The Treason Trail

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Reason: 1
It was in response to the adoption of the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People

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People: 1
Apartheid government in South Africa arrested a total 156 people- 105 Blacks, 21 Indians, 23 Whites and 7 Coloureds.

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People: 1
almost the entire executive of the: African National Congress (ANC), Congress of Democrats, South African Indian Congress, Coloured People's Congress, and the South African Congress of Trade Unions.

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Sentence: 1
Charged with "high treason and a countrywide conspiracy to use violence to overthrow the present government and replace it with a communist state."- Punishment is death.

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People: 1
Chief Albert Luthuli (president of the ANC) and Nelson Mandela were arrested.

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People: 1
the police arrested 144 people in raids across South Africa-another 12 people, including Walter Sisulu, were arrested the next week

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Representaion: 1
Accused represented by a legal team including: Izrael Maisels, Sydney Kentridge, Vernon Berrange, and Bram Fisher.

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Bail: 1
Bail Fund started by: Bishop Ambrose Reeves, Alan Paton, and Alex Hepple.

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Sentence: 1
Preparatory examination lasted until January 1958: resulted in 61 charges of the accused to be dropped. 95 people were left.

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Time: 1
The Treason Trial proper: August 3, 1958
December 5, 1956- start

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Evidence: 1
The government proffered over 12,000 items of documentation: collected over a three-year period of time.

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Evidence: 1
Evidence included several first-hand accounts by both Black and Afrikaner 'detectives' of speeches given at ANC meetings: many could not understand English and were provided notes on the speeches by the government.

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Evidence: 1
The main piece of evidence against the accused was a recording of a speech made by Robert Resha, the Trasvaal Volunteer-in-Chief: "When you are disciplined and you are told by the organization not to be violent, you must not be violent ... but if you are a true volunteer and you are called upon to be violent, you must be absolutely violent, you must murder!" : Resha`s viewpoints were the exception not the rule in the ANC, and the quote was taken completely out of context.

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Sentence: 1
one of the two charges under the Suppression of Communism Act was dropped.

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Sentence: 1
Two months later the government announced that the whole indictment was being dropped, only to issue an new indictment against 30 people - all members of the ANC. Additional indictments against another 61 people were threatened but were never realized.

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Sentence: 1
Chief Albert Luthuli and Oliver Tambo were released for lack of evidence. Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu (ANC secretary-general) were among the final 30 accused.

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Sentence: 1
On 29 March 1961 Justice FL Rumpff interrupted the defense summation with a verdict. Having been found non-guilty, the remaining 30 accused were discharged.

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Ramification: 1
Serious blow to ANC and Congress Alliance: executive members out of circulation for a long period of time, considerable costs, funds suffered.

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Ramification: 1
ANC`s youth league: most left to form PAC.

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Ramification: 1
Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and six others were eventually given a life sentence for treason in 1964 at what is known as the Rivonia Trial.

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Time: 4
The swoop came in the early hours of the morning of 5 December and was executed with military precision.

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Inprisonment: 4
Surrounded by elaborate security precautions, those arrested were driven or flown in military aircraft to Johannesburg, where they were imprisoned in the Fort Prison.

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Inprisonment: 4
One unplanned consequence of the mass arrests was the opportunity they gave to the resistance leaders (who had been confined in two large adjoining cells) to meet openly and uninhibited, a situation which the government had been at pains to prohibit for several years.

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Time: 2
five months after the adoption of the Freedom Charter

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Ramification: 2
keeping key anti-apartheid leaders out of circulation and costing considerable money to support many of the defendants who lost their jobs or could not work during the trial.

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Time: 2
trail lasted four years.

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Sentence: 3
The accused faced charges which claimed that they had participated actively in the campaign to draw up the Freedom Charter. the Charter visualised the abolition of all racial discrimination and the granting of equal rights to all.

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Sentence: 2
Before the prosecution case was even completed, charges were withdrawn against 73 of the 156 accused, however those 73 were still quoted in the indictment as 'co-conspirators'

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People: 2
Of the ninety-one accused, fifteen had been members of the Communist Party and thirty were Whites or Indians, but only two of the Communists and five of the Whites and Indians were included among the final thirty accused.

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Sentence: 2
All the judges agreed that the state had failed to prove the ANC or the Freedom Charter as communist. Therefore, after the longest Treason Trial in South African history, the remaining accused were all acquitted of treason. The government's strategy to eradicate the Freedom Charter at birth had failed.