Violence and the Law: the Use of the Censure in Political Trials in South Africa

Abstract

The law works with a concept of violence which can be defined as follows: an act of violence occurs when injury or suffering is inflicted upon a person/s by an agent knows (or might reasonably have known), that his actions would result in the harm in question. Thus the crime of public violence for example is defined as consisting of the unlawful and intentional commission by a number of people acting in concert of acts of serious dimensions which are intended forcibly to disturb public peace or security or to invade the rights of others.¹

How am I to assess the morality of this act? In a normally ordered society where every citizen enjoys the full range of civil liberties and equal access to the political process — to resort to an act of political protest of this sort would be a totally senseless act and in my view without the slightest justification. What when of a society where the citizen does not enjoy equal access to the political process, where he is denied certain rights and liberties by reason of his race, where he is in his perception of his circumstances a victim of oppression by a ruling class from which he is excluded by the colour of his skin? … Is his moral blameworthiness no different to one who placed the bomb in a normal society? In my opinion there is a difference.

Professor J. Milton (S. v. McBride, 1987)

The Government deems Mr Mandela a sentenced prisoner who is serving a sentence of life imprisonment imposed by a court of law after having been found guilty of a serious crime.

Dr Stoffel van der Merwe (Cape Times 16 July 1988)