On trial for treason

From the book: My Spirit Is Not Banned by Frances Baard and Barbie Schreiner

'Before dawn on 5 December, 1956, the security branch of the police entered the homes of 140 people and arrested 156 individuals, White, Black and Coloured, on a charge of high treason.

The next month after that protest of the women to the mayor in Port Elizabeth, the same year, 1956, a whole lot of us were arrested ”” for treason. They came to arrest us; it was about two o'clock in the morning - I can't remember the exact time -but it was that time when they usually come. They didn't let us sleep; they just took us straight to the police station. At the police station they registered our names and they took our fingerprints as if we were criminals, and then we were ready to leave that same morning for Johannesburg. That's how it was. They come and fetch you at your house without telling you any reasons or anything, take you to the police station, take your name and your fingerprints, and send you off to Johannesburg without you must say goodbye or arrange for the children or anything.
From the police station they put us into trucks and took us to the airport. They put all the people from Port Elizabeth -they arrested a lot of people - into one plane. They used an army plane, a Dakota or something. The people from the other places, Durban and Cape Town and so on, they were all on their own planes and we all arrived in Johannesburg the same morning. I know that they arrested Mrs. Matomela, Lily Diederichs, two or three coloured women, Wilton Nkwayi, Fuyani, Thami Tshume, Nsangane and many more from Port Elizabeth. They took people from all our branches. New Brighton, Uitenhage, Despatch, Walmer, all around.

In Johannesburg they took us to the Fort and they kept us there until the trial. But all that time we didn't know what was going on, what we were there for. It was only when we got to Johannesburg that they told us that we had been arrested for treason. So now we must try to think, 'But what did we do?'

They arrested us for political reasons of their own, and now we must sit in jail and think, 'But what did I do for them to arrest me?' And so many of us too! For treason!

They kept all the political prisoners in one section of the Fort, away from the criminals. But we didn't know why were arrested until we went to court and met each other there. Hawu! And then we see it is so many of us! We went to court, all of us, with our lawyers and our advocates and we listened to what the charges were and so forth, and then they started with all the legal business. Hawu! That case went on for a long time. After a time we were released from prison although the case was still going on. Then I stayed at Sisulu's house, with Florence Matomela.

While we were in that case there was the anniversary of the women's march to Pretoria. All over the country the people celebrated that anniversary and the ANC Women's League and the Federation branches from all over sent telegrams to us there at the trial to tell us about their celebrations and to send us their solidarity on that day.

After the trial had gone on for some time they stopped the case against some of us while they carried on with just some of the people, the ones that they thought were more dangerous maybe. We were allowed to go home while we waited to find out the result of the case against these people. During that time while we were at home they found those people not guilty, and so they had to acquit them and us. All of us were found not guilty.

But that case took a long time; it only ended in 1961 and then it was all for nothing because we were all acquitted; all of us.