STUDENTS AND YOUTH
- Charges brought against 38 East London Youth Congress members under Section 43 of the Ciskei National Security Act were withdrawn on 2 November at the Mdantsane Magistrate's Court.
'Insufficient evidence' was given as the reason. However, on 19 November the Senior Public Prosecutor announced that the charges were to be reinstated. It is alleged that at the time of their arrest on 29 July the 38 youths were holding an illegal meeting in St. Aidan's Catholic Church.
- On being sentenced in the Mdantsane Regional Court on 29 November to two years imprisonment each (with one of the years suspended) five students from Fort Hare University in the Ciskei bantustan gave immediate notice of appeal. They were released on bail of R500. Joseph MASUTHA (22), Gladwell MTHEMBU (23), Michael ZIDE (29), Mkhuseli GAUSHE (27) and Edward RAPOO (22) were found guilty of damaging university property on 8 June 1983, when 400 police tried to disperse a campus demonstration by students. During their trial the five students denied that statements attributed to them in which they had admitted their guilt had been made voluntarily. They had been made only after police beatings and intimidation.
- On 6 December three students from the Mabopane East Technikon, north of Pretoria, pleaded not guilty to charges of 'intimidation' arising from a boycott of classes on 8 October. Abraham PHETLA (21), Philemon MATIME (21) and Ephraim SEEMA (21) were said to have inhibited free discussion at a meeting of students called to approve the boycott. A security guard appearing for the prosecution said that the discussion was not 'spontaneous' but pre-arranged by the defendants. The hearing was postponed to 25 March.
- Seventeen members of the Atteridgeville branch of the Congress of South African Students and the local youth organisation were remanded on R100 bail (except for three minors placed in parental custody) in the Pretoria Regional Court on 18 December. Charged under the Internal Security Act, they had taken part in a demonstration outside the council's offices on 13 and 14 December during mayoral elections in Atteridgeville. At the postponed hearing on 8 January a warrant was issued for the arrest of two of the students, Elias MOKGATUE (23) and Johannes SACHANE (24), who failed to appear and were said by the counsel to be in an unnamed bantustan. The case was further postponed to 25 January, with bail and parental custody extended.
- Charges of public violence against 53 pupils from Senaoane Secondary School in Soweto were postponed to 4 February by local magistrates at a hearing on 4 December. Their ages ranged from 10 to 22.
PWV and EASTERN CAPE PROTESTS
A large number of trials arising out of the protests during the last months of 1984 in the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging area and in the Eastern Cape, have begun or were scheduled to begin in the first months of 1985. Reports on the trials will be given in the next issue of FOCUS.
LABOUR
UNION ORGANISERS
On 27 November Cyril RAMAPHOSA, general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), was released from custody in Namakgale in the Lebowa bantustan, without being charged. He had been detained the previous day, on charges of holding an illegal meeting, while taking statements from workers involved in a dispute with Rio Tinto Zinc's Phalaborwa Mining Company, at the local NUM office. Earlier, a local magistrate had banned NUM meetings under the Riotous Assemblies Act. NUM's legal advisors challenged the validity of the ban because the Act was repealed in 1982. Ramaphosa plans to sue for wrongful arrest.
In a successful action against the Minister of Law and Order, four union organisers from the Sweet, Food and Allied Workers Union, Thembinkosi MASONDO, Mntaingaba NCGOBO, Jay NAIDOO and Renee ROUX were awarded R3,000 in damages and costs, for wrongful arrest, unlawful detention and malicious prosecution in December 1984. The action arose from the arrests of the organisers in 1983, while canvassing support from workers outside the Beacon Sweet factory in Mobeni, near Durban. Charges of incitement against them were subsequently withdrawn.
Jeremy BASKIN, general secretary of the Paper, Wood and Allied Workers Union was charged in the Piet Retief Magistrate's Court, on 21 November, with entering a township without a permit, after addressing a report-back meeting of union members at the Bison Board Hostels. Baskin was tried and acquitted earlier in the year, on charges of organising an illegal meeting, and has said that his union has been singled out for harrassment.
STRIKING WORKERS
In August last year, 40 striking workers at the Carbochem Rubber Factory were arrested on charges of holding an illegal meeting in terms of the general ban on outdoor meetings. Five miners were similarly charged under the Internal Security Act on 19 September in the Roodespoort Magistrate's Court, following unrest at the Durban Deep Roodespoort gold mine during the legal strike by miners in September 1984.
On several occasions workers and union members have been charged with public violence and 'intimidation' during the year. Nineteen workers at the Potchefstroom plant of Triomf charged in July in the Potchefstroom Magistrate's Court under the Internal Security Act were acquitted.
On 2 July, 88 black miners were charged with public violence in the Hlobane Magistrate's Court. Five shop stewards of the General Workers Union were charged with damaging a company office at the Brackenfell plant of Everite (asbestos manufacturers), near Cape Town, during a dispute over conditions in the hostel housing workers.
Enoch BUTHELEZI and two other workers from the Dorbyl Marine plant in Durban were charged with 'intimidation' in a local magistrate's court on 12 November. They were arrested following a meeting of striking workers from the plant sponsored by the General Workers Union. Two men were released on bail of R100 each and one was remanded in custody.
CENSORSHIP TRIALS
- The appeal of Nomonde Sheila CALATA, against conviction and sentence, for the wearing of a banned T-shirt bearing the slogan 'Free Nelson Mandela', was upheld in the Gramsstown Supreme Court on 4 November. The court ruled that the magistrate in the original case had approved an erroneous alteration to the charge sheet made by the prosecution; there were strong indications that the magistrate made common cause with the prosecution.
- Tennyson NYOVANE (18), was convicted in the Johannesburg Regional Court under the Internal Security Act on 11 September for possession of ANC greeting cards, stickers and seven copies of 'The Struggle Continues', published by the ANC. He was sentenced to three year's imprisonment, one of which was suspended for five years. This is one of a number of heavy sentences recently imposed for possession of material relating to the ANC.
- Mxolisi FUZILE, president of the Media Workers Association of South Africa, appeared in Mdantsane Magistrate's Court on charges of possessing banned literature, on 8 November 1984. He was released on R50 bail and the case was postponed to 30 November.
- The general secretary of the Orange Vaal General Workers Union (OVGWU), Phillip MASIA, appeared in the Vereeniging Magistrate's Court on 19 November, charged with possession of banned literature.
