TWO ALEXANDER WITNESSES
HOUNDED IN SOUTH AFRICA
Two Coloured witnesses in the case of Dr. Neville Alexander and ten others have been served with banning orders by South African authorities in Capetown.
The two are Cyril Wallace Jacobs, 26, a school teacher, and Yusuf Lucas, 22, labourer, .
Both men were called by the prosecution as witnesses in. the famous Alexander case. Both of them refused to testify.
The police retaliated by later arresting them and charging them with "sabotage." However the charges were withdrawn last May and the two victims were released,
Under the banning orders, which are valid for five years, ‘the two men are prohibited from attending any meetings whatsoever, including social gatherings, | . In addition, Lucas is confined to the magisterial district of the Cape and Jacobs to the. magisterial district of Wynberg.,
Lucas must report to the police at Caledon Square every Monday, Jacobs must. report. similarly every Monday to the Lans= downe police,
The vindictivétiess of the South African | authorities went | beyond even these reprisals in the case of Jacobs, Last summer he was offered a post as teacher at a Coloured secondary school at Bonteheuwel, The Department of Coloured Affairs refused to allow. him to take up the appointment,
The Alexander case, in which the government sought to force the two nen to testify against the defendants, began last November, The eleven defendants, all of whom were Coloured, were charged with "sabotage." Their real “crime" was political opposition to the fascist-like apartheid policy of the Verwoerd government,
The trial received sensational treatment in the South “African press. Books taken from Dr. Alexander's private library were read into the court record as "evidence."" The books included such well-known works as Che Guevara's treatise on guerrilla warfare, writings by Mao Tse-tung, by Lenin and by Karl Marx,
The eleven defendants. were found guilty and sentenced last April 15 to sentences ranging from ten to five years, Four of the defendants were women, All of them were quite youthful,
The six men were sent to Robben Island, South Africats version of a Nazi concentration camp, There they have been sub jeoted to infamous indignities and manhandled by prison guards. Dr,
Alexander, one of South Africa's outstanding intellectuals, suf~ fered injuries in one of his eardrums when he refused to do the “Tauza dance," a humiliating performance in which prisoners. must expose their sexual organs on pretext of being searched when they return from their dayts work in the prison's stone quarry.
An Alexander Defence Committee has been organized in England to seek funds for an appeal and to help the families of the prison ers, Inquiries about this can be sent to Mrs. Connie Kirkby, 27 Thursley House, Holmewood Gardens, London, S.W.2.
KIDNAP CARS "