A leading South African lawyer, Mr Shun Chetty, who represented hundreds of young people charged with taking part in the uprisings since 1976, recently fled from South Africa because he believed the security police were about to arrest him.
Mr Chetty, interviewed in London, said intensified harassment by the security police, the Transvaal Law Society and Government officials had made it impossible for him to continue representing his clients properly. He also said that secret trials were being held in which political opponents were being convicted and sentenced without the knowledge of their lawyers, families, relatives or friends.
Mr Chetty described two cases, those of Sipho Madondo and Petrus Molefe, in which his clients had already been imprisoned on Robben Island before he heard they had been tried and sentenced to 15 and 12 years' imprisonment respectively. (see FOCUS 17 p.16 and 18 p.10)
Another client, Sidney Digabane (16) who was successfully defended by Chetty in a Terrorism Act trial was immediately rearrested, retried and secretly jailed.
Mr Chetty also states that several of his clients were tortured by the security police while detained. Furthermore, convicted prisoners were also assaulted - he gave an instance of Pandelani Nefolowodwe, Robben Island prisoner convicted in the SASO trial of 1976/77, whose teeth had been smashed with a spade by a warder.
Mr Chetty stated his reason for leaving: "I could no longer function simply as a lawyer for other black victims of apartheid and began to give financial aid and political advice to them as well - and I think the police were on to this." (Obs. 30.9.79)
