Law, Politics, and Treason in South Africa

Abstract

In 1985 the Afrikaner Nationalist Party Government of South Africa arraigned fifty-six people on charges of treason in eight separate trials. Among the defendants were leading members of the broad-based opposition movement, the United Democratic Front (U.D.F.). Since 1979 the government has resorted increasingly to the use of the charge of treason as popular resistance to white minority rule has grown. The numerous treason trials in 1985 came in the wake of successful campaigns by the U.D.F. and other opposition groups against the government's constitutional and administrative reforms, which opponents saw as mechanisms for perpetuating white minority rule. The massive scale of repression occurring during 1985 exposed the absurdity of the claims of the white minority government to the allegiance of those whom it had arraigned on charges of treason. This paper examines some of the legal and political factors underlying this recent upsurge in treason trials in South Africa.