The trial in which five men and one woman were sentenced to death in December by the Pretoria Supreme Court, was one of many trials in which people have been charged with murder, public violence and subversion, as a result of community resistance to apartheid in the form of attacks on police and others involved in the enforcement and administration of apartheid.
Those condemned to death on 13 December in Pretoria were Oupa Moses DINISO (30), Duma Joshua KHUMALO (26), Francis Don MOKHESI (28), Reid Malebo MOKOENA (22), Theresa RAMASHAMOLA (24) and Mojalefa Reginald SEFATSA (30). Along with two others (see POLITICAL PRISONERS) they were also found guilty of subversion, for which they were sentenced to eight years' imprisonment. All the accused pleaded not guilty to the charges and an application for leave to appeal against both conviction and sentence has been made by the defence lawyers.
The first hearing was on 5 September 1985, a year after the killing of a community councillor, Kuzwayo Jacob Dlamini, the deputy mayor of Sharpeville, who had played a prominent role in the apartheid regime's administration of Lekoa, a grouping of six African townships, including Sharpeville, Sebokeng and Vereeniging, which lies to the south of Johannesburg, in the area known as the 'Vaal Triangle'.
The scale and intensity of popular resistance in this area in the months before Dlamini's death on 3 September 1984 reflected the extent of opposition to the regime's supposed 'reform' of the apartheid system.
The formation of the first of the regime's new Black Local Authorities in January 1984, to replace the 'community councils' in African townships, depended on the collaboration of a small sector of the population in the townships. Their function was twofold: to obscure the regime's responsibility for the deprivations of township life and to organise more efficient ways of extracting the costs of township administration from the African residents at a time when they were already hard-pressed by rising prices, cutbacks and economic recession.
The announcement of rent and tax increases by the new councils produced an unprecedented response. During demonstrations by thousands of township residents the homes of councillors, officials and policemen were attacked and at least five councillors and 27 policemen were killed, including Dlamini.
Ten trials known to be in progress and eight others about which there were no recent press reports give cause for concern in the light of the Pretoria sentences.
A second Lekoa town councillor, Jacob Tshakane, was killed in the unrest of 3 September 1984. Five men aged from 21 to 31 and a 16 year old minor, all from Sebokeng, appeared before Oberholzer magistrates on 18 November charged with his murder. The hearing was due to be resumed in the Pretoria Supreme Court on 3 February.
On 17 December at least 21 Mamelodi residents appeared before a Pretoria magistrate charged with the murder of a policeman whose body was found near the township on 10 December. Six days later 19 youths were accused in the same court of the murder of another policeman in October.
The trial of three Muslims in the Cape arrested after the killing of a policeman during a funeral at Salt River in September, was postponed when the president of the Muslim Judicial Council, Sheikh Abdul Gamied GABIER, refused to give evidence for the state. The hearing of charges against him under the Criminal Procedure Act was adjourned to 17 February.
On 10 December 2,000 residents of the Kwanobuhle township in the Eastern Cape sang and chanted their support for ten people accused of killing the Uitenhage councillor and former mayor, Benjamin Kinikini, and five others on 23 March 1985. Armed police and soldiers guarded court officials as they visited the scene of the deaths. The Grahamstown Supreme Court was due to resume its hearing of the case on 17 February.
Twelve residents of Zwide, including five youths aged from 12 to 17 years, appeared before New Brighton magistrates on 8 December charged with the murder of two policemen four days earlier, while the case against Edgar NGOYI, the Eastern Cape regional president of the UDF and nine others who were accused of killing a policeman in Kwazakele on 8 June 1985 was due to be continued on 16 January.
