Demonstrations in South Africa

Major demonstrations were held on main South African campuses on 11 May.

The demonstrations took the form of campus rallies, picketings and the boycotting of classes. They were organised as the result of an appeal by the National Union of South African Students to protest the continued detention of 22 black African political prisoners.

The prisoners, members of the banned African National Congress (ANC), had first been arrested in May 1969; they later appeared in court charged with violation of the Government's all-purpose Suppression of Communism Act. The 22 Africans, including the wife of jailed ANC leader Nelson Mandela, were acquitted, then immediately detained again under the Terrorism Act. It is this legal instrument of indefinite detention of mere suspects (technically for 90-day periods, but re-arrest is automatic) that NUSAS has consistently attacked.

The May 11 protests took the form of campus rallies, picketings and the boycotting of classes in universities in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and elsewhere. One of the most politically active campuses was the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Four members of the Wits Faculty of Law issued a strong statement charging that the Terrorism Act gave security police higher authority than the courts of law. They can make detentions simply on the initiative of a senior police officer. This inspired a number of students to carry placards reading, "Let Judges Be the Judge" and "Charge or Release."

The original purpose of the May 11 demonstrations was broadened to include expressions of "deep sympathy" with colleagues of the four students killed at Kent State University in Ohio (US). The decision to condemn the use of armed force "against the peaceful anti-war demonstrations" in the US was taken at a special meeting of the Students representative Council (SRC) of Witwatersrand University on May 5, just one day after the Kent campus shootings, Both the SRC and NUSAS cabled messages of sympathy and solidarity to Kent State University.

The Waits students scheduled a second series of protests for the following week, May 18. On the eve of the march, at midnight, permission for the second series was denied. Some 2,000 students gathered on the Wits campus in the morning to decide how to react to the court ban. The majority chose to comply with the order, but nearly 400 went ahead with the protests in defiance of the ban. Police intervened, arrested and fingerprinted hundreds of students, then released them. But a police spokesman announced that 357 of the students would be formally charged under the Riotous Assemblies Act. All subsequent requests for permission to demonstrate in protest against the latest incidents have thus far been turned down by the Johannesburg municipal authorities.

On May 20, more than 2,000 students in Durban held a meeting to discuss new tactics of peaceful protest. Out of this gathering-one of the largest seen in South Africa for several years—came the idea of a house-to-house campaign to build up support for "the right of non-violent protest." The so-called "doorstep" campaign involved hundreds of individual Durban students. At the University of Cape Town students staged a teach-in on the theme of "democracy and dissent."