From Our Archives
(1966)
Historic Documents of the anti-apartheid
struggle
durinf the 1960s
Presented
by
Franz J. T. Lee
International
Socialist Review, Summer 1966
The Alexander
Defense Committee (ADC) Under Attack
By: Robert Langston
From
International
Socialist Review,
Vol.27 No.3, Summer 1966, pp.107-108.
Transcribed &
marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Alexander Defense
Committee, an organization providing funds for legal defense and family
relief to persecuted opponents of the racist South African regime, has
been ordered by the US Justice Department to register as an “agent of a
foreign principal” under the provisions of the Foreign Agents
Registration Act of 1938.
Civil liberties attorney Stanley
Faulkner, who has been retained as counsel, has advised the Committee
to ignore the order, as the Act is not applicable to it, and he has so
informed the Justice Department.
In a letter to President Johnson,
A.D.C. officers Paul Houtelle, Robert H. Langston, Berta Green and Dave
Dellinger requested that he order the Justice Department to stop this
harassment. As Chief Executive, the President is responsible for the
conduct of the Justice Department. The letter points out the A.D.C. is
a purely American organization, having no “agency agreement” with
anyone, which decides for itself what cases it will support on a basis
of specific pleas for aid. The organization has no salaried personnel,
and every cent collected above minimal operating expenses is sent to
the victims of apartheid barbarism. In a speech Johnson made on May
26th at a White House reception commemorating the third anniversary of
the Organization of African Unity, Johnson pledged the people and the
government of the United States to the cause of the peoples of Africa
in their efforts to win “freedom, equality, justice and dignity.” He
expressed “repugnance” at “the outmoded policy which in some parts of
Africa permits the few to rule at the expense of the many” and declared:
“Just as we are determined to remove
the remnants of inequality from our own midst, we are also with you –
heart and soul – as you try to do the same.” He further promised that
“we shall continue to provide our full share of assistance to refugees
from social and political oppression.”
Citing Johnson’s speech, the letter
states that “we take the sentiment you expressed with utmost
seriousness.” It then asks:
“But how can the people of Africa, or
the people of America, believe that you do likewise when, at the very
moment you were uttering these things, your Department of Justice was
moving to harass an American organization devoted to translating into
reality, in whatever limited way, these very principals.”
The letter recalls that a short time
ago the Verwoerd government crushed Defense and Aid, the last
organization operating openly in South Africa to provide legal aid to
opponents of the regime, and affirms: “We trust you would not wish to
imitate Verwoerd by suppressing our organization.”
The organization that the Justice
Department is trying to stigmatize as a “foreign agent” was formed in
February 1965 in response to the persecution of Dr. Neville Alexander
and ten of his colleagues. Dr. Alexander is a young scholar who was the
first non-white South African to receive a Humboldt scholarship for
advanced study in West Germany. He was awarded a Ph.D. degree in German
literature by the University of Tuebingen in 1962 and, refusing offers
of academic posts in Europe and England, returned to South Africa to
become a high-school teacher. The Eleven were arrested in July 1963 and
sentenced to prison terms ranging from five to ten years. In reality,
they have been sentenced to indefinite terms, since under South African
law, a prisoner can be held after having served his sentence as long as
his further detention is deemed by the Minister of Justice to be in the
“interest of public order.” Dr. Alexander and his friends were never
accused of having committed, nor even having planned, any act of
violence. The prosecution sought to show only that they had formed
study groups to investigate possible ways of conducting the struggle
against apartheid and had read and discussed Marxist literature and
works on guerrilla warfare. Nor had any of the defendants a long
political past. Although Dr. Alexander had been active at the
University of Capetown in student groups affiliated to the Unity
Movement of South Africa, his initiative in forming the study groups
was his first act of political leadership. Dr. Alexander and the other
male defendants have been in the notorious Robben Island concentration
camp since 1963. Much of this time, Dr. Alexander was held in solitary
;onfinement, and he suffered a serious ear injury as a result of a
beating administered by sadistic guards. This is the “foreign
principal” whose “agent” the Justice Department alleges the A.D.C. to
be.
It is useless to speculate on the
easons for this attack on the Alexander Defense Committee. But that it
is an attack is certain. For if the officers, yielding to the threat of
five year prison sentences and fines of ten thousand dollars, should
comply with the order to register, they would be legally bound to hand
over to the Justice Department all records of the organization,
including lists of contributors. This would make the raising of funds
extraordinarily difficult.
