cruelty and hypocrisy. The prosecution in Pretoria was having deep trouble making a case against the defendants so it abruptly dropped the charges …
‘The prosecution was obviously embarrassed by two things: One was the triviality of its own “evidence” against the defendants. The other was the persistence of Justice Simon Bekker, rare in South African courtrooms nowadays, in inquiring into the pretrial treatment of State witnesses, some of whom had also been detained for months under the provisions of the Terrorism Act … The prosecution’s strategy seems clear: It will simply hold the defendants under the Terrorism Act until more “evidence” can be obtained or concocted by the bestial methods that have become a hallmark of South African “justice”.’30
The idea was for the 22 and others to be broken, for their resistance to cease. They would be arrested and rearrested seemingly at the whim of the security police – such flimsy things as love letters and postcards as evidence of terrorism.
The group was interrogated to uncover high-level plots and plans against the government, fed the bare minimum and kept unhealthy, but alive. Sometimes not. The detainees’ spirits were low, yet the state feared them enough to keep them under its thumb.
‘The freezing loneliness made one wish for death,’ Joyce testified years later at the TRC hearings. ‘I keep harping on this, because I do not know if people realise what went on when the Boers wanted to kill peoples’ intellect.’
The government of the time did not bank on the strength of their convictions.
The trial, The State versus Ndou and 21 others of 1969, may not be as widely known as the landmark Rivonia Trial of 1963/4 which saw the leadership of the ANC imprisoned for nearly three decades. The names of the detainees are not as familiar as those of Nelson Mandela, Ahmed Kathrada and others and yet the Trial of 22 changed the course of South African history and the struggle for liberation in its own right. By the ‘state witnesses’ refusing to testify, the case collapsed.
The detainees were eventually released in September 1970, and the slow machinery of the movement continued.
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