File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_1997/aut-op-sy.9708, message 142


From: "FRANCO BARCHIESI" <029FRB-AT-cosmos.wits.ac.za>
Date:          Sat, 23 Aug 1997 12:10:18 GMT + 2:00
Subject: AUT: EXTREMELY URGENT-Renewed Repression against SA Comrades


Dear all,

Some time ago we informed readers on this list about political
repression against comrades at the University of Durban-Westville.
Now, a further, extremely grave and serious act of repression has
involved another comrade, Aaron Amaral, of the Cape Town Collective
of "Debate", and a lecturer at the University of the Western Cape.
This is a further step in a pattern of generalized victimization in 
South African campuses which concerns us all. Please read carefully 
the forwarded message below. Messages of solidarity to the journal or 
to Aaron can be sent to debate-AT-sunsite.wits.ac.za or 
to aamaral-AT-artso.uwc.ac.za

Franco, Jo'burg

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------

From: "ANDREW NASH" <ANASH-AT-artso.uwc.ac.za>
To: debate-AT-sunsite.wits.ac.za
Date:          Fri, 22 Aug 1997 16:25:53 GMT-2
Subject:       State v Aaron Amaral 

On Monday 18th August, around midday, Aaron Amaral was taken from the 
Philosophy III class at UWC, by two officials of the Dept of Home 
Affairs.  That evening, he was charged with being a prohibited person 
in SA.  He appeared in court on the following day, and will appear 
again on 11 September.  This e-mail is to inform subscribers to these 
lists (some of whom know Aaron) of events leading up to his arrest, 
and indications that it is politically motivated and forms part of a 
pattern of repression which is emerging on our campuses.

Aaron is an American citizen, currently lecturing in the Dept of 
Philosophy, and registered for an M.A. degree at UWC.  (He was 
lecturing when he was arrested.) He is married to a South African.  
They married in April, when he also applied for permanent residence 
in SA.  He has been on the committee of the Marxist Theory Seminar at 
UWC, is a member of the Cape Town editorial collective of `Debate', 
is active in the International Socialist Movement in Cape Town, and 
in the Socialist Students Action Committee (SSAC) at UWC.  

On Friday 8 August, ten days before his arrest, Aaron was visited at 
his office in the Philosophy Dept by the same two officials of the 
Dept of Home Affairs.  They said that they were acting on 
instructions from Pretoria, but were clearly not familiar with his 
residence status or his application.  They confirmed that this 
was not a routine check, and that they were not acting on a complaint 
from UWC. They were particularly insistent, however, that Aaron 
should be removed from UWC.  They repeatedly threatened him with 
arrest, without indicating that they had grounds for any charge 
against him, and told him that he should report to the Home Affairs 
Office in Cape Town on the following Tuesday.

Aaron phoned Home Affairs on that Tuesday, to ask them to communicate 
with his lawyer, and discovered that the Cape Town office knew 
nothing of his case.  Even after the same officials returned to 
arrest him on 18 August, they still did not know what charges they 
could lay against him.  Only after several extended visits to Home 
Affairs offices and police stations was this decided.  Legal opinion 
is that the prosecution is unlikely to succeed.

Why was Aaron the subject of this unusual investigation: one which 
began with the investigators knowing nothing of their suspect except 
that they wanted him removed from UWC campus?  They were not obliged 
to give any explanation to him, except for referring to instructions 
from Pretoria.  But, according to Aaron (who understands some 
Afrikaans), the Home Affairs officials were quite open in describing 
him to their colleagues in the police as a Marxist who was `confusing 
our people'.  His active commitment to popularising socialist ideas is 
surely the explanation for the entire investigation, for the charges 
against Aaron, and for the sudden sympathy between the `new South 
African' officials in their black leather jackets and the uniformed 
policemen inherited from the `old'.

The evidence for such a conclusion is bound to be largely 
circumstantial.  There are plenty of indications of the interest 
and intervention of state officials (including Home Affairs 
officials who were previously student leaders at UWC) in student 
politics on our campus.  But the relevant circumstances are not 
limited to UWC.  Extensive and well-documented involvement of the 
National Intelligence Agency on University of Durban-Westville
over the past few years, and more recently on University of Venda 
suggest a pattern in which those struggling against the massive and 
growing inequalities of SA and the new world order are singled out 
for repression by agents of the state.  Repression does not take 
always take on the overt forms that it did under apartheid; it is best 
to be aware of it and to speak out about it before it does.
----------------------------------------------------------------------



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