REPORTS OF SOUTH AFRICAN PRISON CONDITIONS - [In a special story to the New York Times, sent from Johannesburg, October 28, Robert Conley offers a vivid description of prison conditions in South Africa which confirms the stories that have been seeping out of this fascist-like land into less prominent organs of the world press. Because of its interest, we offer extensive extracts below, Asterisks indicate omissions, -- Editor, ]
There are few midnight knocks on the door by the Security Police in South Africa, Sometimes there is only the late afternoon ringing of the telephone. In an age of increasing mechanization, it is easier for the Security Police to phone a political suspect to tell him that he is wanted . for questioning than it is to go to his home. If he is not there, the message is left with his wife, "Your husband is to-report to Caledon Square at 7 P.M.," one woman was told in Capetown, Her husband went to the Security Police headquarters on the square, and he never returned. Few do.-
He became one of the 320 or more South Africans, aged 17 to 83, who
2 O= have been held, in solitary confinement throughout the country for alleged political activities against the state. and its racial policies,
Since the first suspects were seized in May, these "detainees" have become South Africa's "forgotten men." A ban has been placed on all information about them, . Some have. been confined in solitary rooms and cells for five and a half months, beyond the reach of the courts,. their lawyers and their , churches, No one knows how many have been held "for interrogation" that long, except the Government. As far as the rest of South Africa is concerned, all of those detained are out of sight, as if they had vanished _from the face of the earth, . The law that permits such detentions ‘is. aimed at ; eliminating the threat of "Communism," .
Under South African law, "Communism" can mean almost anything that. is opposed to the Government's policy of apartheid, or “apartness," which decrees that the country!s 3,250,000 whites must be separated racially, ~physically and geographically . from its. 1s, 815, ,000 Africans, Asians and mixedeblood "coloreds,'
One African told of being locked: in a black-walled room for: four weeks, never knowing whether it was night or day. His sole contact:with the outside world, in his words, was the "keyhole in the door,"
- Throughout his waking hours he peered through it, he said, and his only clock was the plate of corn meal mush brought to. him at breakfast, lunch and dinner. tees
- Unlike regular prisoners convicted of specific offenses, the ‘persons detained cannot have visitors, reading matter, cigarettes, clean clothes or even a bath, unless the Security Police permit it, “In the eyes of the police, the detainees are non=people," remarked one South African lawyer.
Wellington Sikiti, 18, a Johannesburg student, said that he was not allowed to take.a bath and was not given clean clothes during the, entire ~ 87 days of his solitary confinement at the Ferndale police station near here, The Security Police, he.said, would. only permit him to use the out~ side faucet at the station house.
"All I could do was splash my face with | a little cold water, the added, “My body was filthy and I felt like an animal. u
Immediately after his release, the youth fled to the neighboring British protectorate of Bechuanaland,
Those detained are deprived of the vights of even a common thief, South Africats Criminal code stipulates that no prisoner can. be put into solitary for more than two days a week, The Code does not apply to detainees, They are political suspects. Prison authorities have absolutely no say in how they are treated, Only the Security Police decide that.
They are not even prisoners. They are not arrested, They are "detained," Few charges are brought against them, None need be, They are in a singular world that lies beyond the normal concepts of law.
The sole purpose of their detention is interrogation, They can be held without trial until they answer all questions to the satisfaction of the Security Police,
In the words of South Africats Minister of Justice, Balthazer J. Vorster, the detainees can be held for questioning up to "this side of eternity." ss
This situation is a result of the General Law Amendment Act of 1963, known as the "No trial" Act. It gives the Government of Prime Minister Hendrik F. Verwoerd the strongest political police powers ever in South Africa in peacetime,
Any commissioned South African police officer is empowered by the Act to detain without trial for successive 90-day periods any person he "suspects" may have committed certain political offenses. The officer can hold the individual for indefinite interrogation | "at any place he may think fit" even on the suspicion that the person is "in possession of any information" about political offenses,
The Act has ended the political suspect's right of habeas corpus =~ a right that had existed in South Africa for three centuries and which required that a prisoner be brought before a court to decide the legality of his imprisonment or detention.
The Act has also invaded for the first time in South Africa's history the sanctity of the lawyer's chamber, the religious confessional and the press. : Any lawyer, clergyman or journalist can be detained if a police - officer “believes" that he has obtained confidential information about political offenses.
‘The individuals detained, themselves, are denied the right of refuse ing to answer questions that might tend to incriminate them. They either answer or they are held, x ++
[Dr. Verwoerd argues that South Africats whites are locked in a "struggle for survival" and that the Act is needed to confine persons deemed likely to commit "sabotage," endanger the safety of the state, or advocate, advise, defend or encourage the achievement of "any of the objects of communism," ]
The Johannesburg Bar Council discounts the Government's explanations, It says that the detention powers are not intended to confine persons regarded as dangerous to the safety of the state, or to apprehend actual revolutionaries, but to permit a "police inquisition,"
That appears to apply in the case of Robert He Strachan, ST, a former art teacher at Port Elizabeth,
The Security Police removed him from a cell in the Pretoria local .jail, where he had been serving part of a six-year term on charges of con» spiring to carry out bombings. He was placed in solitary confinement as a detainee.
As a convict, Strachan had certain rights, protected by the penal
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m2Qe code, As a person. detained, he has no rights and the Security Police can do whatever they wish to him, free from any interference,
The main effect of the weeks of solitary confinement is mental torture. Those detained use that term to describe the sense of unending isolation, where there is no one to talk to and nothing to do,
To fill those moments, some of those held sit or sleep. Some stand and. walk around, counting their footsteps until the mind grows numb, Some jump up and down, A few scream, a few weep and others withdraw within themselves, —_ :
After five weeks in solitary, one African began to fear that the Security Police would move hin, "I was afraid that they would send me to another cell I did not know, ' ' he said, a
Most of the persons detained are held in police stations, rather than in jails and prisons. The rooms often measure no more than 8. by 14. feet. At Marshall Square, the Johannesburg police headquarters, several Africans said that they were kept in rooms with walls that were painted black or dark brown.
tA dim light was kept burning night and day," one man said, "The only windows were narrow slits high up near. the ceiling. You.could not. see out. The only way to reach the slits would have been with a ladder."
Sometimes. there is a mat on the floor to sleep on, a concrete slab — for a seat and a pail for a toilet, Sometimes there is less,
Prolonged interrogations to wear down a suspect apparently are infree quent. The Security Police appear to let the effects of solitary confine= ment do the work for them, They are said to act almost offnandedly toward those detained and usually confront them only once a week, If the suspect refuses to answer questions the usual reply from the police is said to be: "Well, see you next week," Hae
Mrs. Albertina Sisulu, 45, the wife of an African nationalist leader, spent seven weeks ina room that she said had a peep~hole in the door for’ the guards to keep watch,
tEyery. time I wanted to wash I had to cover the peepehole with a handkerchief," she said,
She was seized because the Security Police were seeking her husband, Walter M, Sisulu, the Secretary General of the African National Congress, who had gone into hiding, One of the Sisulust five children, Max, 17, was detained separately for 24 days for the same reason, He later fled to Bechuanaland, ih
Nearly all of the South African newspapers have given up trying to Keep a count of those detained, Their figures trailed off in mid-July when the total. was at 177 cases. Since then only scattered paragraphs have ‘appeared, noting that "five Africans" or "10 coloreds" were seized in a given part of the country. #%% .
Whatever the rest of the world thinks about the detentions and how= ever strong its condemnations, Mr. Vorster, the Justice Minister, has only one remark to make,
"The Government and the country," he says, “owe much to the police,"