowveldvalley, is one of the hottest places in SouthAfrica. The gaol there is a inaximurn securityprison combined with a farm prison, and thecommanding officer was later to tell thecourt in Witbank that 'difficult' prisoners aresent there; though how these prisoners arechosen is not easy to see. for it turned outthat of the working party of the ?9th Decem-ber, one had been a cripple, one was nearlyblind. and at least two had been asthmatic.Blood from FloggingsThe fact that deaths had taken place at thisprison came as no surprise to anyone whoknew anything of the place. During the six-ties and seventies. women political prisoners,both black and white, were held there and in\elspruit Prison. which is under the samecommand, and they recall vividly the viciousnature of the administration. Of the khakiprison trousers that were brought for washingeach week, at least one pair each week wascaked with blood from floggings over the kid-neys. They remember being told of a womanprisoner who had spent a year in solitary con-finement for some prison offence, pickingsisal with bleeding fingers. in her cell, and .flow the commanding officer boasted to visit-ors about how lie made a practice of 'break-ing' prisoners in the heat and toil of the sisalfields. The white women remember a youngwardress, too naive to know that she was giv-ing secrets away, telling them that a prisonerhad been shot dead in one of those fields theday before (they had heard the shot). "But

Page 28 of 38 it's all right," the wardress added, "We'regoing to say he was trying to escape." Bar-berton is known among the South Africanprison population as a 'bad' gaol, one of themost harsh and brutal in a harsh and brutalsystem. The prisoners who were moved therefrom Durban Point Prison just after Christ-mas 1982 later spoke in court of their dis-may when they were told where they weregoing.The notoriety of the gaol, however, hadnot spread to the general public in South Af-rica, and had certainly never been so muchas hinted at in the South African press. In1959, after a series of journalists had writtenpamphlets and articles exposing prison con-ditions, the Prisons Act was passed, to pro-tect the Prisons Department from furtherunwelcome publicity. For twenty-four years,this act has in practice made it impossibleto publish information about prisons or pris-oners, unless the information has first beenmade public by being used as evidence in acourt of law.When the Rand Daily Mail tested thelaw in the mid-sixties, the prosecution thatfollowed ended in a heavy fine for the newspaper, and another prison sentence for theex-prisoner who had supplied the informat-ion. Island in Chains. Indres Naidoo's bookabout the ten-year sentence lie served for sab-otage on Robben Island, is banned in SouthAfrica and so may not legally be read there.In the early seventies, when stories of brutal-ity in Leeukop Prison were told in court,Justice Hi emstra condemned the prison ad-ministration. In the early eighties, the hear-ings of the Iloexter Commission of Enquiryinto the structure and function of the courtsmade public the overcrowding in prisons, thenumber of child prisoners, and the enormoussize of the South African prison populationin relation to the population as a whole.Then, apart from one or two small items,there was no more news until January 1983.`Heat Exhaustion' CaseWhen, in August 1983, the 'heat exhaustion'case finally came to court in Nelspruit, it be-came clear that the three men who had diedhad suffered from more than heat exhaustion,and indeed the trial might equally well havebeen known as the 'rubber truncheon' trial.Eight warders, four black and four white, whohad commanded the working party of the29th December, were charged with murderingthree maximum security prisoners and ofassaulting 34 others with intent to do griev-ous bodily harm, by beating them with rub-ber truncheons as they worked on a prisondam site in temperatures of thirty-five deg-rees Centigrade. The warders pleaded notguilty.Before evidence could be led, there wasan interruption. The first witness called forthe prosecution, a man named Barry Bloem,serving a ten-year sentence, pulled a writtenstatement out of his sock and read it to thecourt. It claimed that the Barberton wardershad threatened to 'get' the 34 men who wereto give evidence. The witnesses all refused togive their evidence unless they had an under-taking that they would not be returned toBarberton Prison, and one witness demandeda written guarantee. They wanted the case tobe heard in Pretoria, but the Department ofPrisons claimed that the prison there was toofull to hold them, and the