Detainees End Hunger Strike After S. Africa Promises Many Releases

Political detainees ended a mass hunger strike today after the South African government, fearing a situation “too ghastly to contemplate,” indicated that it will free most of the 1,000 prisoners held without trial, their lawyers said.

“We have decided to suspend our hunger strike,” more than 300 strikers in Johannesburg’s main prison, Diepkloof, and in city hospitals said in a statement issued through lawyers.

Some of the prisoners had been starving themselves for 24 days and were risking serious health problems.

Lawyers for the Johannesburg prisoners said Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok indicated during intensive talks this week that he will reconsider the cases of each detainee around the country and will release many of them.

“We have received indications from the minister that perhaps the majority of them will be released,” lawyer Kathleen Satchwell told a news conference.

The apparent compromise solution avoided grave suffering to prisoners and headed off a major political crisis for Pretoria. Neither side claimed a total victory.

Fall Short of Demands

The reported undertakings by Vlok fell short of demands by the hunger strikers that they should be released immediately and unconditionally and for an end to detention without trial.

“It will not advance our cause to say they have lost and we have won, (but) we are glad we have got to where we have got,” said Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who issued a statement in Cape Town after the meeting that appealed to the hunger strikers to suspend their protest.

“Mr. Vlok told the church leaders that he agreed with them that the death of a hunger striker would have consequences ‘too ghastly to contemplate.’ ”

However, the strikers in Johannesburg, who took food at 7 a.m., said in a statement that they do not feel their action has been fruitless.

“On the contrary, an important victory has been won. We have succeeded in our principal objective--to highlight the desperate plight of detainees and to protest arbitrary detention,” they said in a statement.

“This is a victory for negotiation,” a spokesman for Vlok, who asked not to be named, said in Cape Town. He acknowledged that the hunger strike hastened a review of detainees’ cases.

Fast Began Jan. 23

The first group of strikers began their fast Jan. 23. They said they had no alternative because, under emergency laws, Vlok could hold them indefinitely without bringing them to court or even giving a reason for continuing to jail them.

It was not clear whether more than 100 detainees at Port Elizabeth’s St. Albans prison, who stopped eating about 10 days ago, had ended their protest. Lawyers representing them were due to meet Vlok later today.

Churchmen who saw Vlok, including heads of the country’s Roman Catholic, Reformed, Methodist and Anglican churches, said they will watch to ensure that he honors his assurances to free a substantial number within two weeks.

The six-member church delegation that met with Vlok included the Rev. Allan Boesak, who had fasted since Monday in solidarity with the hunger strikers. He said he is suspending his fast for two weeks because of the prospect of widespread releases.