Black found hanged in S.A. police cell

Press, 10 August 1982, Page 8

Black found hanged in S.A. police cell

NZPA Johannesburg A black man charged under South Africa's security laws had been found hanged in his cell, at Johannesburg police the police said yesterday. The victim, Ernest Dipale. was believed to be the forty-< seventh person to die in police custody under the South African Government's sweeping security laws- since 1963. All the victims have been black except Dr Neil Aggett, a white organiser for black . trade unions, who Was found hanged in his cell at the same police station in February. Dipale, aged 21,. was found

hanging from a strip of ..blanket at the,.John Vorster Square police-office at 12.13 a.m. (2.13 pin; Sunday, N.Z. . time), a day before he was to appear in court on the charge, a police spokesman said. The Acting Police Commissioner -(Mr Johan Coetzee) had ordered an investigation, of the death. • Dipale had been arrested on Thursday and formally charged. But the spokesman said he did not know where Dipale was from, or the reason for his arrest under the Internal Security Act. The act, first passed in 1950 as the Suppression of Communism Act. was renamed in 1976 and broadened

to cover organisations and individuals who engage in activities which endanger the security of the State or the maintenance of public order.

The act authorises detention without charge, as, well as the banning of individuals and ■ organisations, with no right to a court appeal. Another security detainee at John Vorster, a "26-year-old black union organiser. Erie Mntonga, had been admitted to a city hospital last week after apparently taking an overdose of sleeping pills, the “Sunday Express” newspaper reported. Mntonga apparently had been suffering psychiatric problems after his eight months in detention.