hearing was trans-ferred to Witbank.The prisoners claimed that they had fear-ed for their lives ever since the events of the29th December. After they had agreed to giveevidence against the warders, the prison auth-orities had separated them out into differentcells, saying that they wanted to preventthreats and intimidation: though one prisonerclaimed he had been threatened and intimid-ated by prisoners in the cell he had been trans-ferred to. Some potential witnesses had beenput into solitary confinement on various pre-texts, and Barry Bloem had tried to commitsuicide during this period. There were claimsthat letters home had not been posted, thatthey had been offered better food if they re-fused to testify, and one prisoner, when lielater came into the witness box at Witbank,complained he was hungry, saying that hehad been deprived of five meals beforehand. 23

Page 29 of 38 "We feel powerless as prisoners," their state-ment said, "We have to face the unforeseen... We are in constant fear of our lives."Clearly, it was for safety's sake that theyso strongly wished to be together in one cellduring the months before the case came up,for then, if one or more were killed, therewould be others left to tell the tale. The des-perate determination of these men to standtogether and make public what had happened,their solidarity and co-operation, their ob-vious feeling that they had nothing left tolose, was one of the most notable features ofthis whole business, for only one man brokeranks.During the course of the year 1983, ithad been made plain that there had beengrounds for their fears. In June, shots hadbeen fired (so the official story went) to stopprisoners escaping from Barberton, and inJuly, warders on night duty had been over-powered by ten prisoners during an escape.At about the same time that the 34 wererefusing to give evidence in Nelspruit, fourlong-term black prisoners at Barberton diedin what was officially described as a `brawl,'while three others, as well as two warders,had to be treated in hospital. In September,while the case was proceeding, a prisoner died(and again this is the official story) after anattempted escape. He was said to have attack-ed a warder, who defended himself with astick. The warder must have been a highlyskilled stick-fighter, for, while he sufferedbruises and cuts, the prisoner's injuries werefatal; he was taken to Nelspruit Hospital forwhat appeared to be a broken arm, but laterit was found that he had died of other injur-ies, a spokesman for the Department of Pris-ons said.When at last the case for the prosecutionin the `heat exhaustion' trial opened in Wit-bank, only one witness, Masango, gave evidence conflicting with that of the others. Thetestimony of the other 33 was substantiallythe same.This was the story.A contingent of prisoners was transferred from Durban Point Prison to Barbertonon Tuesday 28th December 1982. Startingat two in the morning, they travelled for fif-teen hours in a prison van, in a temperatureof 30 degrees Centigrade, shackled in pairs atthe hands and legs, with no food or waterand no stops to relieve themselves. On theirarrival at Barberton they were pulled, stillshackled, from the back of the van, andassaulted.The next morning, the men were sent offto work on building a dam outside the wallsof the prison. There were several unusual features about this working party. First of all,though the prisoners were newly arrived atthe gaol, they had not yet had the medicalexamination which prison regulations provideshould take place on admission, and which,in practice, takes place the next morning atthe time of the doctor's regular visit. Second,as the court was told, it is traditional that noworking teams are sent out from BarbertonPrison between the 12th December and the5th January - it is the festive season and thetime when the sun is most fierce, a time oflong lock-up periods for the prisoners, whilethe warders relax. Third, though this partywas accompanied by the usual two armedguards and two dog handlers with their dogs,it was considered necessary to send sevenwarders as well, four black and three white(the fourth white warder arrived at the sitelater). There was evidence that the purposeof the party was to punish the prisoners.There was also evidence that lieutenant Nie-mand, acting head of the gaol, gave instruct-ions that the convicts should be beaten, be-cause some of them had sworn at a warderthe day before. "Make the prisoners warm,"he said, and picked warders who could swingtheir batons.Dogs Kept in the ShadeAt the site of the dam, the prisoners wereordered to push wheelbarrows loaded withgravel up an incline. Some prisoners testifiedthat they were made to run with their wheel-barrows, there were no pauses for rest, andwhen their energy flagged they were beatenwith truncheons. One prisoner said he was

