Detained Black Youths Being Sent to S. African Indoctrination Camps

Some black youths detained without charge under South Africa’s state of emergency are being sent to special government camps, apparently for political indoctrination, before they are freed.

Neil Ross, director of the opposition Progressive Federal Party’s “missing persons” bureau, which monitors security detentions, accused the government Friday of coercing or tricking the youths into going to the secret camps as a condition for being released. He said the program may amount to unlawful imprisonment.

Although little is known about the “reorientation and training program,” youths who have come through the camps told civil rights groups that they had attended lectures denouncing the African National Congress, the principal guerrilla group fighting minority white rule here. They said they had been encouraged in group discussions to declare their support of the government and its policies.

The government’s Department of Education and Training, acknowledging the three-week-old program, described the six secluded rural camps as “reabsorption centers” to prepare young detainees, some not yet in their teens, for “reentry into their communities.”

Denies Brainwashing

“There is nothing sinister about it,” Job Schoeman, the department’s chief spokesman, said when questioned about the program. “I know some people may think we may be involved in brainwashing and indoctrination, but that is far from the truth.”

But Sam de Beer, the deputy minister of education and development aid, said later that the program is an extension of the department’s longstanding courses in “leadership, community development, vocational guidance, sports and study techniques.”

“There is no political component,” De Beer said in a statement. “Attendance at these courses is absolutely voluntary, and anyone who has chosen to attend such a course is free to withdraw at any time. Minors are admitted only with the express written consent of their parents or guardians.”

To resolve the quickly growing controversy over the program, the government promised to arrange tours of the camps next week for opposition members of Parliament and the press.

“The secrecy is what makes the whole issue smell,” said Graham McIntosh, a member of Parliament from the Progressive Federal Party. “If the camps are so good, why has the whole thing been kept closed?”

Says 167 in Program

De Beer, who was not available for questions after issuing his statement in Pretoria, said that only 167 former detainees had gone through the program, at four of the 15 centers where such courses are regularly given by his department.

But youths coming from the camps have told the Detainees’ Parents Support Committee and other civil rights organizations that they had been given a choice to remain in detention, often in solitary confinement, or to go to one of the centers, where conditions were better.

To the youths, much of the program was an extension of their interrogation by the security police during their detention. Some detainees completed the course in 10 days, the youths said, but many others were still being held after three weeks for “further study.”

Figures they gave indicated that at least several hundred more people were in the program, in at least six camps around the country, and that the government apparently planned to include all those young detainees regarded as impressionable.

7,000 Believed Held

According to lists of detainees compiled by the Progressive Federal Party, the Detainees’ Parents Support Committee and other monitoring groups, at least 4,000 of the more than 14,000 people believed to have been detained without charge under the state of emergency were youths under 18. Although a large number of detainees have been released in recent weeks, as many as 7,000 or 8,000 are believed to be still held.

Youths who participated in the program said that accommodations and food were far better than what they had been given in local jails and state prisons. The camps’ gates were not locked, they said, but most were in remote rural areas. Some youths ran away almost immediately and others left after a few days, they added, but most stayed, not wanting to risk renewed detention.

“These are not convicted criminals being rehabilitated,” Ken Andrew, another Progressive Federal Party member of Parliament, said. “They are children who have been detained without charge, held for three months, sometimes in solitary confinement, and this program looks coercive from start to finish.”

As the state of emergency entered its fourth month Friday, the government’s Bureau of Information reported that a police patrol in the black township of Sebokeng, in the Vaal industrial region south of here, had killed a man when it fired on a mob that had thrown a gasoline bomb at it.