Mass Trials in South Africa

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28159, 24 December 1956, Page 10

Mass Trials in South Africa

Recent events in Johannesburg have not relieved misgivings in the free world about the South African Government’s recourse to mass arrests. The problems which a mixed population impose on the South African Government are difficult and heavy; they cannot be denied or glossed over by the strongest critics of apartheid. But the arbitrary powers with which the South African Government has buttressed its apartheid policy have been viewed with deep concern in the outside world; this concern must be deepened by what appears to be a harsh use of these powers. The arrest of more than 150 persons was puzzling and extraordinary. They were arrested in various parts of the Union and taken to Johannesburg and detained there to await a mass trial. The arrested persons include Europeans, Africans, and Indians. The charges brought against them are variants on the general theme of disaffection. In most cases, there is a charge of high treason, and the Suppression of Communism Act and the Riotous Assemblies Act are also cited. The two acts cast their net very wide. The Suppression of Communism Act is the measure passed by the Malan Government in 1950, which not merely made the Communist Party an illegal organisation but empowered a Minister to name any person as a Communist and to impose severe civil disabilities upon him. Of the Riotous Assemblies Act, a South African judge said, when delivering a judgment, that it was directed not against offences committed but to “ restraining a man “from committing a crime he may “ commit but has not yet committed, “or doing some act . . . which he “ may do but has not yet done ”. Speaking of the first-mentioned act, Chief Justice Centlivres acknowledged that, even if the Minister was honestly mistaken in making an order against such a person, it would be useless for the victim to [come to the courts for aid. Acting-

Chief Justice Stratford observed that by the second act Parliament deprived a person of the right of being adequately heard in his defence and of facing and crossexamining his accusers, and established the supremacy of the law made by Parliament over the rule of “ natural justice Treason is more broadly defined in South Africa than elsewhere in the Commonwealth where legal procedure is usually hedged about with safeguards for the accused. In South Africa it need amount to no more than preparing, with a hostile intent, to disturb the State, and the accused may be denied trial by jury. Among the persons arrested there may, therefore, be some who have done nothing that would be regarded as criminal elsewhere. Obviously a successful defence against such broadly-framed charges will not be easy—as the legislation clearly intended. It would not be useful to speculate about the charges, which imply a widespread conspiracy against which the South African Government felt compelled to take dramatic and drastic action. But this may be said: the proceedings in the courts will be watched vigilantly by all who care for civil liberty. The “ Economist ” has observed, that whether the accused have in fact transgressed the law will be the main issue in South Africa; but to many in the world at large the issue will be whether such laws, so applied to such persons, can be regarded as law in any sense understood by a free and civilised community, or whether they are the instruments of a police State. The mass arrests and mass trials have certainly opened South African law and legal proceedings to world scrutiny.