Page 30 of 38 Prisoners in Sourh .-I jrt( a 1wing subict tee/ to a searchbeaten while running %kit It Iris load. The temp-erature rose. it v,as s() hot that the dog hand-lers kept their dogs in the shade: at one stagecooling drinks %scle brought for the warders:but to one prixirlet %%ho asked Ii)r water. awarder replied. "'I Iii, is Barberton. Prisonersdon't drink water. fllc sun drinks water."lleat stroke :auses dellsdration,confus-ion and delirium, and the hod\ sllmtld becooled inunediatcls . :\s the prisoners grewconfused anti bei:all t1l :Ollap'le, the\ %% erebeaten all the (larder. Witnesses describedseeing other prisoners being 'pounded' and'worked over.' One man said that when he re-gained consciousness after fainting, lie wasafraid to open his eyes for fear of being beatenagain, and another said that, nine monthslater. he still suffered pain as a result of thosebeatings. Bloem was thrown into the damand pulled out again. one man named Zuma,a cripple, was beaten because he couldn't digproperly.At some point there arrived on this sceneof desolation and anguish a certain Warrant

Page 31 of 38 Officer Jordaan. Not among the accused, hewas called as a witness, and was referred toin court as the prison 'medical officer.' Hisqualifications were vaguely described as beinga 'nursing diploma' and 'eight years' exper-ience.' There was little conflict between hisevidence and that of the 33 prisoners, exceptin the matter of the part he himself hadplayed in the events of that day. He was un-able to explain to the court why he had lefthis medical bag behind when he had gone tothe dam, nor, indeed, what had caused himto decide to go there at all. Anxious, nodoubt, to appear in a favourable light, heclaimed that he had gathered together thosemen who had collapsed into a 'field hospital'a little way away, where he gave them waterand wiped their faces. The prisoners them-selves described this 'field hospital' as a'human dump,' in the blazing sun, allegingthat Jordaan had refused them water whenthey asked for it, and had turned their facesover with his foot, telling them to look atthe sun.Jordaan said that when Warrant OfficerSmit walked among this pile of unconsciousand semi-conscious men, striking them withhis truncheon, he did not ask Smit to stop,because Smit was his senior. It was, by theway, Smit who threw Bloem in the dam, Smitwho told one of the witnesses, an asthma suf-ferer, "Here in Barberton there are no sickpeople," and ironically it was Smit who wasovercome by pains in his chest when evidencewas being led against him, causing the courtto be temporarily adjourned.All who collapsed were taken to the'dump,' and it was probably there that MayoKhumalo and Ernest Makathini died. Makathini had said he was asthmatic, and was evenseen to show Jordaan a piece of paper hehad in his pocket, but Jordaan replied thatthe doctor had written there was nothingwrong with him. One witness described howMakathini cried aloud "like a bleating buck,"protesting he was sick and could not breathe,but the warders continued to beat him, andwhen he collapsed he was taken to the'dump.' Khumalo pleaded with Stoltz, show-ing him the operation marks on his stomach,but Stoltz called for a cloth, wrapped it roundhis hand to get a better grip on his truncheon,and went on beating. When Khumalo fell un-conscious over his wheelbarrow, he, too, waswheeled to he with the others.At about this time, some of the blackwarders refused to join in, saying to eachother, "They are busy finishing off our peo-ple. They are dying."There is no doubt that the death ofMulakaza Xaba, at least, was directly causedby a blow from a truncheon. By the timeXaba had collapsed, the eighth warder (apartfrom Jordaan) had arrived, a young man oftwenty, named Van Dyk. Van Dyk was noton duty at the dam, in fact he was due to gooh leave that day, and it seems likely that hismain reason for joining the others was hiseagerness to use his truncheon. It was he whokilled Xaba. When Xaba got up, dizzy andstaggering, Van Dyk gave him a blow betweenthe shoulder blades; Xaba screamed anddropped down, and after that never spokeagain. Later, giving evidence in mitigationfrom the dock (for he did not go into thewitness box) Van Dyk admitted that at thedam he had hit other convicts who seemed"lazy and unwilling to work," but he said hehad struck Xaba on orders from Smit, whosaid Xaba was trying to escape. The judgedismissed this suggestion as "childish," and awitness who was ordered to load Xaba's bodyinto a vehicle said that Xaba had tried to stag-ger away from the assaults, and not from theprison.A doctor from Barberton testified thatwhen he was called to the prison after thesehappenings, he found three dead men and "aroom full of severely injured people," withmarks of blows on their bodies, and in con-ditions of delirium, heat stroke and shock.Four were in a critical condition. he said,while others, covered in head and bodywounds, required urgent attention.White Prisoners Have 'Good Behaviour.'The case for the prosecution was overwhel-ming. After it, the case for the defence came

