African Activist Archive

Fundraising mailing for the International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa (IDAF) discusses brutality by the South African Police, including interrogations, torture, beating, and deaths. IDAF is working to protect those who are imprisoned and brutally ill-treated because of their belief in a free South Africa. Donald Woods, a newspaper editor in South Africa, talks of what he learned from his friendship with the black activist Steve Biko. The mailing says IDAF was formed to provide legal defense for people arrested in the nonviolent Defiance of Unjust Laws campaign in the 1950s and to aid their families. It also defended Nelson Mandela and 155 other defendants in the Treason Trial of 1956-1961. IDAF has defended thousands of political prisoners--not only in South Africa but also in Namibia and Rhodesia before it became Zimbabwe. The mailing says well over 10,000 children have been detained by the security forces. South Africa leads the world in capital punishment; in 1987 the regime hanged some 160. Woods also discusses the February 1988 effective banning of 17 anti-apartheid organizations as well as the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and tightening censorship of the news media. There is now a ban on all uncensored news about police violence, boycotts, demonstrations, and all other forms of resistance. The mailing says in December 1986 the regime detained Zwelakhe Sisulu, the editor of the newspaper New Nation; Sisulu is still behind bars. The mailing discusses Richard Attenborough's film Cry Freedom, President Reagan, the State of Emergency, the Sharpeville Six, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the Committee for the Defense of Democracy.

African Activist Archive

A LETTER FROM DONALD WOODS

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