NEW BANNING ORDER: Modika TSATSA, a former member of the banned South African Students' Movement who was held in police custody from December 1979 until August 1983, was banned for three years on his release from detention on 10 August. In his banning order the Minister of Law and Order stated that Tsatsa was banned because he was recruited by the ANC and trained to use violence in overthrowing or endangering state authority. During his period in custody Tsatsa spent a year in prison for refusing to give evidence in the trial of Khumalo and Dludlu. On completion of his sentence in March 1982 he was kept in detention for a further 17 months. In April 1983 it was reported that he was being treated in the psychiatric ward of a Johannesburg hospital.
MEETINGS BANNED: In recent months the regime has made increasing use of its powers under the Internal Security Act to ban meetings called to organise and consolidate opposition to apartheid.
- Police in Mdantsane in the Ciskei bantustan placed restrictions on the funerals of people shot by the police and banned a memorial meeting.
- In September a rally planned to take place in Soweto to launch a new campaign for the release of Nelson Mandela was banned under the Internal Security Act.
- The government banned a series of rallies planned in the Johannesburg area to observe 'Black Consciousness Week' in commemoration of the death in detention of Steve Biko. A ban was issued under the Internal Security Act prohibiting all meetings, services and gatherings planned for the weekend preceding the anniversary by the Azanian People's Organisation (AZAPO) and any other black organisation in the Johannesburg, Roodepoort, Germiston, Elsburg, Bedfordview, Edenvale and Alberton areas. Meetings and services took place before and after the period of the ban and in other parts of the country. Over 200 attended a commemoration service at the University of Witwatersrand addressed by the secretaries of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Release Mandela Committee.
- Two meetings and a mass rally planned for 24 September in East London to launch a Border region branch of the UDF were banned under the Internal Security Act.
- The government issued a ban on memorial meetings for Dr Yusuf DADOO, the exiled chairman of the banned South African Communist Party and leading ANC activist who died in London on 19 September. The ban applied to the districts of Pinetown, Umlazi, Inanda and Verulam in Natal and covered the weekend following his death. A rally organised by the Transvaal Indian Congress was prevented from taking place.