Page 32 of 38 as an anticlimax. The accused had pleadednot guilty, but none of them went into thewitness box, and, apart from the officer com-manding the prison (who spoke in mitigation)only the renegade witness, Masango. had agood word to say for them, stating that theyhad tried to break up a brawl and preventthe prisoners from hurting themselves. Coun-sel for six of the accused dismissed the storyof the 33 complainants, saying that they had'collaborated' over it, and asked for a verdictof culpable homicide.The judge rejected the allegation of 'col-laboration,' and effectively accepted the evid-ence of the 33 prisoners. He said of Van Dyk'sassault on Xaba that it was "a border case ofmurder," and used strong terms in speakingof all the warders, saying that they were"heroes of the truncheon," who had assaul-ted unarmed and defenceleless men.The judge's verdict and the sentencesthat followed seemed to be out of propor-tion to his moral condemnation of the accused. His verdict was even more lenientthan that asked for by the prosecutor, forhe did not find any of the warders guiltyof culpable homicide; instead, he foundsix of them guilty on various counts ofcommon assault and assault with intentto do grievous bodily harm. In law, thismeant that the warders could not reason-ably have been expected to foresee thatthe men might die.Two black warders, L C Makhola andF E Mahumane, were found not guilty on allcounts, and discharged. Warrant Officer G LSmit was sentenced to an effective eight years,C T W Horn to five years, W Kobyane tothree and a half years, J C Stoltz to threeyears and J Z Madonsela to one year. VanDyk, the killer of Xaba, was sentenced to amere two years' imprisonment.It is impossible not to take notice of thecontrast between these sentences and thosegiven to the freedom fighters of UmkhontoWe Sizwe, who get anything from twentyyears to the death sentence forattacking in-stallations, even when there has been no lossof life, and no one has been injured. Smit,Horn, Stoltz and Van Dyk have short termsto serve, considering the gravity of theircrimes, and their life in gaol will not be tooonerous. As white prisoners, they are unlike-ly to be called upon to do hard physical workin the sun, and it is even less likely that theywill ever be on the receiving end of a rubbertruncheon, for they will be treated as col-leagues rather than as prisoners by the war-ders who guard them. They will almost cer-tainly be sent home on parole after they haveserved a third or a half of their time, andthere is no doubt at all that they will get re-mission for 'good behaviour,' for, underSouth African law, the only prisoners noteligible for remission are drug offenders, cat-tle thieves and political prisoners.Violent DeathThis points to another contrast. While thefour convicted warders will have an easy lifein gaol, every black prisoner in South Africafaces possible violent death, and knows it. InBarberton, as in other gaols, it is black menprisoners who are taken out in 'work teams'guarded by warders with guns, dogs andbatons.In a reply to a question put in the whiteparliament in Cape Town in April 1983, thenumber of deaths among prisoners was givenfor the period from July 1981 till June 1982.During this time 183 sentenced prisoners diedin South African gaols. Of these, 157 deathswere said to be due to 'natural causes,' 7 tosuicide, 5 to 'accidents' and one to poisonallegedly taken before arrest. 11 were said tohave died as a result of assaults by fellow pris-oners, one after an assault by a warder, andtwo were said to have been shot while attemp-ting to escape. It is probable that these fig-iires do not include any prisbners who diedwhile being used as slave labour on white-owned farms, for prisoners on farms are class-ified as 'paroled.'Prisoners not convicted of any crime atall are also in danger, for 16 unsentencedprisoners died during the period given, and itis public knowledge that some unsentencedprisoners die of electrocution. The Bultfont-

