TRC Final Report

Volume 1

Chapter 13

Subsection 21

1982 Internal Security Act No 74:

S Following the recommendations of the Rabie Commission of Inquiry, this Act provided for the following:

• Sections 4 and 6: Banning of organisations, if the Minister had reason to believe than an organisation was using, encouraging, or threatening violence or disturbance in order to overthrow or challenge state authority or bring about change.
• Sections 5 and15: Banning of publications.
• Sections 19(1) and 20: Banning of people, including confinement to a particular district, prohibition from attending any kind of meeting and prevention from being quoted. Also provided for house arrest.
• Section 28: Indefinite preventive detention.
• Section 29: Indefinite detention for interrogation. Detainees were held in solitary confinement.
• Section 29(2): The validity of a detention order was not subject to court challenge.
• Section 31: Detention of potential witnesses for not longer than six months or for the duration of a trial.
• • Section 30: Empowerment of the Attorney-General to order that prisoners arrested be refused bail.
• • Section 50: Fourteen-day preventive detention. A low-ranking police officer could detain a person deemed to be threatening public safety. For the detention to be extended beyond fourteen days, a magistrate’s permission was required.
• • Sections 46-53: Prohibition of meetings.
• • Section 54: Redefinition of ‘communism’ to include campaigns of civil disobedience and creation of racial hostility between European and non-European races of the Republic (SRR 1982: 222). This definition was removed by the 1991 Internal Security and Intimidation Amendment Act.
• • Section 54(2): Proscription of such activities as the promotion of ‘general dislocation’ or the causing of ‘prejudice or interruption’ to an industry or undertaking ‘with the purpose of effecting social, political, constitutional, industrial or economic change’.
• • Section 56(1): A ban on the publication or dissemination of any stateme made by a listed person, except with the permission of the Minister of Law and Order.
• • Section 62: Prohibition of actions causing, encouraging or fomenting feelings of hostility between different population groups.

Commenced: 2 July 1982

IN FORCE: CRIMINAL LAW AND PROCEDURE

1982 Black Local Authorities Act No 102:

P Provided for the establishment of local communities, village councils and town councils for blacks in certain areas.

Commenced: 1 August 1983

Repealed by the Local Government Transition Act No 209 of 1993

1983 Republic of South Africa Constitution Act No 110:

P Provided for the establishment of a tricameral Parliament consisting of separate legislative houses for whites, coloureds and Indians. Matters before Parliament were to be divided into ‘general affairs’ (to be discussed by all houses and applying to all South Africans) and ‘own affairs’ (relevant to one particular race group). The Constitution also made PW Botha both the formal and executive head of state and Commander-in-Chief of the South African Defence Force.

Commenced: 3 September 1984, except ss 48, 49(1)-(3), 50 & 102(9): 24 February 1984.

Repealed by the Constitution of Republic of South Africa Act No 200 of 1993

1984 Black Communities Development Act No 4:

U Introduced freehold ownership (Budlender 1989: 5). The Act stated that only a ‘competent person’ could lease or rent property. A person was ‘competent’ if she/he had section 12 rights in terms of the 1945 Natives (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act. (For further information see RRS 1984: 161-3.)

P This Act provided for purposeful development of black communities outside the national states and amended and consolidated certain laws which applied to such communities.

Commenced: 1 April 1984, except s 55: to be proclaimed; ss 56 & 57: 1 November 1985

Repealed by s 72 of the Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Act No 108 of 1991, with the exception of chapters VI and VIA