ELUDES SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE IN 700-MILE TREK FOR FREEDOM
A graphic account of how a political prisoner escaped from a Botswana jail cell and managed to walk 700 miles through wild bush country until he finally gained refuge in Zambia appeared in the Times of Zambia last December 21.
Ernest Jama, 25, a student, was declared a prohibited immigrant in Botswana. He was being held in the Lobatsi prison awaiting deportation to South Africa where he faced a five-year jail sentence in the notorious Robben Island penal settlement for political prisoners. He had been "banned" by the South African government for holding membership in the Society of Young Africa and the African Peoples' Democratic Union of Southern Africa, an affiliate of the Unity Movement.
After slipping out of Lobatsi, he moved parallel to the railway line north, successfully evading police dragnets. At one stage he went for three days and nights without food or water.
"I had some vitamin tablets," he told newsmen in Lusaka, "and was able to beg food in some places. It was terrible walking through that hard country. But I was confi-
dent that I would get to Zambia.
"I lit fires at night to keep animals away. Often it was too dangerous to sleep, but I knew if I followed the line of the railway I would reach safety."
Jama was endorsed out of Cape Town originally and banned to Indwe in the Transkei. He and his brother Eric, now in Britain, were badly beaten by South African police. He managed to escape to Botswana.
The government there, economically dependent on South Africa, is collaborating with the South African police. They are barring any more political refugees from entering the country. If regulations are broken by those already present, an estimated 260, the policy is to jail them and then turn them over to South Africa. Jama said that a companion of his, Miss Fidelia Sidzumo, was deported in this way after being held in the Lobatsi jail. Jama backed the charge made by officials of the Unity Movement in Lusaka that the representative of the Pan African Congress in Lobatsi, whom they knew as Loabile, had been kidnapped and taken to South Africa.