Page 33 of 38 ein case of the early sixties showed that elec-tric shock torture apparatus at that time already being used on political detainees wasstandard equipment at police stations andwas being used oil black prisoners suspectedof a variety of crimes. Two cases of electricshock torture in police cells were made pub-lic in 1983, one in Dirkiesdorp in May (whena black man suspected of cattle theft died)and one in Woodstock in September.Furthermore, the Barberton revelationscast considerable doubt oil the reasons offic-ially given for deaths in prison. Certainly,some prisoners do die because assaulted byother prisoners: Indres Naidoo describes themurders committed by gangsters on RobbenIsland; in a brutal system brutality will flour-ish, and the attempts made by the prisonauthorities to investigate these murders are.at best, half-hearted. But what exactly werethe nature of the five 'accidents?' If the sevensuicides were genuine suicides, what causedthe despair that lay behind them? Were thosetwo prisoners really trying to escape whenthey were shot? And what do officials of theSouth African prisons mean when they speakof death from 'natural causes?' What of theyoung diabetic woman whom the press repor-ted had died in gaol in March 1993 becauseshe was denied insulin would her death fallinto the category of 'natural causes?'Prisoners and Doctors.The matter of this young woman brings usto another question that has been raised be-fore (notably over the matter of Steve Biko'sdeath) and which the Barberton evidence hasraised again: and that is the question of themedical attention given to prisoners in SouthAfrican gaols.The lines of black prisoners standing inthe open in the early mornings, summer andwinter. waiting ready stripped for the doctor,are a familiar sight in the gaols. A regulationlays down that prisoners must be examinedby the doctor on admission to any prisonand may not be sent out to work until passedas tit: but the Barberton case shows how_s easily this rule may be broken at the whimof the officer commanding the prison, andanyone who has been a prisoner in SouthAfrica can bear witness to the perfunctorynature of the examinations. The murderedmatt, 'Kayo Khumalo, was not the onlyasthma sufferer on the work team that day;another man. who gave evidence afterwards,claimed to be asthmatic and said he'd beentold to work in spite of it. There is plenty ofevidence on record about the kind of caregiven to sick men by the 'medical officer,'Jordaan; he admitted in evidence that themedical bag he failed to bring with him didnot even contain a clinical thermometer, andhe had never been given any information onthe symptoms and treatment of heat exhaust-ion. It was not until four months after thedeaths at Barberton that the Prisons Depart-ment issued instructions about heat illness,with a recommendation that prisoners be ac-climatised before being required to work inextreme conditions.At the end of September 1983 the Min-ister of Justice promised an enquiry into Bar-berton prison, to investigate the 'unsatisfactory aspects' referred to in the judgment,and to advise how to avoid a repetition. Littleor nothing can come of this enquiry, andlittle or nothing is intended to come of it. Tobegin with, it is confined to Barberton Pris-on, and will not deal with the 'unsatisfactoryaspects' of other prisons or of the system asa whole fit will not, for example, explain thecholera in Durban Central nor the shigelladysentery in Pretoria Central in February1982. nor explain what steps the prison auth-orities have taken to avoid a repetition ofthese outbreaks). The commission is to beanswerable only to the Minister, who doesnot have to make public either its findings orwhat steps lie takes as a result. The investig-ations of the commission will be made publiconly if the chairman so decides.The Ethos of ViolenceWorst of all are the terms of reference of theenquiry. It is to look into: the role of gangactivities in the prison. whether the prisonersthreaten each other's lives or intimidate each

