City Councillors Want Treason Trials Moved

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28159, 24 December 1956, Page 11

City Councillors Want Treason Trials Moved

(Rec. 8 p.m.) JOHANNESBURG, December 22. Johannesburg City Councillor are pressing to have the Court hearing against 152 people held on allegations of treason, transferred to some other centre when they resume on January 9.

There was violence for the third day running yesterday outside the Johannesburg Drill Hall. The case is being heard there because the Magistrate’s Court is too small. The hearing was adjourned yesterday. A number of City Councillors have decided to apply pressure to have an emergency meeting of the council, possibly on Christmas Eve. to consider having the cases moved elsewhere.

The Johannesburg morning newspaper. the “Rand Daily Mail,” said that the people of Johannesburg “have had one of the most unpleasant weeks in the history of the city and we think that it is now their turn to voice their protest.”

“The people of Johannesburg now have every right to hold this examination elsewhere. Pretoria and Bloemfontein both seem eminently suitable.” Another Arrest Later today, the number held on allegations of treason rose to 153 when a leading member of the South African Youth Congress appeared before the Magistrate’s Court in Johannesburg.

He is Abednego Bekabantu Ngcobo, a former president of the Students' Representative Council (non-white section) of the University of Natal. No evidence was given and the case was adjourned until December 24. Defence counsel said that an urgent application for bail would be made today.

At yesterday’s brief session, Mr A. I. Maisels. Q.C., one of the counsel for the defence, expressed appreciation of the efforts made by the Johannesburg Magistrates and members of their staffs and of the police, who facilitated the release on bail last night of all the treason suspects. Mr J. C. van Niekerk, law adviser to the police and who is leading for the Crown, then resumed his address to the Court.

He said that the National Action Council of the Congress of the People (a multi-racial organisation with Leftist views) advocated the establishment of a democratic State on the principles advocated by the Communists.

The congress claimed that South Africa was a Fascist police State, and it wanted the capitalists to have no

say in the rule of the country, he said.

“The basis of a high treason charge would be incitement preparatory to the overthrow of the existing State by revolutionary methods involving violence, and the establishment of a socalled people’s democracy on the basis of the Eastern European Communist satellite State and China.” Mr van Niekerk then quoted from certain alleged statements made by the accused. He. did not specify when or where they were made.

One statement said that the time for speeches was now past and the people were ready for action.

Another said: “We must smash this Fascist monster.”

A third statement said that the congress wanted money to buy machineguns to defend themselves. A fourth said that the “oppressed” people of the world were on the march and the Dutch (meaning Afrikaners) “must be killed.”

Mr van Niekerk said that another statement referred to the people of Israel, Egypt, and Cyprus fighting for their freedom, and said: “Why cannot we? It does not matter whether we die.” Outside Assistance A speaker had suggested that if the masses went over to the struggle they would get assistance from the outside, particularly from behind the Iron Curtain and from the Bandung Conference countries.

Earlier Mr van Niekerk had referred to an oath taken by “so-called freedom volunteers” pledging to fight apartheid (segregation of the races) and to die if necessary in doing so. An example of incitement to revolution was a statement that “we must fight the Nationalists’ (the National Party, which is in . power in South Africa) at sea, on land, and in the air.” he said.

At the national provincial conference of the African National Congress in July last it was said that the Nationalist Government could only be defeated and the country liberated by extra-Parliamentary action, said Mr van Niekerk.