Campaigner visits Mandela

Press, 4 July 1983, Page 10

Campaigner visits Mandela

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg The anti-apartheid campaigner, Helen Suzman, was quoted yesterday as saying that she had held uninhibited talks with the jailed black nationalist leader, Nelson Mandela, last week when they discussed his prison conditions. The “Johannesburg Star” newspaper reported that Ms Suzman, Opposition Parliamentary spokesman of prisons and civil rights, had visited Mandela and his right-hand man, Walter Sisulu, at Cape Town’s Pollsmoor prison after receiving information that conditions there were unsatisfactory. Mandela, the leader of the banned African National Congress, and Sisulu werd jailed for life in 1964 for sabotage and conspiring to overthrow South Africa’s white minority Government. Ms Suzman was quoted as saying that Pollsmoor had offered the men fewer facilities than their former prison on Robben Island, but the food there was better. “I had a 90-minute meeting with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and four other prisoners — all except one

of them jailed for life,” she told the “Star.”

“It was a very full and open discussion despite the fact that both the commander of Pollsmoor and the regional commander of prisons were present,” she said. “It is clear to me that Pollsmoor, as a closed maximum security prison as far as these prisoners are concerned, is less open and offers fewer opportunities than did Robben Island.” She said that the men were together in one large cell at Pollsmoor and added that she was not impressed with the structure of new single cells being built at the prison. “I hope to persuade the authorities to make changes,” said Ms Suzman, who has visied Mandela a number of times in recent years.

The Government has ordered Mandela’s wife, Winnie, confined to the remote Orange Free State town of Brandfort for a further five years, while State-imposed restrictions under which Sisulu’s wife Albertina had spent most of the last 18 years were removed.