Page 34 of 38 other, whether the strains of overcrowdingplayed any part in the events of the 29thDecember, 1982, and whether the lives andsafety of members of the prison service areadequately protected. These stated aims bearso little relation to the reality of the evidencethat came before the court at %% itbank, it isas if the prisoners had beaten the warders, oreach other,to death.When, at the beginning of tile Barbertontrial, the prisoners insisted on being transfer-red to another prison, Justice Vertnootencould only reply that the matter was in thehands of the Prisons Department, and in theend he could do no more than make a prisonofficial available to deal with the prisoners'fears and their complaints. Tile case of lieut-enant Niemand, who gave tile orders for thework team at the dant, has been handed overto the public prosecutor. If Niemand is con-victed of any crime, he will be convicted asan individual, as the other warders were, andthe abuses in the South African prison systemwill go unpublicised and unrectified. Self-protecting and self-preserving, shielded bylegislation, this system is in all matters itsown prosecuting counsel and its own judge.The prison system, the unspeakably uglyand vicious events that took place at the damat Barberton, and the punishments incurred,must all be seen in the context of racist SouthAfrican society as a whole, and as part of anethos of violence used by Whites againstBlacks. Over the years, cases have been re-ported of white farmers who beat their blacklabourers to death, white householders whobeat their black servants to death. More rec-ently, in December 1982, there was a case ofa white driver who drove his vats several timesover a black man on the road from Pretoriato Kempton Park; the victim died of multipleinjuries and the driver was given 8250 bail.In March 1983, a young white farmer inNamibia was gaoled for six years for killingan eighteeen-year-old Namibian half his site,who had been sent to work on his farts; hechained him by the neck to a pole, withoutfood or water, and later beat him to deathwith his fists, a bucket, a broom and a crow-bar. In April. three black passengers died ona train when two young white brothers open-ed their compartment door and began firingat point blank range. The two accused latertold tile court that they hated Blacks, believ-ed they had been correct in what they haddone, and that given the opportunity the)would do t'te same again. One of the brotherswas given the death sentence in this case, butit is rare for sentences of more than fiveyears to be imposed for crimes of this kind,when they come to court. and it is likely that,given tile complicity of tile white police,many cases go unreported. and never cometo court at all.The Nature of the Penal SystemThe nature of the South African penal systemis determined by the nature of tile society itprotects. It is well known by now that thegaols provide black slave labour for tile white-owned farms and for contractors outside thegaols. More important, tile prisons have afunction in helping to ensure that the entireblack population of South Africa is kept as asupply of cheap labour.Numerous oppressive laws go to maintainapartheid. which is itself essentially a systemof cheap labour. These laws are enforced bythe gun, and a harsh and brutal penal systemis part of a wider system, that of the organ-ised terrorists of the state, which is kept inpower by threats, intimidation and murder.The farmer in Namibia, tile warders at Bar-berton, all were in a real sense defendingsomething, the apartheid system that grantstheist their privileges, the system that theANC and the soldiers of Umkhonto WeSit.we are fighting to overthrow.

Page 35 of 38 n nc~u~iiicu rannTiiicRcINVASIONS OfANGOLABy J. M.White Paper on Acts of. Aggression b), theRacist South AJiican Rcginte ggainst thePeople's Republic of Angola, published bythe Angolan Government, 1983.Since 1975, when independence was declaredin both Angola and Mozambique. the SouthAfrican regime has never ceased to attackAngola with bombers, helicopters, airbornetroops, cavalry, infantry. armoured cars. art-illery, even dogs. For eight years. Angop. theAngolan news agency, has issued statementafter statement, telling of destruction andmassacre, but all these reports have had butpoor coverage in the western press.During 1983, the governments of bothAngola and Mozambique made efforts topublicise the damage being done to both theircountries by South African attacks, bothopen and covert. Paulo Jorge, the AngolanForeign Minister, gave a press conference inLondon in February; Samora Machel addres-sed the Summit Conference of Nun-AlignedCountries in March, describing file destruct-ion done in Mozambique, and lie visited Brit-ain in October. The Angolan White Paperwas presented to London at another pressconference in October, and some thirty orforty journalists were present, but once againlittle appeared in the press.This White Paper gives an account ofSouth African aggression against Angola inan extremely direct and factual way, beginning in 1975, when the forces of the racistregime invaded southern Angola in an at-tempt to reach Luanda before the declaration30 of