Friday, December 6, 2013

Rivonia Trial



Rivonia Trial

The Rivonia Trial was a trial that took place in South Africa between 1963 and 1964, in which ten leaders of the African National Congress were tried for 221 acts of sabotage designed to overthrow the apartheid system. This trial was made after the police raid on the MK base in Rivonia, which showed documents of relations to the 10 accused men.
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Origins

It was named after Rivonia, the suburb of Johannesburg where 19 ANC leaders were arrested at Liliesleaf Farm, privately owned by Arthur Goldreich, on 11 July 1963. It had been used as a hideout for the African National Congress. Among others, Nelson Mandela had moved onto the farm in October 1961 and evaded security police while masquerading as a gardener and cook called David Motsamayi (meaning "the walker").

Arrests

Arrested were:
and others.
Goldberg, Bernstein, Hepple, Wolpe, Kantor and Goldreich were white Jews, Kathrada and Nair were Indian, and Sisulu, Mbeki, Motsoaledi and Mhlaba were Xhosa, while Sisulu had a Xhosa mother and a white father.[1][2]
The trial was essentially a mechanism through which the apartheid government could hurt or mute the ANC and allied organizations. Its leaders, including Nelson Mandela, who was already in Johannesburg's Fort prison serving a five-year sentence for inciting workers to strike and leaving the country illegally, were prosecuted, found guilty, and imprisoned. The apartheid regime's attack on the ANC's leadership and organizers continued with a trial known as Little Rivonia, in which other ANC members were prosecuted for sabotage. Amongst the defendants in this trial was the chief of MK, Wilton Mkwayi who was sentenced to life imprisonment alongside Mandela and the other ANC leaders on Robben Island.
The government took advantage of 90 days without trial, and the defendants were held incommunicado. Meanwhile, Goldreich and Wolpe bribed a guard and escaped from jail on 11 August.[citation needed] Their escape infuriated the prosecutors and police who considered Goldreich to be "the arch-conspirator."
Lawyers were unable to see the accused until two days before indictment on 9 October. Leading the defence team was Bram Fischer, the distinguished Afrikaner lawyer, assisted by Joel Joffe, Arthur Chaskalson, George Bizos, Vernon Berrangé and Harold Hanson. A separate team including Hanson and Harry Schwarz defended Kantor. At the end of October, Hepple was able to leave the dock because under pressure he decided to testify for the prosecution but never did; he managed to escape and flee the country.[3]
The presiding judge was Dr. Quartus de Wet, judge-president of the Transvaal.
The chief prosecutor was Dr. Percy Yutar, deputy attorney-general of the Transvaal.
The trial began on 26 November 1963. After dismissal of the first indictment as inadequate, the trial finally got under way on 3 December with an expanded indictment. Each of the ten accused pleaded not guilty. The trial ended on 12 June 1964.

List of defendants

The Palace of Justice in Pretoria, site of the trial
The first trial indictment document listed 11 names as the accused.[4] Counsel for the accused successfully challenged the legal sufficiency of the document, with the result that Justice de Vet quashed it.[5] Prior to dismissal of the first indictment, The State withdraw all charges against Bob Hepple, after he agreed to testify for the prosecution. The second indictment thus only listed 10 out of the original 11 names, referring to them as Accused 1 through 10.[6]
  1. Nelson Mandela
  2. Walter Sisulu
  3. Denis Goldberg
  4. Govan Mbeki
  5. Ahmed Kathrada
  6. Lionel "Rusty" Bernstein (acquitted)
  7. Raymond Mhlaba
  8. James Kantor (acquitted)
  9. Elias Motsoaledi
  10. Andrew Mlangeni

