17 OCTOBER 1981, Page 19

Gulag in South Africa?

Sir: The scores of prisoners 'done to death' in prisons by South Africa's security police must have felt the same fear, pain and horror as those prisoners murdered in the Gulag, and any academic distinction by Richard West (3 October) must seem polemic to Steve Biko. Nicholas von Hoffman (12 September) is correct in stating that President Reagan is indifferent to the suffering' of black South Africans. That Richard West can quantify those evils and then seek to qualify them is staggering beyond belief. Perhaps the inhumanities and violence he saw in Vietnam or during the Rhodesia war have numbed him to the realities of life on Robbin Island and elsewhere in the Republic.

Duncan Graham 5-13 Battersea High Street, London SW II