This Unlock Apartheid's Jails campaign mailing discusses repatriation of the thousands of South Africans opposed to apartheid who went into exile during the past three decades to avoid imprisonment, torture and assassination. Until recently, the government has allowed only selective amnesties for exiles who wish to return, and even then only if their crime was that of leaving the country illegally. In August, a long-overdue agreement was reached between the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the South African government allowing for the voluntary repatriation of an estimated 40,000 South African political exiles and refugees, and the UNHCR was given permission to establish...
This Unlock Apartheid's Jails campaign mailing discusses repatriation of the thousands of South Africans opposed to apartheid who went into exile during the past three decades to avoid imprisonment, torture and assassination. Until recently, the government has allowed only selective amnesties for exiles who wish to return, and even then only if their crime was that of leaving the country illegally. In August, a long-overdue agreement was reached between the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the South African government allowing for the voluntary repatriation of an estimated 40,000 South African political exiles and refugees, and the UNHCR was given permission to establish an office in South Africa to oversee and process the returning exiles for the next twelve months. In spite of such a seemingly giant step forward, there is much less to applaud then one might hope; Foreign Minister Pik Botha cautioned that what Pretoria was agreeing to was not a general amnesty "in the usual sense of the word." The mailing discusses the African National Congress (ANC), the National Coordinating Committee for Repatriation, revelations of South African manipulation of the Namibian elections, a "Memorandum of Understanding," and Sipho Sithole.
