/ 1 September 1989

100 held in 24 hours, say police

Yesterday saw a wave of police raids and detentions, meetings banned, crowds dispersed and tear-gassed and marches stopped. Brigadier Leon Mellet, representative of the Ministry of Law and Order, confirmed last night that about 100 people had been held in a series of clampdowns. About 70 of these were connected with unrest in the Western Cape, he said, and added that some of those detained had already been charged in court. 

The head of police public relations, General Herman Stadler, told reporters there had been ”quite a number” of arrests of dissidents allegedly involved in unrest and who had contravened restriction orders placed on their activities. Last night, the Witwatersrand Divisional commissioner of police, Brigadier GN Erasmus, banned all meetings from today to September 7 organised by the Riverlea Human Rights Committee, the Transvaal Anti-Presidents Committee (sic) and the Standing for the Truth Campaign. Standing for the Truth had invited ”South Africans committed to peace” to attend a peace service in Soweto on Saturday afternoon. The Transvaal Anti-PC Committee had organised a ”don’t vote” meeting in Bosmont on Saturday. 

Among those detained yesterday was Cumick Ndlovu, national chairman of the United Democratic Front and a recent member of a ”mass democratic movement” delegation to see American President George Bush and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He is the fifth person in Durban to be held murder Emergency regulations in the last 48 hours. All were MDM activists involved in planning a ”picnic protest” against segregated beaches this coming weekend. The others were Trevor Bonhomme of the Durban Housing Action Committee, Sipha Cele, a regional secretary for the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Myrtle Beaunoir and Keith Joseph, both members of the United Committee of Concern in Wentworth, Durban. 

Durban police yesterday also used Emergency media regulations to confiscate 30 000 copies of a pamphlet related to the ”picnic protest”. In the Eastern Cape, Cosatu official Dennis Neer was briefly detained. Police arrested 12 journalists in Cape Town yesterday during a placard demonstration organised by the Southern African Society of Journalists. The journalists, all staff of the Argus, were protesting against media regulations. A similar protest in Johannes¬ burg outside the Star went ahead peacefully. 

Audrey Brown reports that over 1 000 students defied a police banning of a rally at the University of the Witwatersrand yesterday and refused to disperse after police launched several teargas attacks. At least 15 students were arrested, and the confrontation lasted several hours as the students – including hundreds of school pupil from Soweto -continued to regroup on the piazza outside the university’s Great Hall. Several diplomats watched as press photographers and foreign television crews had their tapes and film confiscated. At least one photographer was arrested. The confrontation arose after police banned a meeting billed as ”Wits defies apartheid” in line with the MDM’s defiance campaign. The rally was intended to announce the unbanning of various student organisations, among them the Soweto Student’s Congress (Sosco), Congress of South African Students (Cosas) and the Black Students’ Society (BSS), an affiliate of the South African Student’s Congress (Sansco). 

The meeting took place after two postponements, and was to be addressed by veteran anti-apartheid activist Helen Joseph. Following the announcement of the banning, students decided to carry on their protest, ”to show our rejection of the coming racist elections”. Police allowed student: time to discuss their reaction to the ban after university officials mediated to prevent the teargassing of students inside Senate House. Deputy vice-chancellor, Professor Mervyn Shear, said teargassing inside the building would have been ”disastrous”. ”I was anxious the police would use teargas and that would have been disastrous with the more than 600 students there panicking and trampling each other in the chaos.” Shear believed that at least 12 students, including some pupils from Soweto, were among those arrested. The students emerged from the concourse, regrouped on the piazza and continued singing and chanting. Police fired several teargas canisters to disperse the crowd. 

However, the arrival of several hundred pupils from Soweto to strengthened them, and they regrouped several times during the next four hours. For the next four hours, as more teargas was fired, police reinforcements arrived, journalists were harassed and a number of students and pupils were arrested, but the protesters kept corning back. The impasse was broken when police moved off the campus and stationed themselves on the perimeters of the campus and the students slowly filtered off the campus. In a statement to Sapa, Wits vice-chancellor, Professor RW Charlton, said police arrived on campus at the same time the meeting was banned. ”I deplore the banning of the meeting, which I had been assured would have been peaceful,” he said. ”Instead the work of the university was disrupted and hundreds of people, including university staff on duty and innocent parties in the neighborhood, were subjected to tear smoke and the real danger of serious injury from stones and rubber bullets.” 

The police unrest report described three ”incidents”. ”Three incidents occurred on the campus of the University of the Witwatersrand, on the lawn in front of the Great Hall. At 11.20, approximately 200 people gathered. They were ordered to disperse. When they refused, they were dispersed with tear smoke and rubber bullets. ”At 12.51 approximately 250 people gathered. They refused and were dispersed with tear smoke. At 13.20, approximately 600 people gathered. They were also dispersed with tear smoke after ignoring an order to disperse. The divisional commissioner of the Witwatersrand had earlier issued an order forbidding the holding of the meeting.” 

Keith Madonsela reports that raids were conducted at the head offices of Cosatu in Johannesburg, at the Yeoville home of Cosatu leader Jay Naidoo and the head offices of the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu). Police raided the Cosatu office yesterday and detained 11 people in the building. The raid, by plain-clothes security police, began at 10.30am and lasted more than five hours. In the early hours of yesterday morning the horne of Cosatu’s general secretary, Jay Naidoo, was raided. Naidoo was then taken, by the security police to the union federation’s head office. 

According to union lawyers, who were present during the raid, the police searched the building and read documents, which they confiscated. Eleven unionists, who were protesting outside the building in Rissik Street – including National Union of Mineworkers national organiser, Mantashi Gwase – were arrested and bundled into a van. A crowd of about 100 people continued singing and chanting slogans outside the building after the van had left. The federation’s administrative staff had to wait outside the building for most of the morning before being allowed to re-enter and continue their world. Meanwhile, the spectre of right-wing violence or informal repression raised its head earlier this week in Pretoria. 

Ivor Jenkins, one of the organisers of a campaign to desegregate buses in the capital city, escaped death when bullets were fired at his home after he received threatening telephone calls. Another Pretoria activist, Louis Bredenkamp, confirmed that nine shots were fired at his home last Sunday night, narrowly missing his son, who was sleeping in the lounge. A petrol bomb was thrown at the Pretoria house of Students for a Democratic Society member Alet Schoon. Durban activist Farouk Meer also received telephoned threats from someone who identified himself as a member of the ”Wit Wolwe”’. Other people detained in the last week include prominent MDM leaders Mohamed Valli Moosa, Trevor Manuel and Bulelani Ngcuka. A number of pre-dawn raids on the homes of Alexandra Action Committee members and South African Council of Churches communications director, Sakkie Macozoma, were also carried out. However, a battery of charges has been brought against people for breaking their restriction orders. 

Earlier this week, South African Youth Congress executive member Ignatius Patrick Jacobs appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on 89 counts of breaking his restriction orders. Jacobs was one of six activists who staged a sit-in at the British Embassy in Pretoria in March this year. Three others – Donsie Khumalo, Grace Dube and Selebogo Mabena – appear in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on similar charges. Charges against Jacobs arise out of his actions after the abortive embassy sit-in. In Bekkersdal, Westonaria, 11 restricted people were arrested for similar offences. One of the 11 has laid assault charges against the police. Repression in various forms continues to rise around the country, with Cape Town the focal point. The teargassing of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and University of Western Cape rector Jakes Gerwel at a prayer service in Cape Town last week sent shock waves around the world.

This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.

 

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