M. P. Naicker
II. ACCOUNT OF THE CAMPAIGN
desperately trying to cut off the leadership of the ever-growing Defiance Campaign from the people. Meanwhile, the courts which, at the beginning of the campaign were
sentencing resisters to relatively short terms of imprisonment, began handing out maximum sentences in almost all the areas. In Port Elizabeth, a magistrate began sentencing youngsters under 21 to canings. Police treatment of spectators at resisters`
trials began to get rougher and there were many cases of men and women being injured as a result of police brutality. Reports from most prisons indicated that resisters were being singled out for extremely harsh treatment and forced to do the most back-breaking and menial jobs. A leader of one group of resisters in Brakpan was sentenced to three days of solitary confinement and spare diet in Boksburg gaol after he had given the Congress salute "Afrika!" in front of some warders. There were several reports of resisters being beaten up by prison warders. Despite this wave of intimidation and brutality, however, the campaign grew in momentum.
National Leaders Arrested
On August 26, exactly two months after the campaign had begun, and roughly three weeks after the massive police raids, twenty national leaders of the African National Congress and the Indian Congress and the youth movements of both these organisations, as well as the Chairman of the Transvaal Council of Non-European Trade Unions, were arrested and charged under Section 11 (b) of the Suppression of Communism Act. The leaders included: Dr. J.S. Moroka and Dr. Y.M. Dadoo, the Presidents of the ANC and the Indian Congress respectively; Nelson Mandela, President of the ANC Youth League;
Ahmad Kathrada, President of the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress; and James Phillips, the Coloured Chairman of the Transvaal Council of Non-European Trade Unions. They were accused of leading the Defiance Campaign which aimed at "bringing about a change in the industrial and social structure of the country through unconstitutional and illegal methods."
Unprecedented scenes greeted the opening of the court case. The magistrate had to adjourn the proceedings to enable Dr. Moroka and Dr. Dadoo to address the thousands of people who had jammed the courtroom, the corridors and the courtyard, singing national songs and giving the "Afrika!" salute. Both leaders urged the people to be silent so that the trial could proceed. The crowd responded by moving over to an open square across the road from the court where they held an all-day meeting. Far from slowing down the campaign, the arrest and trial of the leaders aroused greater interest and determination and over 600 volunteers courted imprisonment in the week following the arrest of the leaders.
By October, less than three months since the campaign had begun, over 5,000 volunteers had been imprisoned. All over the country, in the African townships, in the rural reserves, in Indian and Coloured areas, enthusiasm for the campaign had reached new heights. Meetings of the Congresses were drawing more and more people. There was a wave of national consciousness and national unity of all the oppressed, unprecedented in the history of the country. Leader writers in the white-owned English-language dailies,
who had attacked the campaign before it had begun, were grudgingly admitting that vast masses of the black people were supporting the Congresses and the Defiance Campaign.
Violence Breaks Out
It is at this precise moment, that which the leadership of the campaign feared most and constantly warned against, happened: riots broke out, first in New Brighton, Port
Elizabeth, and then in the southern Transvaal town of Denver, in Kimberley and East London. Immediately after the riots began in New Brighton township, Port Elizabeth, on the afternoon of October 18, 1952, Dr. J.L.Z. Njongwe, President of the Port Elizabeth Branch of the ANC, whose home was in New Brighton, called for a Judicial
Commission of Inquiry. This demand, which was supported by the National Executives of the ANC, the Indian Congress and many other organisations and leading individuals, both black and white, was rejected out of hand by the Government.
From independent reports received by the Congresses at the time, the following facts emerge:
First, the Port Elizabeth riots followed the death of an African shot by a railway policeman on the busy New Brighton railway station. The police later alleged that the dead African had stolen a pot of paint. Hearing the shot, people from the nearby New Brighton African location rushed to the scene. Learning that one of the residents had been shot dead, the people began stoning the station buildings. Police reinforcements, which had also arrived on the scene, opened fire on the people, killing seven persons. The people retreated from the station and in the rioting that followed, four whites were killed.
