Anti-Apartheid Activists Face Trial : Hundreds in S. Africa Accused of Treason, Terrorism

In the wake of three years of widespread civil unrest, the South African government is putting hundreds of anti-apartheid activists on trial, charging them with treason, subversion, terrorism and other crimes under the security laws.

Sixty-nine people are currently facing treason charges in six separate cases. Civil rights groups see these cases as “show trials” intended to cripple the United Democratic Front and other anti-apartheid organizations by removing key leaders, making members hesitant to take their places and discouraging community support.

Among those accused of treason are the United Democratic Front’s general secretary, publicity secretary and provincial vice chairman, the general secretary of the country’s second-largest black labor union, a top commander of the African National Congress’ military wing and 30 community leaders who allegedly organized a network of civic associations, street committees and “people’s courts” in black townships in eastern Transvaal province.

Other Trials Expected

Nearly 20 other top people in the United Democratic Front have been detained under the state of emergency, now in its 15th month. Their lawyers say the security police appear to be preparing cases against most of them. Other trials are expected following the defection of a senior ANC underground cadre.

Charges ranging from murder, assault and arson to sabotage, subversion and terrorism are pending against 130 other people, most of them local community and youth leaders, in 25 other major cases around the country. Prosecutors have said that special courts will be set up soon to speed the hearing of these and similar cases.

Lesser charges, some under security legislation but most under criminal laws, are pending against hundreds of other political activists, students and labor union members, many of whom were initially detained under emergency regulations but who have now been formally charged. One defense lawyer estimates that more than 2,100 are awaiting trial on these charges, but other observers believe the total number is much higher.

Ripe With Bitterness

Even stripped of much of their emotion and reduced to the point of dry legalese, the cases suggest the bitterness of black militants’ struggle to end apartheid. Some examples:

-- Community leaders from the Vaal River region, south of Johannesburg, where the unrest began, are accused of conspiring to make their towns “ungovernable” and thus begin a revolution that would overthrow the state.

-- Thirteen confessed members and supporters of the African National Congress’ armed struggle are awaiting sentencing in Cape Town for their roles in a campaign of hand-grenade and bomb attacks there.

-- Eight youths from Alexandra, a black ghetto on the northern border of Johannesburg, are accused of treason and sedition for running a “people’s court” that the prosecution says effectively supplanted the state’s authority there. Thirty community leaders from eastern Transvaal towns have gone on trial on similar charges.

-- Two labor union organizers are on trial on charges of subversion for leading a consumer boycott in Pietersburg, a conservative town in northern Transvaal.

-- Two black security policemen from Pretoria are charged with working for the ANC. So great is the government’s embarrassment that their trial is being heard in secret.

-- Suspected ANC insurgents will be tried in half a dozen outlying towns, most on South Africa’s borders with Zimbabwe and Swaziland, on charges of planting land mines that killed white farmers and their black workers.

Among the accused are leading figures in the anti-apartheid movement--Popo Molefe, Patrick Lekota, Moses Chikane and the Rev. Arnold Stofile of the United Democratic Front, Moses Mayekiso of the National Union of Metalworkers, Tom Manthata of the South African Council of Churches, Father Smangaliso Mkwatsha of the South African Catholic Bishops Conference and Ismail Ebrahim, a veteran commander in the ANC’s military wing, Spear of the Nation.

Step-by-Step Reforms

In the last six months, prosecutions have begun to rise sharply, and members of President Pieter W. Botha’s Cabinet have told Parliament recently that the government intends a further acceleration as a key part of its strategy to end the prolonged unrest and then proceed with step-by-step reforms aimed at a controlled sharing of political power.

Challenged in Parliament about the increase in political trials, Kobie Coetsee, the justice minister, reiterated the government’s determination to prosecute those responsible for the violence of the last three years.

“Only when these people have been dealt with can we sit down and talk to others who want to negotiate,” Coetsee said.

The government also believes, Coetsee said, that those guilty of murder--particularly the “necklace” killings in which suspected police informers or government collaborators are burned to death with gasoline-filled tires about their necks--must be dealt with harshly if order is to be restored.

“These are offenses against mankind,” he declared.

See Return to Old Strategy

Roelf Meyer, deputy minister of law and order, told Parliament earlier that 2,165 of those initially detained without charge under emergency regulations between June, 1986, and last April have been charged and will be brought to trial. In addition, 95 people detained for questioning under the security laws had been charged, Meyer said.

