Mandela loses case to go home

Press, 15 January 1986, Page 6

Mandela loses case to go home

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg The South African Supreme Court has rejected an application by the black activist, Winnie Mandela, against a Government banning order which forbids her to live at her home in Soweto. Mrs Mandela was granted leave to appeal. “The matter in issue here is a matter of personal freedom of the individual... a very important principle,” Judge Louis le Grange said. Mrs Mandela, wife of the jailed African National Congress leader, Nelson Mandela, was not in court. She is hiding from the news media somewhere outside Johannesburg. The official order bars her from Johannesburg or nearby Roodepoort. It was Mrs Mandela’s first legal challenge to Government restrictions, a series of which have been imposed on her since 1962 to prevent her from taking part in politics. In the last few months she has become more outspoken in her opposition to the Government. Last month the authorities relaxed an order which had limited her to a remote township near Brandfort in the Orange Free State since 1977, but they still barred her from Johannesburg. She has been arrested twice for alleged violation of the new banning order by being in Soweto, and is due in court to face charges on January 22. At present she is on bail. Banning is designed to silence political opponents without putting them in jail. Banned people are usually not allowed to meet more than one person at a time and cannot normally be quoted in the news media.