News Bulletin of the International Defence & Aid Fund
focus ON POLITICAL REPRESSION IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
NO1—NOVEMBER 1975
INTRODUCING focus
A message from the President of the International Defence and Aid Fund, Canon L. John Collins.
I am happy to commend FOCUS to all who wish to see Southern Africa freed from Apartheid and all other such forms of racial discrimination. FOCUS is a new venture undertaken by the International Defence and Aid Fund as one of its means of "keeping the conscience of the world alive to the issues at stake".
FOCUS aims to provide the facts behind the news concerning current affairs in Southern Africa, the verified facts about detentions, political trials, the banned, the banished, about "protected villages", about all who are persecuted and silenced in South Africa, in Rhodesia, and in Namibia. It will also assist in the international campaign for the release of all political prisoners in Southern Africa, and it will be a part of the Fund's service to the Liberation Movements. It will, it is hoped, be published 6-8 times a year.
Our reason for launching this new publication is that Mr. Vorster's detente policies obscure what is happening to those who challenge and oppose Apartheid. In terms of this policy, Mr. Vorster, it would seem, seeks to normalise South Africa's policies with Africa, to 'settle' the Rhodesian question, and to impose a Bantustan type of Constitution on Namibia, while creating the illusion of flexibility and change in his domestic policies in South Africa, by the removal of some Apartheid signs and the opening of a few theatres and other amenities to blacks. Simultaneously, he has increased his military budget to almost R1,000,000,000 (over 20% of the total budget and double the 1973 total). He has also embarked on new waves of oppression inside South Africa. More trials in terms of the Terrorism Act are now under way than ever before. More than 60 persons are detained without trial: black and white students; black workers; members of Christian organisations; University teachers; Namibian leaders; Coloured youths; an Afrikaner poet. It matters not who they may be - if they oppose Apartheid, they face detention and torture.
The Smith regime, at this crucial time of negotiation, has not attempted to create an atmosphere of conciliation and goodwill. The contrary is true. So many people are facing charges in terms of the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act that an additional Regional Court has been established to hear the cases. The number of people held in detention without trial has risen to at least 600. Horrifying reports of conditions of the people forcibly removed to the 'protected' villages and of police and army brutality have been authenticated by our research department.
South Africa is currently spending vast sums of money on propaganda, much of it false to the facts, which would seem to be designed to "whitewash" the dark and grim realities of Apartheid and to denigrate those who are opposed to it. Perhaps more than ever before, there is a great need now to "keep the conscience of the world alive to the issues at stake". To this end we are launching FOCUS; and I hope and believe that it will play an immensely useful role in helping to rid the world of the incubus of racialism in the white regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia.