The A.D.C. therefore cannot comply
with the Justice Department order. Under no circumstances would the
Committee commit the perjury that such compliance would necessarily
involve. Nor would it breach the trust of its contributors. And the
A.D.C. will certainly win a court battle if the Justice Department
pursues this matter further.
However a long legal struggle would
interfere seriously with the work of the committee. It would force it
to divert energy and, worse than that, funds, from its proper work to
the task of simple self-preservation.
Although no further legal steps are
possible in the Alexander case, the families of the Alexander Eleven
must be supported, as they were left destitute by the imprisonment of
their breadwinners. The case itself must continue to be publicized as
widely as possible. There are some 3,500 prisoners in South Africa who
have been convicted of political offenses; and there are an
incalculable number of others who are being held in police stations
throughout the “Native Reserves” under Proclamation 400, which allows
any policeman in the Reserves to arrest any African at any time and to
hold him indefinitely, incommunicado, without charges.
Need for Defense
These victims are mostly very poor,
and without help from abroad their families will, quite simply, starve.
There is a continuous stream of political exiles from South Africa who
need financial aid in relocating. And there are thousands still active
in the liberation struggle inside South Africa who may yet be arrested
and tried for their activities. They will need funds for legal defense,
and these funds must come from outside, since anyone within South
Africa who solicits money for the defense in political cases makes
himself liable to prosecution under the Suppression of Communism Act.
Typical of those who are being aided
by the A.D.C. are the following whose cases are sketched here briefly:
*
P. Gcabashe. Mr. Gcabashe is a sixty-year-old former teacher who,
shortly before he was due to retire, gave up his teaching position, and
thereby also his claim to a pension, to become a full time organizer
for the Unity Movement among the peasants in northern Natal Province.
In
December, 1964, Mr. Gcabashe was seized by the political police.
Frantic appeals by his wife to be informed of his whereabouts were
unanswered. Finally, in a letter which he was able to smuggle out, it
was learned that he was being held in a jail in Pondoland under
Proclamation 400. So far as is known, Mr. Gcabashe is still in prison.
It is unlikely that he will ever be tried in a regular court of law
where a legal defense would be possible. His family lacks any form of
support.
*
Leo Sihlali and Louis Mtshizana. Mr. Sihlali is a teacher who was
fired and black-listed for his leadership in opposition to the “Bantu
Education” scheme, whereby the South African regime hopes to fragment
the African community through re-tribalization. Mr. Mtshizana is a
lawyer who has defended hundreds of persons accused of political
offenses. Over the years, they have been subjected to relentless
persecution. After Mr. Sihlali was fired from his teaching post, he was
hounded from town to town, everywhere refused a residence permit and
always prevented by the police from finding a job. Mr. Mtshizana has
been framed on a weapons possession charge, although he was finally
acquitted. He has been convicted of “seeking to defeat the ends of
justice” for advising some school boys charged under the Suppression of
Communism Act of their constitutional right to refuse to testify
against themselves.
In
July, 1963, Mr. Mtshizana was banned for five years. Mr. Sihlali was
served with similar banning orders in March, 1964 and, in addition, was
placed under house arrest. In April, 1964, both men were convicted of
violating the Suppression of Communism Act and of seeking to leave
South Africa without valid documents. Both are now in the Robben Island
concentration camp. The families of both victims need help urgently.
Mr. Sihlali is the father of four children, and Mr. Mtshizana of three.
Mrs. Sihlali was subjected to bitter persecution after Mr. Sihlali’s
conviction, and her friends have recently lost all contact with her.
New Tour Planned
In order to raise funds to aid such
victims, the Alexander Defense Committee seeks to awaken the American
people to the realities of the South African situation. In 1965, the
A.D.C. brought I.B. Tabata to the United States for a national lecture
tour. Mr. Tabata, who is now in exile in Zambia, is one of the most
prominent of the South African liberation leaders and is currently
president of the Unity Movement of South Africa and of the African
Peoples Democratic Union of Southern Africa.
The Committee has invited Mr. Franz
J.T. Lee to come to the United States for a similar tour during the
late summer and early fall of this year. ... Franz Lee who
is a close personal friend of Neville Alexander, is secretary of the
German Alexander Defense Committee and European representative of the
African Peoples Democratic Union of Southern Africa. He has written
extensively and lectured throughout Europe on South African affairs.
Funds are urgently needed to carry on
the work of the committee and to counter the attack on it by the
Justice Department. All queries and contributions should be addressed
to the Alexander Defense Committee, 873 Broadway 2nd Floor South, New
York, N.Y. 10003.
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isr/vol27/no03/langston.html
home
