BANNING AND RESTRICTION ORDERS WERE SOME OF THE DE-HUMANISING ACTIONS AGAINST ACTIVISTS, INCLUDING JOURNALISTS

                                        

Banning and house arresting apartheid opponents were some of the most restrictive measures that the former apartheid authorities had imposed in an attempt to crush the struggles for a free and non-racial South Africa.
While some of the restricted people were allowed to continue with their occupations, the activists who felt the full impact were journalists who were denied the right to be the "eyes and ears" of the people. I wrote the following article after my three-year banning order expired in July 1983.

 

When on the morning of December 29 1980 two white special branch members of the South Africa Police called at the offices of the newly-established Ukusa newspaper and Press Trust of SA News Agency, to serve a three-year banning order on me, the severity of the banning system did not really affect me immediately.

Before that date I had never known what it was like to be a banned and house-arrested person. Being a journalist, I had only reported about the imposition of banning orders on other people and the denial of their “freedom” of movement, speech and assembly.

Even when one of the security policemen told a colleague, Quarish Patel, who was in the office at that time, that he should explain the implications of the banning order to me, I did not take the comment seriously.But I soon realised the full impact of the order when I read the details and found that I was not only prevented from continuing with my work as a journalist but also house-arrested every weekday from 7pm to 6am, weekends and even on public holidays.

                               

In addition, I was not allowed to enter newspaper offices, the lifeblood of my work, and prevented from receiving any visitors whatsoever, except for three close relatives and my doctor.Within a matter of a few months I began to realise that the banning order was not only taking its toll on my meagre resources but my family life was beginning to show strains. Not being able to visit relatives, friends and journalist colleagues and attend weddings, public meetings and Federation Professional League soccer matches were beginning to cramp my family and myself.

The prospect of the security police paying a surprise visit at my house in Verulam was also an unnerving experience for the whole family – mainly for my four-year-old daughter, Seshini, who once fell asleep with fright on the sitting-room couch after one of their visits.I soon found that for a journalist the banning order is the most de-humanising trick the authorities can pull on you. While a banned doctor, lawyer, insurance salesman, lecturer or a clerk is allowed to continue with his or her work, a journalist is simply robbed of his occupation  and made to pay the price for being the “eyes and ears” of the people.

I, however, found solace from the thousands of “good wishes” cards that were sent by sympathisers from Holland, United Kingdom, Belgium, West Germnay, Sweden and Austria – all Western countries.I also found solace from the stream of letters I received from the Edinburgh branch of Amnesty International who had “adopted” me in an attempt to highlight the plight of the silenced and restricted persons in South Africa.Their concern was a regular reminder that the banned person has not been forgotten.But now, three years later, the South African Government has lifted the banning orders of some 55 people, including the writer, in terms of the new Internal Security Act of 1982.There is no doubt that I am relieved at this new found “freedom” but it is still a mystery to me why I was banned in the first place. Being robbed of nearly three-years of your life at the peak of your career by an administrative action is a travesty of justice and a complete disregard for the rule of law.It is going to take sometime to re-orientate myself because after being dis-orientated for so long it is simply not easy to get back into the “groove of things”.But, despite the unjust incarceration, I would not want to wish banning and restriction orders on anyone – even P W Botha. I bear no malice or grudge for any one except the system which forces good men to turn to evil methods to silence their critics.

I only want to be allowed to continue with my work as a journalist so that I could contribute to the undoing of the social, economic and political injustices so rife in South Africa. Ends– July 4 1983