“We are faced with a revolutionary onslaught against the government and people of this country, and where we have evidence of participation in this violent attempt to overthrow the established order, we will bring charges and prosecute them to the full,” a senior government official said in Cape Town, asking not to be quoted by name. “This is the duty of any government anywhere. . . .”

But anti-apartheid activists see the increased prosecutions as a return to an old government strategy, employed for more than 30 years: using political trials as a tool to destroy the anti-apartheid movement by imprisoning its leaders, paralyzing its organizations and demoralizing its members.

The new prosecutions, in their view, are aimed primarily at the United Democratic Front, a broad coalition of 700 anti-apartheid groups with more than 3 million members, which moved into the forefront of “the struggle” after its formation four years ago and became identified, in the minds of many, with the outlawed African National Congress. Nearly three-quarters of the defendants in the major political cases belong to the UDF or its affiliates.

Says Struggle Won’t Stop

“The government seems to want to put us all in jail, and its only problem is figuring out a way to do it so we stay there a long, long time,” says Albertina Sisulu, co-president of the United Democratic Front. “But they are wrong if they think these trials will stop the struggle. It hasn’t before, and it won’t now. The people know their demands are just, and they will not be deterred, and if their leaders are jailed, other leaders will emerge.”

Sisulu, the wife of Walter Sisulu, one of the ANC leaders imprisoned with Nelson Mandela, was charged with high treason two years ago but was acquitted along with 15 other anti-apartheid leaders and trade unionists when the prosecution’s case collapsed. She still faces two years in prison under an earlier conviction on a charge of “furthering the aims” of the ANC, but is free while appealing.

Despite her expressions of defiance, Sisulu concedes that the trials have an impact.

“Even when we win, and that’s not easy under their laws, these political trials do tremendous damage,” she said. “They take our leaders away from their real work and put our organizations on the defensive. They cost a terrible amount of money, which could be much better spent. They divert our energies and often prevent us from moving forward.”

Trials, Charges on the Rise

The number of trials and people charged with political crimes at present is more than twice the levels of 1985 and 1986, according to comparative figures provided by the independent South African Institute of Race Relations. Researchers say that the scope of prosecutions now exceeds that of previous crackdowns on the anti-apartheid movement.

From April to June, 118 people were convicted of politically related crimes in major trials, according to the Detainees’ Parents Support Committee, a civil rights monitoring group that has recorded an increasingly upward trend in the number of prosecutions over the past year.

The committee believes that “a substantial percentage” of the 3,500 to 4,500 people now detained under emergency regulations or security laws will be brought to trial as the police prepare the cases against them, and that the seriousness of the charges will also increase.

Thirty-two blacks are now on death row pending appeal of their murder convictions and death sentences for killings during the three years of unrest. Most were found guilty of murdering black policemen, local officials and other people believed to be collaborating with the government, but one was convicted of exploding the car bomb that killed three women outside a Durban hotel last year. Of the more than 120 people hanged in South Africa last year, five were convicted of politically motivated crimes.

Much Broader Scope

Although large and increasing, these figures on major cases understate the scope of the prosecutions, which include thousands of charges of “public violence” and malicious destruction of property that are too numerous for monitoring groups to record. In 1986 alone, more than 11,000 people were charged in “unrest-related” incidents in South Africa’s black townships, according to the South African Research Service, which warns that even this figure is not comprehensive.

Despite the tremendous effort that the security police and state prosecutors put into these cases, the government loses as many verdicts as it wins, according to monitoring groups. They note that the prosecution has its biggest problem in proving charges in large show trials where allegations of conspiracy are a key element.

In the treason trials concluded last year, for example, 10 people were convicted, though only six of treason, according to the South African Institute of Race Relations. Eight were acquitted. In 1985, only eight were convicted of treason and one on a related charge, while 12 were acquitted.

The major reason for the acquittals, most defense lawyers say, is the continued independence of much of the senior South African judiciary.

“Most of our judges are determined to be impartial and fair,” said a senior advocate who defends many “politicals” but asked not to be quoted by name. “Perhaps they are not as fair as I would like, but still fair by their own lights. As a result, a case that544433509ool.”

Times researcher Michael Cadman contributed to this article.