S.A. censors ban record

Press, 13 June 1984, Page 35

S.A. censors ban record

NZPA-AFP Johannesburg

South African censors have banned a British hit record because it is dedicated to Nelson Mandela, the jailed leader of the antiapartheid African National Congress. The decision to ban the record by the group Specials AKA came almost 20 years to the day after Mr Mandela was jailed for life plus five years for his activities on behalf of the A.N.C.

The record featured on the weekly list of writings, recordings and articles considered undesirable by the Government’s Board of Publications, along with Leon Trotsky’s “History of the Russian Revolution.” T-shirts inscribed “No to the War in Namibia,” the latest edition of Namibia’s “Windhoek Observer” weekly newspaper, and a series of allegedly pornor A

graphic cards from the United States.

The law forbids the quotation of any statement by Mr Mandela, aged 65, the former A.N.C. secretarygeneral, who was jailed for "terrorism” on June 12, 1964, or even the publication of his photograph. For the last 20 years his wife, Winnie, has also been under successive “banning” orders, and is forbidden to leave the town of Brandford in the Orange Free State without special permission or to receive more than one visitor at a time.

South African censorship is more active in stamping on any propaganda on behalf of the A.N.C.. whose armed wing has recently stepped up sabotage attacks in its efforts to end white minority rule in South Africa.

Last year two black reg-

gae musicians were jailed for four years for publicly singing a song glorifying Steve Biko, the leader of the “Black Consciousness” movement, who died in the hands of the police in 1977.

A black mechanic was given 18 months jail for scratching A.N.C. slogans on the mug he used in his factory tea-break. Numerous other opponents of apartheid, including journalists, university teachers and clergy, have been charged and often imprisoned for possession of banned literature dealing with the A.N.C., its offshot the Pan-African Congress and the underground South African Communisty Party. In 1983, 51 per cent of publications submitted to the publications board were declared undesirable in South Africa as potentially harmful to the security of the State.