A case study of aspects of the political life of Advocate Benjamin Magson Kies (1917 - 1979) and of "The Torch" newspaper with which he was closely connected, showing how the criminal justice system in South Africa was  employed in an attempt to silence political and ideological opposition to the apartheid regime

Cavernelis, Dennis Burt

A case study of aspects of the political life of Advocate Benjamin Magson Kies (1917 - 1979) and of "The Torch" newspaper with which he was closely connected, showing how the criminal justice system in South Africa was employed in an attempt to silence political and ideological opposition to the apartheid regime

Thesis / Dissertation

1993

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Centre for Law and Society

Faculty

Faculty of Law

Abstract

Charles van Onselen( 1) writes that in his biography of Nongoloza Mathebula "we , can ,see ..... the story of one man's search for justice within the context of the most important labour repressive institutions that developed during the South African industrial revolution. He states that he has provided a local illustration of the assertion by C Wright Mills that: "the biographies of men and women, the kinds of individuals they variously become, cannot be understood without reference to the historical structures in which the miliEH,IX of their everyday life are organised." (2) . This paper is in some respects both biographical and historical. B M Kies was a leading figure in the Anti-CAD (Coloured Affairs Department) Movement, The Teachers' League of South Africa and the Non-European Unity Movement, sectors of the liberatory movement in South Africa. His involvement in the liberatory struggle began in his student days in the late 193Os and continued up to the time of his death at the end of the 1970s. This paper is not a political biography of BM Kies, but the story of his life (which has yet to be written) may also accurately be described as "the story of one man's search for justice". The focus of this study will be on the contact which B M Kies had with the criminal justice foe system and the broader legal system in South Africa from 1948, when the Nationalist government with its platform of apartheid policies came to power, to 1963 when that government's repressive measures to enforce its apartheid policies reached new heights. A number of reported Supreme Court decisions will be considered. These decisions, all relate to cases in which B M Kies was either directly or indirectly involved as a result of his political activities .