Chapter 7 - Prosecuting Frenzies and Deaths in the 1980s

Summary

Introduction

In some ways the 1980s were both the most challenging and most triumphant of the Project's existence. McDougall served as the organization's longest-running director, leading the Project for more than a decade. Apartheid became once again a point of global concern as celebrity- and youth-led movements grew to contest it. During this time, the phenomenon became symbolic of anti-racist struggles across the globe. As the next three chapters show, this decade provided opportunity for the Project, just as it at times devastated its workers. McDougall and her colleagues once again worked closely with South Africans, and in doing so faced the devastating emotional and psychological consequences of state repression.

Bantustans, opposition and assassination

By 1981, the Project's efforts at building a legal aid system had brought it into close partnership with several prominent lawyers, including Mohapi family lawyer Griffiths Mxenge. The 46-year-old previously served as counsel to Biko, Ramphele and other detainees during the mid- and late 1970s. He hailed originally from the Ciskei. A vocal opponent of the regime and its practices, Mxenge often spoke out against the bantustan policy while continuing his Durban-based practice and maintaining UDF membership. Sally Burdett commented that “long days in detention and a spell on Robben Island had failed to break his spirit and crush his fight against apartheid.”

The efforts to crush Mxenge's spirit continued through both emotional and physical abuse. In 1976, of course, state attorneys harassed him for not divulging protected client information. In 1978, in the midst of another sabotage trial, he narrowly escaped injury when his car suddenly lost its tyre and spun out of control; firm employees reported seeing three white men tampering with it outside the Magistrate's Court. Their private investigation began with hope of bringing criminal charges but ultimately yielded nothing.

As Total Strategy ramped up, the attorney represented families who had died in SADF's Mozambique raids, negotiating with the government to allow victims’ bodies home for burial and issuing an ultimatum that families would—with passes or without—cross the border to mourn their loved ones.

As the bantustans—such as Ciskei—gained so-called independence, black citizens lost what meagre claims they held in the larger South Africa, requiring passports and travel documents that exceeded the already-existing passes in order to enter the country and work as migrant labourers, mirroring colonial systems.