Second, the riots in Denver, Southern Transvaal, began when residents of the Denver African Hostel, who had refused to pay increased rentals - from 11 shillings to one pound - rushed at a tenant who tendered the full rental on November 3, 1952. When the tenant was taken into the municipal buildings for protection by the municipal police, the people stoned the building. The arrival of a large contingent of armed police forced the people back into the hostel. The police then hid behind protective barricades and fired into the hostel, killing three people and wounding four others.
Third, five days later, three youths who had been drinking beer at the Municipal African Beer Hall in No. 2 Location, Kimberley, are alleged to have shouted the Congress salute when they had finished their drink. They were ordered out of the hall.
They left and most of the other drinkers followed them out and congregated outside the beer hall. Some began stoning the hall. Police, heavily armed, arrived and instantly opened fire on the crowd. Thirteen Africans were killed and 78 injured.
Fourth, at East London, on November 9, a bona fide religious meeting for which permission had been granted by the authorities, was baton-charged by a large body of police whose commander decided that the meeting was not a religious one. The Government had earlier banned all meetings except religious meetings and had introduced a curfew in five areas including East London. The 1,500 people who had
gathered at the open-air meeting moved away and while they were doing so, the police climbed on to their open lorries and indiscriminately fired into the homes of the people while their lorries patrolled along the main roads of the location. The people reacted irrationally. They were reported to have burnt the local Roman Catholic Church and killed a nun and a white man.
The ANC and the Indian Congress called on the people not to be provoked into violence and warned them against agents provocateurs, whom they suspected of
instigating the riots which broke out in quick succession in four different areas separated by hundreds of miles. The ANC also warned the people that the chaotic condition brought about by the situation would be used by the Government to declare a State of Emergency and to suppress the movement.
The Congresses, however, called on the people to rally closer to the movement and to continue with the campaign with the same discipline and unity they had displayed earlier in the campaign. More and more resisters joined the campaign and courted imprisonment and these were joined by four white democrats in Cape Town and seven in
Johannesburg.
Suspension of the Campaign
Towards the end of November 1952, the Minister of Justice issued a proclamation banning all meetings of more than ten Africans anywhere in the country. Soon thereafter the Government enacted two savage and antidemocratic laws especially designed to suppress the Defiance Campaign. In terms of the first law - the Criminal Law
Amendment Act - any person who broke any law in protest or in support of a campaign could be sentenced to the following:
a) A fine not exceeding three hundred pounds; or
b) imprisonment for a period not exceeding three years; or c) a whipping not exceeding ten strokes; or
d) both such fine and such imprisonment; or e) both such fine and such a whipping; or f) both such imprisonment and such a whipping.
Other provisions of the Act laid down similar severe penalties for any person who
"in any manner whatsoever advises, encourages, incites, commands, aids or procures any other person... to commit an offence by way of protest
against a law..."
Similar penalties were prescribed for any person "who solicits, accepts or receives from any person or body of persons... any money or other articles" for the purpose of assisting such a campaign or for "assisting any person" who has committed any offence as a protest against any legislation. Persons convicted under the Act would subsequently be prohibited by the Minister of Justice from being within any area defined in the prohibition order.
The second law - the Public Safety Act - empowered the Cabinet to suspend all laws anywhere in the Union whenever it was of the opinion that a state of emergency existed and to publish emergency regulations for anything it deemed necessary. These
regulations could carry any penalty, including death, for any contravention, as well as confiscation of goods and property.
It was in this situation that in the middle of April 1953, Chief Albert John Mvubi Luthuli, who was elected President-General of the ANC in December 1952, declared that in the light of Government proclamations and the new laws, it was necessary for the organisation to take stock of the situation. He called off the Defiance Campaign and announced: