19 on Trial Plan Anti-Apartheid Forum

Nineteen blacks accused of treason, subversion, murder and terrorism in one of South Africa’s biggest political trials opened their defense here Wednesday, declaring their intention to make apartheid the major issue in the case.

Arthur Chaskelson, the veteran civil rights lawyer who is representing the defendants, said that most of them, including top leaders from the United Democratic Front coalition of anti-apartheid groups, will testify about their activities, the aims of the “national liberation struggle” and their hopes for the country.

With most black opposition leaders unable to address rallies or to attack government policies publicly because of state-of-emergency rules against “restricted gatherings” and “subversive statements,” the Delmas treason trial could thus become the country’s only major and uncensored forum for their views.

“We will have a lot to say, don’t worry,” Patrick Lekota, the United Democratic Front’s publicity secretary, said from the prisoners’ dock Wednesday as he chatted with newsmen at lunchtime. “Those who think we have been silenced should just tune in to this trial later this week.

“By imposing censorship on everything except Parliament and court testimony, the government has given us, shall we say, a ‘captive audience,’ and we intend to address it as fully as possible, not just to clear up the charges against us and the UDF but to halt, if we can, the increasing and very dangerous polarization in the country.”

The defense intends to respond to prosecution charges that the United Democratic Front was the internal political wing of the outlawed African National Congress, and that it ignited the past 2 1/2 years of civil unrest in an effort to make the country “ungovernable” and to hasten the violent overthrow of the white-led minority government.

It also plans, Chaskelson told the court, to provide the “full socioeconomic background” to the political violence, to explain in detail “the legitimate grievances” of the country’s black majority and to trace the evolution of black protest against minority rule and the injustices that many whites as well as blacks see in apartheid.

The more the prosecution challenges the defense on these issues, Chaskelson indicated in his daylong opening statement, the more witnesses will be called and the more evidence that will be introduced.

Popo Molefe, the UDF general secretary, has drafted a preliminary statement that already runs to more than 250 pages, according to friends, and by the time it is completed might be nearly three times that.

“We’ll be lining up a publisher shortly,” one supporter said, “because the government cannot ban bona fide court testimony, even when published in books or newspaper supplements, without a confrontation with the courts themselves.”

The trial has already gone on for more than a year, with 171 state witnesses, more than 8,000 pages of testimony and 15,000 pieces of documentary evidence. Chaskelson told the court Wednesday that the defense case will be at least as long.

The charges arise, first, from the 1983 organization of the United Democratic Front, a coalition of more than 700 anti-apartheid groups with 3 million members, to oppose government reforms that brought the Indian and Colored (mixed-race) communities into the Parliament but continued to deny blacks equal political rights.

But the prosecution has also charged many of the defendants with direct responsibility for the anti-government riots in the Vaal River region in September, 1983. The riots led to more than two years of political violence.

Originally 22 men, all blacks, were charged, but Justice Kees van Dikjhorst acquitted three in November while ruling that the others had “a case to answer.” Another marathon treason trial involving 16 other United Democratic Front leaders and union organizers ended last year in acquittal.