IMPRISONMENT FOR NELSON MANDELA AND HIS COMRADES
World-wide pressure probably induced Judge Quartus de Wet not to condemn Nelson Mandela and seven other defendants to hanging after they were convicted June il at the trial that began last October in Pretoria, But the sentence passed the following day by the judge «= life imprisonment for all these voices of South Africats oppressed and persecuted 15,500,000 nonwhites ~~ may amount to slow death in the prisons that are organized in Hitlerite style, The pressure for their release, and the release of some 1,500 other political prison= ers, must be kept up on an international scale,
The eight heroic opponents of South Africa's racist apartheid policy were Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Dennis Goldberg, Govan Mbeki, Ramond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi, Andrew Mlangeni and Ahmed Muhammad Kathrada,
A ninth defendant, Lionel Bernstein, was found not guilty by the judge. The police at once arrested him, What "crimes" he might have committed besides being found innocent were not disclosed,
Under the fascist-like laws which the defendants were aocused of breaking, the judge's task was not difficult, The defendants admitted their guilt on some of the counts brought against them, They defended their acts as being the only possible response under the intolerable conditions imposed on their people by the government of 3,500,000 whites that has banned all those born with a colored skin from any participation or representation in government,
The defendants appealed for revolution against the herrenvolk government and proudly proclaimed what they had done in seeking to organize guerrilla warfare and an eventual armed rebellion,
Mandela took the lead in this by frankly stating that he was one of the founders of Umkonto we Sizwe [Spear of the Nation], the fighting organization, and that he was deputy president of the African National Congress, Yes, he said, he toured South Africa soliciting funds for these “subversive” organizations and he helped to arrange for military training for recruits and underwent military training himself,
On April 20 Mandela made a powerful speech in court entitled "Why I Am Ready to Die." [See World Outlook May 1 for extensive excerpts,] He began as a believer in nonviolence, he said, but the South African government, by closing all democratic means of chang-~ ing the political and social order, had compelled him to recognize
that only by the use of armed force will it be possible for Africans to break the racist chains that have. been heaped upon- them, "The fight which held out the best prospects for us and the least risk of life to both sides was guerrilla warfare,"
The savage sentences metcd out to these political prisoners will undoubtedly help convince an entire new generation of youth in. South Africa of the correctness of Mandela's conclusions about the | kind of struggle needed to win freedom,
DENNIS BRUTUS TRANS FERRED TQ ROBBEN ISLAND
‘South Africa's Minister of “Justice B.J.Vorster has revealed that one of the country's internationally known political prisoners,