The renewal of the State of Emergency on 11 June indicated the regime's failure to suppress popular resistance to apartheid. This fact was underlined by President Botha in statements explaining the measures.
Except for the three months between March and June 1986 South Africa has been under successive States of Emergency since 21 July 1985. The Public Safety Act stipulates that a State of Emergency cannot last longer than 12 months. On 10 June President Botha said that a new State of Emergency was required because 'the same conditions that prevailed [a year ago] still exist today'.
In response to a legal challenge to the validity of the new regulations by the Release Mandela Campaign and the Weekly Mail, President Botha told the Supreme Court in Pietermaritzburg that emergency powers were needed because what he called the 'ordinary law' of the land, including the far-reaching Internal Security Act, was inadequate to govern the country.
The Deputy Minister of Constitutional Development said that the State of Emergency was needed to 'maintain peace' while the government dealt 'in the long term... with the unrest by creating a system that people would not oppose by rioting'.
The new emergency powers were in most respects the same as earlier ones. Restrictions on funerals in the Witwatersrand, in Natal and the Eastern Cape, control on movement in a Western Cape township, and new detentions were among the first uses of the new powers.
