SOUTH AFRICAN PROTEST Sta,---The Defence and Aid Fund established by
Christian Action has played a magnificent part in the task of relieving the hardship inflicted upon a grow- ing number of people by acts of the present Govern- ment in South Africa.
The Treason Trials drag on interminably. We are glad to report that we in this country have raised approximately half of the £100,000 that has so far been spent on the defence and maintenance of the accused, but we do not know what we would have done without the most generous support of men and women in Britain.
Unhappily, indications are that the need for that support will grow, not diminish, as time goes on.
We seem in Sciuth Africa to be living through a period in which our rulers tend more and more to regard opposition to apartheid as treasonable. More and more people are being charged with offences of an anti-apartheid nature; they are being charged more hastily, and punished more heavily. The need for adequate legal defence will, therefore, be even greater in the future than it is today. Swift administrative action against African men and women (invariably of a kind which denies those affected any recourse \s hat- soever to a Court of Law), leaving families without Means and children without care, is being resorted to more frequently.
Your readers may know, for example, that African women are now compelled to carry passes, euphem- istically termed 'reference books.' Many South Afri- cans fear that African women will now be liable to an evil which has for so long afflicted African men, namely, to be stopped in the streets, and to be hauled off to police stations, sometimes to be absent for many days. This is bad enough for men, but it is much more to be feared for wives and mothers. It is ex-, peeled • that many women will be involved in such offences, and in demonstrations against the law.
The operation of the apartheid laws creates almost daily new demands for the relief and rehabilitation of its growing number of victims; demands that cannot, in the name of ordinary humanity, be denied.
For these reasons we call upon your readers to support. the Defence and Aid Fund so that it may continue, in the future, to enlist the aid of British generosity for one of the most deserving causes to be found in the Western world today.—Yours faithfully, JOOST CAPETOWN, AMBROSE JOHANNESBURG, A. J. LUTUL1, G. M. NAIKER, ALAN PATON, LESLIE RUItIN lo Christian Action, 2 Amen Court, EC4.
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