Apart from the general ban on outdoor gatherings under the Riotous Assemblies Act and the further ban on meetings of more than 10 imposed for two weeks in June there has been frequent use of powers to ban or prevent meetings not falling under the general bans. And when meetings did take place the police acted to break them up by physical attack on those taking part, on some occasions with mass arrests.
Many planned meetings did not take place: * A Free Mandela meeting called by the Students Representative Council of Natal University was banned by a Maritzburg Magistrate; * All open-air meetings in Nkowankowa township near Tzaneen were banned by a local magistrate after demonstrations by 2000 students; * All mass meetings at the University of Fort Hare were banned by the Acting Rector after a decision to boycott lectures; * The chairman of the Gugulethu Residents Association was told by police who visited him at home to cancel a meeting of parents, pupils and teachers to discuss the boycott; * A school principal asked a rally of 800 pupils from schools at Eldorado Park to disperse, when he was instructed to do so by the police; * A meeting of the liaison committee to be held in the Catholic Church hall negotiations to striking workers at the Frame Group Textile factories was banned by a Pinetown magistrate; * A union report-back meeting for striking workers in the car industry in Uitenhage was banned; * The Institute of Race Relations had to cancel a lunchtime meeting on "South Africa - post Mugabe" when permission to hold it was refused by the Chief Magistrate of Johannesburg.
Reports of use of baton-charges or teargas to break up meetings or demonstrations included the following: * A protest march of 6000 pupils in a Cape Township on the first day of the boycott stopped by police with powder from the "sneeze-machine"; * Groups of students on 22 April in Soweto, Kliptown and Randfontein; 20 were injured; * Pupils from two high schools in Chatsworth, Durban; * A peaceful meeting of 2000 Coloured schoolchildren in the grounds of Westbury High School; police climbed over the school fence to attack the meeting, and arrested 700 on Riotous Assembly charges; * A demonstration of 1500 pupils in the grounds of KwaMashu High School near Durban; * A meeting of 1000 students in the cafeteria at the University of the Western Cape dispersed by police; * Striking workers at Rely Precision Mouldings, Boksburg, where police arrested 55; 11 later laid charges of assault against the police; * Bellville High School where 15 were injured and 52 arrested, and at Paarl; * A demonstration of 300 outside the locked doors of the Regina Mundi Church where a commemorative service was to be held, before the ban on all meetings.
Other police actions against demonstrators were described on pp. 00-00. * A demonstration of 2,000 students in Nkowankowa township near Tzaneen; * A march of 1000 Fort Hare students setting out for Alice; * University of the North students demonstrating at the university's 25th anniversary celebrations; 17 were arrested and later released; * 600 pupils in KwaMashu after a meeting to discuss the boycott in the township cinema; * A demonstration of 1000 pupils centre of Cape Town, and another of 2000 in Maritzburg both attacked by police.