independence. They set up organs ofUN11A go~crnnient as they went along, forthe support Pretoria gives UNITA has alwaysbeen fairly open, in contrast to the supportit gives the so-called MNR in Mozambique.FAPLA, the army of the MPLA, which hadjust fought a long war against Portuguese col-onialism, succeeded in repelling the attack.After independence was declared, the Gov-ernment of the People's Republic of Angolafound itself in confrontation with SouthAfrica and UNITA in the south and thewestern-backed FNLA in the north. It wasthen that it asked the Cuban Governmentfor help.Another section of the Paper gives asummary of no less than 352 acts of aggress-ion between June 30th 1976 and December5th 1981. They ranged from threats, in theform of troop concentrations on the border,to violations of air space by reconaissance air-craft. bombing of buildings, theft or killingof herds of cattle, devastation of agriculturalland, bombing of wells, mining of roads,strafing of schools, attacks on unarmed vill-ages - on September 18th 1981, for example,troops on horseback and infantry with dogsburned down a village and massacred itspopulation.The International Commission of En-quiry into the Crimes of the Racist and Apart.heid Regime in Southern Africa, meeting inLuanda in 1981, declared in its statement:"Armed attacks and temporary militaryoccupation of the territory by the SouthAfrican army (penetrating as deep as150 km) and violation of Angolan air

Page 36 of 38 space, perpetrated by these forces stat-ioned at the military bases in Namibia,are carried out systematically and almostdaily."Another section of the White Paper gives asummary of attacks during the first sixmonths of 1982, together with a table ofmaterial damage done during that time; yetanother, the resolutions on the situation inAngola taken by the Security Council be-tween March 1976 and June 1980. Thephotographs are placed at the very end ofthe book: pictures of gutted buildings, theuniforms and identity documents of soldiersin the racist army, a map of Angola with thestamp of the United States Central Intellig-ence Agency, a captured napalm bomb.In 1982, when Britain and the Argentinewere fighting a war in the South Atlantic,the British press gave publicity to stores ofnapalm allegedly left behind by the retreat-ing Argentinians. This news was treated asevidence of Argentinian brutality. At thesame time these papers gave no space to re-ports from Angop that the Pretoria govern-ment had been using napalm in Angola.Earlier, in 1981. at the time of the invasionwhich the racist regime referred to as 'Oper-ation Protea,' when the Angolan representat-ive was reporting to the United Nations thatthe invading forces were 'killing everythingthat moved,' the Angolan Government invitedthe London papers to send correspondents,but not a single paper responded. Even now,the atrocities still taking place go virtuallyunreported in the capitals of the west.With the exception of the team thatmade the documentary, The Agony of Ang-ola, shown on British television in 1980, television journalists from the West have invar-iably gone through Pretoria to follow theprogress of the UNITA forces, and have hada tendency to present UNITA as the liberat-ors of the Angolan people. At the time of'Operation Protea' a BBC correspondentwent to Luanda, but he, too, described theinvasion in the terms used by Pretoria - asan attack on SWAPO guerrillas - until, un-hurt but badly shaken, he had to reportthat he and his team had themselves beenstrafed on the open road by South Africanaircraft.All this time, the Pretoria regime has putout a lie that its strikes into Angola are'defence' measures, in 'hot pursuit' of guerrillas. The Government of Angola tells a dif-ferent story. Of the 352 attacks between theend of June 1976 and the beginning of Dec-ember 1981, not more than half a dozen weredirected against ANC, SWAPO and ZAPUinstallations, and these were refugee camps.The White Paper tells the story of attacks onrefugees, civilians and the Angolan army.The main intention behind the attacks seemsto be to murder, threaten and terrorise thepeople of Angola, to destroy their homes,their schools, their factories, their food andtheir means of producing food, their liveli-hood and their hospitals and health services(it was reported in 1983 that in southern pro-vinces, so frequent have been the attacks andso many the injuries that the supply ofblood transfusion equipment was for a whilenot equal to the need).In maintaining its silence over what isreally happening in Angola, the western pressis protecting the policy of its own govern-ments.The International