THE South African Government ought to welcome the present chance
of dropping the prosecution of their ill-famed 'Treason Trial.' The decision of the leader of the prosecution, Mr. Oswald Pirow, QC, to withdraw the indictment, provides just that opportunity. Yet, before the matter can even be considered, and certainly before Mr. Pirow can have reported on the extraordinary difficulties facing the prosecution, the Attorney-General for the Transvaal has led off by publicly reminding the world that the accused are only out on bail pending the presentation of another prosecution. I am told that Mr. Pirow has never made any secret of his opinion of the futility of trying to draw an indictment wide enough to embrace ninety-one people and yet detailed enough to allow the accused to know the exact nature of the case against them. Carrying on the case upon an indictment which he must have known could not be sustained, it is not surprising that in what seems to have been a sudden fit of pique he announced that he was withdrawing the indict- ment altogether. The effect of this decision, which is so far as I know unprecedented, means that the ninety-one accused remain under an indefinite shadow of further prosecution. Already these men and women have had their lives interrupted for twenty-one months; let us hope that the South African Government will now end their mockery of Western freedom.
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