Defence lawyers

Nat Levy was attorney of record in Pretoria for Mandela and the other accused, with the exception of Kantor.[7] Hilda Bernstein (wife of Rusty Bernstein) approached Joffe, after being rebuffed by other lawyers who claimed to be too busy or afraid to act for her husband. Joffe was subsequently also approached by Albertina Sisulu (wife of Walter Sisulu), Annie Goldberg (mother of Dennis Goldberg) and Winnie Mandela (wife of Nelson Mandela). Joffe agreed to act as attorney for all of the accused except Kantor, who would require separate counsel, and Bob Hepple.[8][9]
Joffe initially secured the services of advocates Arthur Chaskalson and George Bizos, then persuaded Bram Fischer to act as lead counsel. Vernon Berrangé was also later recruited to join the team of advocates.[10] The defence line-up for the majority of the accused was:
The accused all agreed that Kantor's defence could share nothing in common with the rest of the accused. He thus arranged a separate defence team.[11] While Harold Hanson primarily represented Kantor, he was also invited to deliver the plea for mitigation for the other 9 accused.[12] The defence line-up for Kantor was

Charges

Charges were:
  • recruiting persons for training in the preparation and use of explosives and in guerrilla warfare for the purpose of violent revolution and committing acts of sabotage
  • conspiring to commit the aforementioned acts and to aid foreign military units when they invaded the Republic,
  • acting in these ways to further the objects of communism
  • soliciting and receiving money for these purposes from sympathizers in Algeria, Ethiopia, Liberia, Nigeria, Tunisia, and elsewhere.
"Production requirements" for munitions for a six-month period were sufficient, the prosecutor Percy Yutar said in his opening address, to blow up a city the size of Johannesburg.
Kantor was discharged at the end of the prosecution's case.
The trial was condemned by the United Nations Security Council and nations around the world, leading to international sanctions against the South African government in some cases.

Escapes

  • Arthur Goldreich and Harold Wolpe escaped from The Fort prison in Johannesburg while on remand after bribing a prison guard. After hiding in various safe houses for two months they escaped to Swaziland dressed as priests with the aid of Manni Brown who posed as a tour operator as a cover to deliver weapons to the ANC. From Swaziland, Vernon Berrangé was to charter a plane to take them on to Lobatse, a small town in south-eastern Botswana.[13]
  • Wolpe's escape saw his brother-in-law James Kantor arrested and charged with the same crimes as Mandela and his co-accused. Harry Schwarz, a close friend, and a well-known politician acted as his defence. After being the subject of vicious taunting and many attempts to place him as a vital cog of MK by Percy Yutar, Judge Quartus de Wet discharged him, stating Accused No 8 has no case to answer. Kantor fled the country and died of a massive heart attack in 1975.

Results

“
This is the struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and experience. It is a struggle for the right to live. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society, in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunity. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But, if needs be, my Lord, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
”
— Nelson Mandela speaking at the dock of the court, 20 April 1964[14]
Originally the death penalty had been requested, but was changed because of world-wide protests and skilled legal maneuvers on the part of the defence team. Harold Hanson was called upon to argue in mitigation. He compared the African struggle for rights to the earlier Afrikaans struggle, citing precedents for temperate sentencing, even in cases of treason. Eight defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment; Lionel Bernstein was acquitted.
"There was no surprise in the fact that Mandela, Sisulu, Mbeki, Motsoaledi, Mlangeni, and Goldberg were found guilty on all four counts. The defence had hoped that Mhlaba, Kathrada, and Bernstein might escape conviction because of the skimpiness of evidence that they were parties to the conspiracy, although undoubtedly they could be prosecuted on other charges. But Mhlaba too was found guilty on all counts, and Kathrada, on one charge of conspiracy. Bernstein, however, was found not guilty. He was rearrested, released on bail, and placed under house arrest. Later he fled the country."[15]
Denis Goldberg went to Pretoria Central Prison instead of Robben Island (at that time the only security wing for white political prisoners in South Africa) where he served 22 years.
Nelson Mandela would spend twenty seven years and eight months in prison as a result of the Rivonia trial (18 years of which would be spent on Robben Island). He was released on 11 February 1990 by President F. W. de Klerk

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