Alexander and ten associates, now serving sentences ranging from five to ten years in South Africa!s version of Nazi concentration camps, will be heard March 2. Their appeal from conviction on charges of "sabotage". (meaning political. opposition to the apartheid system) was originally scheduled for last November but had to be postponed due to the fact that the law- . yers for the defence were refused permission to.go to Robben Island, where seven of the victims are held, to > get the defendants! ‘signa-
tures.; and to consult with them about the appeal.
The appeal is based on glaring irregularities in the trial sushi” “as ‘prying into correspondence between the defendants and their counsel, Prison authorities illegally seized correspondence sent to defense counsel and when it was returned Dr. Alexander found an addition -- a page in the handwriting of a secret policeman. The prosecution did not deny that the page was from the desk of the cops. In fact it was brazenly admitted and shrugged off.
. There is little information about the eleven defendants, since under the Nazi pattern followed by the South African government, prisoners are sealed off. It is known that Dr. Alexander, -.one of South Africa's outstanding intellectual figures, was brutally assaulted by warders with injury to an eardrum.
The assault occurred when Dr. Alexander objected to the degrading ritual which colored prisoners are forced to undergo each day when they return from the quarries or other hard-labor projects. This is the infamous "tausa dance." The white warders compel each prisoner to strip naked, clap his hands, jump in the air and expose his sexual organs. .
Lionel Davies, Marcus Solomon and Leslie van der Heyden witnessed the assault on Dr. Alexander. For daring to state that they were witnesses, prison authorities placed them in solitary confinement. ;
Fikele Bam, another.defendant, had the temerity last June 10 to ask for more food. The answer to this was a kick and a slap from a head warder, When Bam reported this to the authorities the next day, he was told that he was a Kaffir and should be thankful for the food the department of prisons was wasting on‘him. It should be added that as in the Nazi concentration camps. ‘the "waste" is not much in either quantity or quality.
A report leaked out from Robben Island that Don Davies: had also been beaten by warders but it has not been possible to verify this,
‘Dr. Alexander is reported to have sought to get special permission from the Robben Island command to continue his studies during his ten-year incarceration, While at Tlibingen on a scholarship he specialized on the German dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann, He’ would now like to continue this. It is not known what the response was or whether the request was forwarded to higher rungs of the herrenvolk regime for a decision,
In England there is increased interest in the case of Dr. Neville Alexander, A review of his book about Hauptmann in the December 31 Times Literary Supplement mentioned that he was in some kind of trouble with the Sora African authorities. This was fole-
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lowed by a letter in the January 14 issue from C.L.R.James, the author of Black Jacobins, giving a few details about the case and the London address of the defense committee. [See World Outlook January 22.]
Two days after this letter was printed, the secretary of the British Alexander Defence Committee received a cheque for £100 from a London donor,
With the setting of the appeal date, the British Alexander Defence Committee plans to intensify its campaign for contributions to help meet legal costs, More than £1,000 is still needed.
Cheques should be made payable to "Defence and Aid (Alexander Appeal)" and sent to:
Connie Kirkby .
Secretary Alexander Defence Committee
~ 27 Thursley House
Holmewood Gardens
London, S.W.2, England