Paarl Riots report submitted

On 25 June 1963 Mr. Justice H. Snyman submitted to parliament a final report on the 1962 Paarl Riots. The report analysed the main causes of the riots, and included information on Poqo, an armed offshoot of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Snyman had heard evidence detailing the nature and activities of Poqo from 7 December 1962 to 13 March 1963. On 22 November 1962, 250 Poqo members, armed with axes, machetes and home-made weapons, marched from the Mbekweni location to Paarl in its most determined effort to destabilise South Africa and spark a general uprising. The rioters attacked a police station, burned houses and businesses, and killed a man and a woman before being repulsed. In his report Snyman expressed alarm at his discoveries regarding Poqo and called for immediate action against the organisation. He discovered that Poqo intended to violently overthrow the government in 1963 in order to create an African socialist state representing Black South Africans. The presiding Judge observed that, in view of the existing law, the state had to prove connection between Poqo and the banned PAC, and he suggested retrospective legislation. Minister of Justice B. J. Vorster subsequently created a retroactive 90 day detention law, the General Law Amendment Act (No. 37 of 1963), declaring reactionary organisations existing since 7 April 1960 unlawful. This allowed the government to align Poqo with the PAC and Umkhonto we Sizwe with the banned African National Congress (ANC).