The Sixth National Conference of the Detainees Parents Support Committee (DPSC) in October attended by representatives from 40 regions noted a shift in the pattern of detention. Fewer people were being held under the emergency regulations although 2,000 such detainees were still thought to be in custody out of a DPSC estimate of 30,000 people detained since June 1986. Between two and three hundred of those still held were thought by the DPSC to be children between 16 and 18 years of age. Many community and political leaders remained in detention.
In addition there were 499 people known by the DPSC to have been held under laws other than emergency regulations in 1987. At the end of September there were 210 people known to be in detention under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act, a figure which the DPSC said was certainly less than the total.
TORTURE AND VIOLENCE Although the Minister of Law and Order recently dismissed as 'vilification' allegations of torture by various independent bodies monitoring detentions in South Africa, convincing evidence pointing at sophisticated and systematic torture of detainees by police has continued to emerge. Both Section 29 of the Internal Security Act and the Emergency Regulations prevent visits by independent observers other than those permitted by the state. For this reason, and in response to systematically and carefully compiled evidence at their disposal, various independent bodies including the DPSC, the National Medical and Dental Association (NAMDA) and others have demanded an independent commission of inquiry. In August the DPSC held a Press Conference at which it released information on studies of torture during the 1980s. Since the State of Emergency imposed in mid-1985 approximately 40 cases involving 120 people have been brought against the Minister of Law and Order alleging abuse of emergency detainees. These do not include the action brought against the state by Dr Wendy Orr and 42 others in the Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage area in 1985 which involved hundreds of people.
Recent reports including a study by NAMDA in April 1987 and an inquiry by a four-person team of the International Commission of Jurists which visited South Africa in early 1987 have added to the evidence revealed by earlier studies. The evidence consistently indicates that detainees are subjected to brutal and systematic torture at the hands of the police.
METHODS The methods revealed by the above reports and other statements include deprivation of sleep for long hours, enforced physical exercise and exertion, being kept naked, beating, suffocation, slapping and kicking, electric shocks, attacks on genitals, suspension in mid-air and other forms of violence.
NAMDA found that in beating, police used sjamboks, batons, or other blunt instruments. They discovered that in most instances detainees were subjected to mental abuse and deprivation. Thirty-seven affidavits in the possession of Helen Suzman revealed that similar methods of torture are used throughout the country.
A Durban attorney, Linda Zama, found about 10 youngsters in KwaMashu police station on 2 September doing press-ups on the instructions of people who appeared to be police reservists. The police were armed while those doing exercises were 'sweating and grumbling with effort'. She also 'saw a group of male students moving up and down in a semi-squatting position and being made to keep their arms out in front of them'.
A canvas bag with electrodes was reported to be in use in the Eastern Cape according to Helen Suzman. The International Commission of Jurists Report of 20 August 1987 claimed that in addition to electric shocks, children were teargassed, beaten with rolled wire, and scalded with boiling water and burning plastic.
Between the end of August 1986 and 10 February 1987, 263 detainees were hospitalised and had sustained a 'variety of injuries to arms and hands; the head or groin; eye injuries, gunshot wounds, jaw injuries and dog bite wounds'
CONDITIONS The DPSC charged that detainees, especially those in police stations, are held under inhumane conditions. Detainees have complained of the often 'incompetent and unsympathetic' approach of district surgeons resulting in inadequate medical care. There is also a lack of isolation facilities for detainees suffering from infectious diseases.
Neither the Emergency regulations nor Section 29 of the Internal Security Act allow any contact between the detainee and the outside world except with the approval of the authorities. Medical care is provided by state-employed district surgeons and detainees have no access to independent private doctors except for specially established panels of doctors, which were authorised in 1985 to enable detainees to consult a doctor other than the district surgeon. It took a year for the panels to start work and their objectivity was called into question following an admission by the Secretary General of the Medical Association of South Africa (MASA) in an interview in London in 1986 that panel members were screened by the government for 'security' reasons.
CAMPAIGNS Attempts to secure the release of detainees have taken various forms, from court cases brought against the state by detainees themselves to a range of protests by detainees in jails, as well as national and international campaigns.
There have also been glimpses of the resistance waged from within prisons and police stations. Letters smuggled out of Kroonstad Prison in the Orange Free State in April last year and allegations from former detainees at Fort Glamorgan Prison in East London described the harsh conditions for the detainees, which had resulted in such protests as hunger strikes. In Modderbee Prison, 178 emergency detainees on hunger strike were teargassed by prison warders in December 1986. The Minister of Justice argued that this was 'an effective alternative to application and deployment of more stringent means'.
Another letter smuggled to the New Nation in June last year gave details of a hunger strike by political detainees held at Benoni's Modderbee Prison. According to the letter all the 45 detainees held there joined in the protest. The prison authorities maintained that they would abide by international regulations governing prisons and would not force-feed them.
Relatives of political detainees have taken a number of measures to highlight the plight of detainees. On 9 November 1987, approximately 25 women and a child marched to parliament demanding the release of their relatives. In Cape Town the Mitchells Plain Crisis and Relief Committee was formed following widespread detentions in the area. One of its aims is to campaign for the release of detainees.
Community organisations and trade unions have joined these efforts, through advertisements demanding the release of detained leaders and the holding of political rallies to draw attention to political detainees. Two hundred and fifty students and teachers of Setotolwane College of Education in the Lebowa bantustan boycotted classes in protest against the detention of the SRC President Moses Tshehla. Staff and students at the University of Witwatersrand used the birthday of emergency detainee Raymond Suttner to promote the cause of their detained colleagues by holding a picket outside the Great Hall.
The Free the Children Alliance organised a week of action in October and a month earlier the Anglican Bishop of Grahamstown, David Russell, went on a four-day fast against detention in September. The United Democratic Front and its affiliates initiated a campaign called 'Unlock Apartheid Jails' aimed at collecting symbolic keys to be presented to the State President. Launching the campaign, UDF Patron Allan Boesak accused Adriaan Vlok of telling lies in order to allow orchestrated repression to continue.
In November the Thisahlulu Youth Congress in the Venda bantustan organised a 12-hour fast by villagers protesting against the continued detention of leaders who include Tendamudzimu Robert Ratshitanga and Tshivhulawi Makumbane, the village headman.
SARHWU MEMBERS Altogether 32 members of the South African Railways & Harbour Workers Union detained during and after the South African Transport Services strike, were still in detention at the end of September. Their names are listed below. All were taken into detention in the Witwatersrand area between 29 April and 8 July, except for Mzolisi Dyasi, held in Port Elizabeth on 7 August.
At the beginning of December several of those detained were scheduled to appear in court, following a number of other trials arising out of the dispute.
