South Africa’s Appalling Justice

The commutation of death sentences for the Sharpeville Six by President Pieter W. Botha is a most welcome development, but it will not allay concern about the standards of justice and the rule of law in South Africa.

Five men and a woman, part of a mob that murdered a black town councilor in 1984, had faced the gallows. No evidence of their direct participation in the killing had been introduced in the trial, but they were convicted under “common purpose” provisions of South African law. They now face prison sentences of 18 to 25 years.

Botha acted immediately after the highest court of South Africa had refused the defendants’ appeal. His promptness was a humane act, ending at last the agonizing uncertainty of the defendants. The appeal-court action came only days after another court action had underscored how out of step with the free world is the system of justice in South Africa. In the second case, leaders of the United Democratic Front in South Africa had been convicted of treason and terrorism and themselves now face possible death sentences.

The judge in the UDF treason trial may have been faithful to the law as it is understood in Pretoria, but his definition of treasonable activity is incomprehensible in Western democracies. His decision virtually closed the door to legal nonviolent political opposition, and seemed to invite increasing resort to violence. It jarred the sense of civility and strangled any normal political opposition.

Violent reactions in South Africa are an inevitable consequence of the massive repressionof the black majority by the state. The stress of circumstance makes violence more likely, no matter how committed to peaceful protest the opposition may be. Those who abetted the Sharpeville lynching bear a heavy responsibility, although it is by no means clear that everyone in the mob intended death for the councilor. In the UDF case there was no persuasive evidence that the organizers of a legal protest march intended the violence that ensued. On the contrary, their commitment to nonviolent protest appears to be authentic.

There was strong evidence in the treason trial that the UDF leaders were engaged in nothing more than dedicated political opposition. But the court chose to accept the government’s case, finding them guilty of “waging a war of conquest” and of the highest crimes against the state, and determining that the UDF was a conspiratorial extension of the outlawed African National Congress.

Speaking of the decision, an opposition white member of parliament, Helen Suzman, commented: “It narrows the margin in this country between lawful dissent and what is considered treason.”

Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu of Cape Town, the Anglican primate, characterized those convicted as “gentle, rational people who, in a democratic society, would be regarded as civic-minded, public-spirited leaders.”

“If this is treason, then I am guilty of treason,” Tutu concluded. So, too, are millions in the free world, appalled at this redefinition of the rules of political participation.