In Pretoria, eight men--six Africans, one European, and one Indian--were given life sentences on June 12, 1964, after a trial which had begun on Oct. 29, 1963.
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The convicted men were Nelson Mandela (a lawyer and former secretary-general of the banned African National Congress), Walter Sisulu (also a former secretary-general of the A.N.C.), Dennis Theodore Goldberg (a Cape Town civil engineer), Govan Archibald Mbeki (a Port Elizabeth journalist), Ahmed Mohammed Kathrada (former secretary-general of the Transvaal Indian Congress), Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Matsoaledi, and Andrew Mlangeni. Another accused, Mr. Lionel Gabriel ("Rusty") Bernstein, an architect, was acquitted.
The indictment alleged that the accused, most of whom had been arrested on July 11, 1963, had conspired to commit 199 acts of sabotage in preparation for guerrilla warfare and an armed invasion of South Africa; these acts had included the blowing-up of the office of the Minister of Economics and Marketing in Pretoria in October 1962 and many other incidents involving damage to railway lines, power pylons, telephone lines, and buildings.
An application by defence counsel for the indictment to be quashed was granted by Judge-President Quartus de Wet on Oct. 30, 1963, on the grounds that the State had not provided sufficient details of the allegations made against the accused to enable them to prepare for trial. Defence counsel had pointed out, inter alia, that 156 of the alleged 199 acts of violence had been committed while Mandela had been in prison.
Despite the judge's decision, all the defendants were immediately re-arrested in terms of a directive from the Attorney-General that they should be charged with sabotage. At the same time Dr. Percy Yutar, Deputy Attorney-General of the Transvaal, announced that he was withdrawing the charges against Mr. Hepple, who would later be called as a State witness. On Nov. 26, however, Dr. Yutar announced that Mr. Hepple and his wife had fled the country.
All 10 accused were again charged on Oct. 31 in a Pretoria magistrate's court and remanded to the Supreme Court, applications for bail for some of them being refused. The new indictment named, together with the accused, 24 other persons who, in addition to the co-conspirators mentioned above, included R.H. Strachan, B. Turok, and Looksmart Solwandle Ngudle, who had been found to have committed suicide while being detained for 90 days under the General Law Amendment Act.
When the new trial opened on Nov. 26 a further application to quash it was refused. All the accused pleaded "Not Guilty" on Dec. 3 and all except Mr. Kantor added that not they, but the Government, should be in the dock as it was responsible for what had happened in South Africa.
When the trial resumed on April 20 after a six-weeks' adjournment, the accused successively made statements or gave evidence.
Mandela, speaking for nearly five hours and recalling his political history, admitted that he was one of the persons who helped to form Umkonto before his arrest in August 1962, but denied that his activities or "the struggle in South Africa" were in any way inspired by the Communist Party. He conceded that he had planned sabotage, though "not in a spirit of recklessness" but "as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the situation, after many years of oppression and tyranny of my people by the Whites"; he added that as all other means of opposing the principle of White supremacy were "closed by legislation, we had either to accept inferiority or fight against it by violence. We chose the latter."
Announcing the verdict on June 11, Judge-President de Wet found Mandela, Sisulu, Goldberg, Mbeki, Matsoaledi, Mlangeni, and Mhlaba guilty on all four counts and Kathrada on one count (of being a party to the conspiracy with the other accused). The guilt of Bernstein had in the Judge's opinion not been established, and he therefore found him not guilty on all charges.
Defence counsel announced on June 24 that the eight men sentenced would not appeal against their conviction or sentence.
This article comes from Keesings Worldwide Online
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