The names of 77 members and officials of the African National Council of Zimbabwe currently detained at Marandellas Prison south-east of Salisbury have been received by IDAF. Of these, 19 were among the 98 named ANC(Z) members detained in June and July and reported in FOCUS 12. The remainder may represent more recent arrests and detentions. The 77 names include seven members of the ANC(Z) National Assembly, four National Executive members and 13 provincial officials. The majority of the others are district and branch officials. Most of the detainees have been in prison before, some for as many as 8 to 10 years.
In reply to a recent question by an African MP, the regime's Minister of Law and Order Hilary Squires denied that the police "concentrated exclusively on detaining officials of the African National Council of Zimbabwe". He said that members of all 'nationalist factions' had been detained but added that the ANC(Z) had "constituted a large part of the terrorist threat to Matabeleland". Squires further claimed that the regime's "processes of detention" compared "most favourably with those in other parts of the world." (BBC 14.10.77, reporting Rhodesian Parliamentary Proceedings on 11 October).
