This is SOUTH AFRICA

(Political prisoners breaking rocks on Robben Island)

"R. B. I. is referred to as Hell Head Quarters and that if they survive this ordeal one must expect other place like Hell. Only Robben Island is such a place."

— Smuggled from Robben Island

Here, on South Africa's "Devil's Island," more than a thousand political prisoners are delivered over to the unrestrained aggression of sadistic guards and warders. Here, beatings, assaults, humiliation, and solitary confinement constitute men's daily lives. Typical of reports from Robben Island is this sworn statement of a former inmate:

"One hot afternoon the agricultural span (team) was working near us. Minor assaults took place often so we did not take notice when a warder started to hit one of the prisoners, but then we saw that he was being buried in a hole up to his neck. He called for water, for as usual not enough water had been brought. One of us walked across to give him water but before he got there P (a warder) began to 'make water' into the man's mouth."

The condition of these prisoners is symbolic of the fate of all of South Africa's thirteen million Non-Whites. Africans are deprived of all political rights. They are barred from land ownership except in the small, infertile portions of the country set aside as "native reserves." Driven from the land, they are brutally exploited on the farms and in the mines and cities. They are denied the right to move freely within the country. In the Transkei—called a "Bantu homeland" by the ideologues of apartheid—Africans can be arrested and detained indefinitely at the whim of police officials.

Africans are prisoners in their own land.

issued by: ALEXANDER DEFENSE COMMITTEE

(Over)

And anyone, Black, White, Coloured, or Indian, who opposes the oppression will be persecuted by harassment, banning, imprisonment, or death. Thousands of men and women are in the concentration camps of South Africa, convicted of "sabotage," because they raised their voices against the apartheid tyranny; scores have been hanged for political "crimes"; thousands of others have been held without charges in police stations throughout the country, often in solitary confinement and often subjected to tortures.

Dr. Neville Alexander, a brilliant young Coloured scholar, and ten of his comrades are now serving sentences ranging from five to ten years on Robben Island. Their crime, "sabotage": they had begun to organize study groups to consider possible ways of conducting the struggle against apartheid. For this they were condemned, although the state admitted that they had committed no act of violence, nor even planned one. All appeals to higher courts have been denied and it is quite possible that, under South Africa's barbarous re-arrest laws, they will simply be returned to prison without a trial, after their formal sentences have been served, and detained for an indeterminate period.

Mr. Leo L. Sihlali and Mr. Louis Mtshizana have fought the tyranny politically for many years in the ranks of the Unity Movement of South Africa. Mr. Sihlali is a former teacher who, because of his opposition to the implementation of "Bantu education" and his leading role in the Cape African Teachers Association, was discharged from his teaching position in 1955 and black-listed. Mr. Mtshizana is a lawyer who defended hundreds of individuals charged with political offenses, thereby incurring the displeasure of the authorities. After a decade of intense persecution and after their careers had been wrecked, Mr. Sihlali and Mr. Mtshizana were sentenced to Robben Island for two and a half and four and a half years, respectively, for "attempting to leave South Africa without valid documents." No further legal steps are possible. Money is needed to help their destitute families and to publicize their cause in order to exert pressure on the authorities so that they will not be held indefinitely after they have completed their sentences.

The above cases are only representative: apartheid "justice" strikes down many of the best . . . And not only these brave men and women already imprisoned but the great number who will follow them into the dungeons of South Africa must have the assurance that their families will be cared for and that their plight and their emancipatory struggle will not be forgotten. International action must continue until they and the thousands of other political prisoners in South Africa are once again free to live in dignity and to work for a new and better South Africa; until Africans are no longer prisoners in their own country.

### OFFICERS

PAUL B. BOUTELLE

CARL OGLESBY

Co-Chairmen

ROBERT H. LANGSTON

Executive Secretary

BERTA GREEN

Corresponding Secretary

DAVE DELLINGER

Treasurer

### SPONSORS

James Aronson

Kay Boyle

Carl and Anne Braden

Calif. Assemblyman Willie L. Brown

John Henrik Clarke

Congressman John Conyers, Jr.

Mich Senator Roger Craig

Rev. Henry H. Crane

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Dorothy Day

James Forman

Rabbi Leon Fram

Rev. Stephen H. Fritchman

Maxwell Geismar

Carl Haessler

Vincent Hallinan

Nat Hentoff

Rev. Charles A. Hill

Prof. H. Stuart Hughes

Dr. Horace M. Kallen

John O. Killens

William M. Kunstler

Sidney Lens

Walter Lowenfels

Prof. Staughton Lynd

Floyd McKissick

Jane McManus

Rev. Wm. Howard Melish

Prof. Hans J. Morganthau

Rev. A. J. Muste

Rev. Reinhold Niebuhr

Prof. Conor Cruise O'Brien

Prof. Linus Pauling

Prof. Sidney M. Peck

Robert Scheer

Peter Seeger

Prof. J. David Singer

Dr. Paul M. Sweezy

Dr. Willard Uphaus

Daniel H. Watts

Dr. Howard Zinn

To: Alexander Defense Committee
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