The Sickness of South Africa
M., A.
AT THIS WRITING thirty South African men and women are again on trial for their lives because they dared publicly oppose the Nationalist Government's harsh apartheid program of...
...It is perhaps too early to see the effects of the boycott on South Africa, but the Minister of External Affairs, apparently fearful of its spreading, has warned that the African workers will be the first to suffer...
...T. E. Tshunungwa, former president of African Teachers' Association...
...Lillian Ngoyi...
...Ghana and Jamaica are cooperating, as well as sympathizers in England...
...It is no secret that the race issue has also been an effective camouflage for the Government to implement its anti-union sentiments...
...The releases, the indictments, the regroupings by the Government, have all seemed without rhyme or reason to those arrested...
...C. Mayekiso, trade unionist who had campaigned for better wages and against rent increases...
...known Communists have been dismissed, respected leaders like Professor Z. K. Matthews were kept on...
...Since June 26 another method has been put into effect in South Africa: economic boycott...
...therefore violence must be intended...
...Among those on trial are T. Tshume, young African volunteer worker for trade unions...
...The whole story of the increasingly extreme racist measures of the Government, the stifling of opposition, the gestapo methods, the endless humiliations to Africans, Indians, and Coloreds, the hardships suffered by these defendants and their families during nearly 3 years of hearings, cannot even be suggested here...
...Nearly $300,000 has had to be spent for legal aid and family welfare, raised by Defense Funds in South Africa, England, and the United States, and administered by trustees Alan Paton, the Bishop of Johannesburg, and other' liberal South Africans...
...The Government now seems to be trying to prove that the present thirty were active advocates of "violent" overthrow of the state on the basis of statements to the effect that "freedom in our lifetime" shall be achieved...
...Sixty-one accused earlier still do not know whether the Government might re-indict them, having had two previous indictments quashed by the courts...
...Many are evidently willing to risk it—they have little to lose, and human dignity to gain...
...Over our dead bodies, the Government action implies...
...480...
...Write to American Committee on Africa at 801 Second Avenue, New York 17...
...AT THIS WRITING thirty South African men and women are again on trial for their lives because they dared publicly oppose the Nationalist Government's harsh apartheid program of total segregation of the "Bantu" population (total except for daily work, for which Africans must travel miles into white areas...
...South African rock lobster is about the only product Americans are likely to notice on the market here...
...others who have been miners or factory workers until their arrest, as well as teachers, doctors, lawyers, and small businessmen...
...The American Committee on Africa's Defense Fund has raised $50,000 for the defendants, and is seeking further funds for this and other urgent legal cases* which have arisen in South Africa, the Central African Federation, and Kenya, where police attacks and arrests of opposition leaders to white settler and colonial governments have made legal and welfare aid the main channel remaining for democratic support...
...garment worker Mrs...
...Sixtyfive others were dismissed over a year ago, after being held, without compensation, for a year and a half (since the first mass arrests in 1956) while thousands of documents were examined...
...gold, diamonds, uranium and other "vital" products constituting the bulk of American purchase, are more difficult for American consumers and workers to refuse to get their hands on...
...South Africans have been called on not to buy from merchants or manufacturers who support Verwoerd's Nationalist Government...
...The Kenya Federation of Labor has called on all African workers throughout East Africa to support the boycott...
Vol. 6 • September 1959 • No. 4
