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78 MANDELA, Nelson. Appeal to the People of Great Britain from All Freedom-Loving People in South Africa. South Africa: 1961 signed by mandela and the anti-apartheid leadership, appealing for british aid during the treason trial A rare and extraordinary survival and a signal document in the history of modern South Africa, relating to the sensational Treason Trial of almost all of the anti-apartheid leadership; it is signed by 30 leaders of the struggle, including Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and Lillian Ngoyi. Very few copies of this highly ephemeral piece are known to have survived. “The core of the treason charge related to a momentous – and for the government, disconcerting – event at Kliptown, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, on 25–26 June 1955 . . . The delegates were drawn from the ranks of the Congress Alliance, a coalition of race-based anti-apartheid groups – the ANC (still Africans only), the Indian Congresses, the Coloured People’s Congress and the white mix of communists and non- communists. They had come together to draw up the country’s first democratic constitution . . . Out of the deliberations came the endorsement of a Freedom Charter, which to western eyes was an unexceptionable statement of democratic principles and equal rights, owing something to the UN Charter but virtually nothing to the Communist Manifesto” (Herbstein, pp. 28–9). In response 156 individuals who attended or were involved with the meeting were arrested, in effect almost the entirety of the anti-apartheid leadership, based on the 1950 Suppression of Communism Act. By 1961, with the trial in its fourth year, three of the indictments had been quashed, most of the defendants discharged, and only 30 individuals remained on trial. However, if prosecution of the fourth indictment were to succeed, it would open a further 60 individuals to re-indictment and a possible death penalty. The leadership appealed for international aid. Drafted just months before the end of the trial this remarkable document appeals for further British support towards legal expenses and help for the detainees and their families: “On the outcome of this trial depends more than the fate of 28 men and 2 women. Upon it may depend the rights of men to struggle for their freedom and emancipation, and to use non-violent pressures
in the attempt to reach their goal. To ensure that the high standard of defence may be maintained to the end, we ask the people of Britain who have already helped us with such generosity to help us again in our attempt to raise the final £30,000 required to conclude this trial”. Various British groups and individuals provided funds and support: “the Movement for Colonial Freedom joined organizations such as Christian Action, the British Council of Churchmen, and the Labour Party in donating funds for the subsequent Treason Trial Fund, which provided food, clothing, and legal fees for the accused and their families. The donations demonstrate the transnational movement for freedom spurred by the trial” (Gorman, p. 168). As it transpired, the trial was concluded on 29 March 1961 with the acquittal of the remaining defendants. Mandela, in Long Walk to Freedom , describes the last months of the trial as “in many ways . . . the glory days for the accused, for our own people were on the stand fearlessly enunciating ANC policy”. The trial helped unite the strands of the anti-apartheid movement, itself often separated by race, and attracted international support for the struggle and international condemnation of the South African
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