Commission of 1981,already mentioned, recorded that SouthAfrica attacks Angola with arms from theUnited States, France, Belgium and theNATO countries,"through direct importation, manufact-ure, under licence and fraud committedwith export licences."Jonas Savimbi has been invited to addressthe European Parliament. The legal and inter-nationally recognised Government of Angolareceives no support from the United Statesand the NATO countries. Support is giveninstead to the aggressor. After 'OperationProtea' the forces of the apartheid regimedisplayed in Pretoria all the trucks and otherequipment it had captured in Angola. Thepowerful imperialist countries brought nopressure to bear on South Africa to make

Page 37 of 38 reparations for this robbery. The only com-pensation the people of Angola receivedfrom the west came from the charity, 'Waron Want,' which opened an appeal for privatedonations to replace what had been stolen.In the United Nations, support forAngola has been overwhelming. Both theGeneral Assembly and the Security Councilhave taken resolutions condemning SouthAfrican aggression, expressing approval forthe stand taken by the Angolan Government,and rejecting the notion of 'linkage' betweenthe withdrawal of South African troops fromNamibia and Cuban troops from Angola. Thewestern countries continue to arm apartheidSouth Africa, and the western 'contact group'continues to support the 'linkage' plan.Here, we should recall that the UnitedNations was founded after the war of 1939-1945 on the principle that small nations havethe same rights to their own sovereignty aslarger and more powerful ones. The principlewas established because Nazi Germany, heav-ily armed, had defied the League of Nationsby invading small countries and illegally ann-exing them one by one. The United Statesand the NATO countries, as well as SouthAfrica, are now playing the same role thatwas then played by Nazi Germany.It is hypocrisy for Pretoria to suggestthat it fears the presence of Cuban troops inAngola as a military threat to itself, for noteven the South African racists have beenbrazen enough to claim that Cuban troopshave ever attempted to cross the border toattack them. It is possibly true that Pretoriahas some reason to fear the presence in thefront-line states of SWAPO and the ANC.But a more important reason for theaggressive attacks is that the independentAfrican states represent to the people ofSouth Africa an example of people who havefought for their freedom and have won it, anexample dangerous to the regime.The most important reason for the at-tacks is that South Africa and the imperial-ist countries want control over these independent states. Their policy is one of syst-ematic destruction of the existing economyof these states, and tile attacks of the so-called MNR on the port of Beira and the raillink with the inland countries is proof of this,for these developments are projects of theSouthern African Development Co-ordinat-ing Conference. and are attempts to makethe front-line states economically indepen-dent of South Africa. These countries arerich in resources (such as the port of Beira,the still unexploited minerals of Angola) andthey are potential sources of cheap labour.In his address to the Fourth Congress ofFRELIMO in April 1983, President Tantbosaid'... when imperialism held unquestionedsway over Southern Africa it constructedwithin our region a sub-system of ex-ploitation, with its centre in racist-ruledSouth Africa. Within this sub-systemMozambique, Angola, Lesotho and othercountries were assigned a special placeas an exploitable hinterland from whichthe centre could draw human and mater-ial resources while not obliged to giveanything in return."The need to regain this 'exploitable hinter-land' is clearly very important to the imper-ialist countries now. Pretoria and tile inves-tors of the west see the front-line states asfields for super-exploitation. They are tryingto conquer these territories, and tile armiesof MPLA and FRLLIMO and tile inter-nationalist Cuban forces are defending them.The successes of the ANC and SWAPO arecontributing to this defence.Because they loudly claim to give sup-port to the principle of 'human rights,' andbecause tile whole world now knows aboutthe denials of 'human rights' that take placeunder apartheid. it is embarrassing for thegovernments and tile newspapers of tile westto give support too openly to the Pretoria re-gime. The press of the west does what, fromits point of view, is the next best thing - itsimply does not report what are some of theworst and most inhuman excesses of theSouth African racist regime.JM

Page 38 of 38