South Africa: The Pimpernel's Exit

To his childhood friends, South African Attorney Abraham Fischer seemed destined for great things. The son of a former judge-president of the Orange Free State, Fischer studied at the best schools, went on to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, displayed a keen mind and a deep social conscience. Last week, Fischer stood in the dock of the Pretoria Palace of Justice, charged with 15 counts of Communist activity and conspiring to commit sabotage, fraud and forgery under South Africa's Suppression of Communism Act.

Unlike many South Africans prosecuted under the country's catch-all subversion law, Fischer made the government's case easy. He admitted being a Communist. Over the years, he defended a string of Communists and black nationalists accused of treason, including Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, who were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 for planning a series of bombings and a Red Chinese-style "war of liberation." Three months after Mandela and Sisulu were convicted, Fischer was arrested as an accomplice. He then jumped a $14,000 bond and went into hiding — growing a goatee, dyeing his hair black and winning the romantic nickname of "the Scarlet Pimpernel" for his risky, catch-as-catch-can existence. Fischer was finally captured in Johannesburg last November — and convicted last week. His sentence: life imprisonment.

Fischer was no sooner sentenced than thousands of poster-waving university Students (WHERE HAVE ALL THE FREEDOMS GONE?) took to the streets in Durban, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Grahamstown, protesting still another example of South African justice. The recipient this time was Ian Robertson, 21-year-old president of the 20,000-member National Union of South African Students, who was suddenly put under a five-year ban that prohibits him from joining in N.U.S.A.S. activities, leaving the Cape Town municipal area and teaching, once he gets his law degree. Robertson's apparent crime was to invite Senator Bobby Kennedy to visit South Africa next month.