On 13 September three detainees took refuge in the United States Consulate after escaping from their captors while being taken to Johannesburg Hospital for medical attention. All three had been held for over a year without trial under the State of Emergency regulations and all legal efforts to secure their release had been unsuccessful. Vusi KHANYILE who was the chairperson of the National Education Crisis Committee, an affiliate of the United Democratic Front (UDF), had been held since 12 December 1986. Murphy MOROBE, the UDF acting Publicity Secretary, and Mohamed VALLI, the organisation's acting General Secretary, were detained on 12 July last year while visiting Port Elizabeth.
On 22 September they were joined by Clifford NGCOBO, an official of the Soweto Civic Association who had been held since 23 April. He also escaped into the consulate after being taken to Johannesburg General Hospital to see a psychiatrist. In an interview with the Weekly Mail he said he was suffering from severe pains in the lower back and abdomen, had lost weight and had been urinating blood for some weeks as a result of assaults by police. Details of his medical treatment could not be published in the press in terms of the emergency regulations. He suffers from asthma: 'I can't sleep at night... I just couldn't breathe, I was sure I was going to die'. His lawyers filed a civil claim for damages and also laid charges of assault against the police.
In a press statement released through their lawyer, the four detainees described their action as 'a dignified response to our continued incarceration... Our action is also a plea to all South Africans and the international community not to allow the plight of detainees to be forgotten. We would like our action to be seen as highlighting not only our plight, but also that of hundreds of other detainees whose situation is equally hopeless'.
Their action followed a series of other measures taken by many detainees to secure their release including hunger strikes. Other detainees have challenged the emergency regulations through the courts.
The detainees issued a list of demands from the consulate which included: the release of all political detainees; a guarantee from the government that they would not be redetained when they left the consulate; and the lifting of the State of Emergency.
Although the government undertook not to redetain them if they left the consulate, no response was made to their other demands. On 19 September the detainees sent a memorandum to the Ministers of Law and Order and Foreign Affairs in which they reiterated their demands and described expectations that they would leave the consulate as both 'unreasonable and unrealistic'. They feared that if they left the consulate they would either be re-detained, be placed under house arrest or have restrictions on their political activities imposed on them. They undertook to reassess their position when the government demonstrated that their fears were ill founded.
Those detained since the declaration of the State of Emergency have enjoyed the support of the public both nationally and internationally. Campaigns against their continued detention varied from letters of protest to the government and newspaper advertisements proclaiming the injustice of detention without trial to petitioning the United Nations to secure its intervention in the matter.
A support group for the detainees has been established drawing its members from their lawyers and a broad range of organisations. Prominent community leaders visited the three pledging their support.
