Although the number of children in detention in South Africa has fallen they have continued to be subjected to repression of various kinds.
Restrictions follow detention For a number of young detainees release has been followed by restrictions under the emergency regulations.
The number of children held under the emergency regulations fell as the total number of emergency detainees decreased. In mid-February the Minister of Law and Order told parliament that 52 emergency detainees were children aged 17 years or under (30 aged 17 and 22 aged 16) and a month later that there were 14 (13 aged 17 and one aged 16). His statements did not cover people held under the Internal Security Act or other laws allowing detention without trial.
Two 17-year-old Soweto students received restriction orders when they were released from detention on 27 February. The orders required Solomon Solly DOLAMO and Petrus Dumisani XABA to be in their homes between 6 pm and 5 am and to report each day to a police station. They were also prohibited from attending any gathering organised to attack, criticise or protest against the government or any local authority. Dolamo was one of at least four 17-year-old members of the Soweto Students Congress (SOSCO) who took part in the detainees' hunger-strike in February. On the eve of the local authority elections in October last year, SOSCO was prohibited under the emergency regulations from engaging in any activities.
Dolamo had spent 10 months in detention when he was released, while Xaba, who was acquitted in August last year on charges of arson and possessing explosives, was detained for seven months.
In April four pupils in Upington who had been detained under the emergency regulations in February, were placed under restrictions on their release. The four, the youngest of whom was 17-year-old Patrick WILLIAMS, were confined to their homes at night and required to report to Upington police station every day. They were prohibited from speaking to the press and from taking part in the activities of youth and student organisations in Upington.
Trials and imprisonment It is not known how many children appeared in political trials during the first half of 1989. Official figures for children in prison given in March gave an incomplete picture, both because they failed to distinguish political cases and because many children on trial are not held in prison, but may be released into the custody of their parents. According to the Minister of Justice there were, at the end of 1988, a total of 645 children (under 18 years of age) in prison awaiting trial, and another 3,183 awaiting-trial prisoners aged between 18 and 21.
Most recent political trials involving children have arisen out of the period of mass protests which began in September 1984. One such trial, the subject of a recent successful appeal, illustrated the nature of political trials in which children appear — often hidden from public knowledge — and highlighted the vulnerability of children in prison.
Lungile BACELA was 16 years old in 1985 when three women, suspected of having caused the death of a young activist, were killed by a crowd of residents in the Eastern Cape town of Stutterheim. Bacela and nine others were convicted of murder and other offences in September 1987. Bacela was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for murder, three men were sentenced to death, and the other six received prison sentences of varying lengths. The three sentenced to death were: Mxolisi MALGAS, 42; Michael MAMBUKWE, 32; and Lulamile MANELI, 32.
After a year in prison Bacela Lulamile Maneli wrote to his parents saying that he was depressed and being badly treated. In September 1988 he was found hanged in his cell. In April this year, seven months after his suicide, the Appeal Court ruled that Bacela and the nine others, including the three sentenced to death, had been wrongfully convicted. It ruled that the state's evidence on which the conviction depended was so thoroughly unreliable that the trial court should have rejected it in totality. Neither at the time of his trial and conviction nor during his imprisonment was Bacela's identity publicly known as he was under 18 years of age. News of his death only became public when the outcome of the appeal was reported.
The number of children serving prison sentences after conviction in political trials is not known either. The monitoring of press reports of trials gives only a partial picture, but it has made it possible to identify political trials in which juveniles (people under 21) have been given prison sentences. On the basis of such information it appeared that in January this year there were at least 198 people who had been imprisoned as juveniles and who, unless they had been granted an early release which had not been reported in the press, were serving prison sentences because of their participation in protest.
