Looking Back

From the Sunday Times 50 years ago

A PLOT by pro-South African elements to “stop the Bernsteins leaving Bechuanaland at all costs” is feared in Lobatsi after the flight from Johannesburg this week of Lionel Bernstein and his wife, Hilda. Bernstein, freed after the Rivonia trial, was under house arrest in Johannesburg.

He and his wife arrived in Lobatsi exhausted and blistered after a nightmare cross-country hike and immediately began planning to leave for Britain. But last night a special police guard of four armed Askaris was put on a twin-engined Bechuanaland Airways plane at the airfield here. It is feared that, because the plane may be used to fly the Bernsteins from Bechuanaland, an attempt may be made to blow it up. — August 9 1964

From the Sunday Times 25 years ago

THE Mass Democratic Movement is set to focus the second phase of its “defiance campaign” on beach apartheid — by flooding “whites only” beaches with non-whites. And the campaign is likely to kick off with a mass rally on one of Durban’s remaining “whites only” beaches, probably next Sunday.

Two weeks ago, the MDM and its affiliates headed a campaign to defy segregation of health facilities, which saw hundreds of black patients arriving at white provincial hospitals across the country for treatment. Now beaches and other segregated recreational facilities are the target of the mass campaign, which is likely to focus on Durban following a looming confrontation between the city council and nearly half of its workforce over bylaws which enforce beach apartheid. — August 13 1989