African Activist Archive

This funding appeal for the International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa (IDAF) focuses on the impact of South Africa's State of Emergency on children, who constitute about two-thirds of the thousands of people detained under the State of Emergency. Sixteen months before the Emergency, 973 children were in South African prisons, 570 of whom had not yet been charged; in 1974 more than 3,400 children were jailed with their mothers. The mailing says, on August 25, Bishop Tutu's son Trevor was arrested after he commented on the young age of some of the 300 Soweto schoolchildren who were charged for failing to attend class. On September 6, the authorities reacted to the grievances of students in the Cape Town area by shutting down 450 "Coloured" schools and colleges, preventing about 350,000 students from attending school. Information about unrest and public violence is being controlled by police public-relations officials; journalists are being prosecuted, expelled from the country, and sometime attacked by police. IDAF has set up a special fund to meet emergency needs of detained children and their families. The mailing discusses Phillip Dhlamini, Mita Ngubeni, Fannie Goduka, the KwaThema ghetto, sten guns, and school boycotts. The mailing includes an excerpt from an article "Toddler shot as bitterness grows" from the Johannesburg Star, airmail edition, October 7, 1984.

African Activist Archive

CHILDREN'S EMERGENCY IN SOUTH AFRICA

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