African Activist Archive

This fundraising mailing for the International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa (IDAF) says apartheid is the worst form of institutionalized racism since Nazi Germany that strips the majority of those living in South Africa and Namibia of every basic right. The mailing reports on the adoption of a new Constitution in 1984 that entrenches the disenfranchisement of 72% of the population. In places like Thembisa, Soweto, Sebokeng, and Sharpeville, thousands of South Africans rose up in protest; they have been met with police violence and arrest. Detentions of political dissidents have more than doubled over 1983. For more than 30 years, IDAF has provided support to political prisoners and their families. In IDAF's most notable success, all 156 defendants in South Africa's most notorious treason trial, which ended in 1961, all were acquitted thanks to IDAF's legal defense. In 1984 the South African government began another big treason trial, a "show trial" expected to last 18 months. The mailing includes quotes Bishop Desmond Tutu.

African Activist Archive

[Dear Friend, Heads of state and church leaders world-wide have attacked it.]

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