The banning of 19 Black Consciousness Movement Organizations on Black Wednesday
It was dubbed “Black Wednesday.” The World and Weekend World were banned on October 19, 1977. Percy Qoboza, the editor of The World before becoming the editor of City Press in 1984, was detained and jailed in Modderbee Prison for five months under Section 10 of the Internal Security Act.
Furthermore, the apartheid regime deemed 19 Black Consciousness organizations unlawful and jailed a large number of activists. That day is now known as “Black Wednesday” in South Africa, as well as National Press Freedom Day.
Apart from outlawing independent media in an attempt to conceal the regime’s at-the-time atrocities, officials reacted immediately to coverage of Steve Bantu Biko’s assassination in September of the same year. Biko was a Black Consciousness Movement leader who was arrested in August of that year under the Terrorism Act.
The Special Branch police arrest Percy Qoboza and his deputy, Aggrey Klaaste.
October 19, 1977
Percy Qoboza, editor of The World and Weekend World, and his deputy, Aggrey Klaaste, were arrested by Special Branch police as part of an operation to shut down the two Black journals. After being escorted straight to their cells in their suits and ties from the newspapers’ building, Qoboza and Klaaste spent five months in solitary confinement. Journalists including Mathatha Tsedu, Joe Tlholoe, Don Materra, and others were jailed and given five-year bans upon their release.
On October 19, 1995, South African police announced the arrest of a serial killer.
Moses Sithole, the country’s most sought man at the time, was apprehended by South African police in Pretoria. Sithole, 31 at the time, was detained in connection with the killings of at least 37 women and one child, as well as the rape of forty women, across Gauteng over the previous eighteen months. He was injured during his detention and was taken to the hospital under police protection. His crimes were revealed in June 1994, following the discovery of the remains of fifteen women buried on a mountainside near Cleveland, east of Johannesburg. Sithole was later convicted and sentenced to 2410 years in jail.
