Gwen LISTER, political editor of the Windhoek Observer and freelance correspondent for The Guardian and the BBC, was acquitted on all three charges relating to possession of banned literature.
Lister was detained and searched at Jan Smuts airport, Johannesburg, on her return from an international conference on Namibia in Paris in April 1983. A number of documents in her possession, including the constitution and programme of SWAPO, were confiscated.
At her trial in the Kempton Park Regional Court on 7 May, Lister admitted possessing the documents but pleaded not guilty to the three charges of importing banned publications without a permit, failing to declare prohibited publications to customs officials and possessing literature of the banned Pan Africanist Congress.
She told the court that she did not know that some of the documents were banned, while others she needed in her job as political correspondent. She had intended to keep the documents relating to SWAPO as she had to write about the organisation. As SWAPO was not a banned organisation and operated in Namibia, she did not know that its constitution was banned.
A senior South African journalist and the director of the South African Institute of Foreign Affairs gave evidence for the defence. Both said Lister's work was highly regarded among South African journalists and foreign diplomats.
