The Treason Trial was a trial in which 156 people, including Nelson Mandela, were arrested in a raid and accused of treason in South Africa in 1956.
The main trial lasted until 1961, when all of the defendants were found not guilty. During the trials, Oliver Tambo left the country and was exiled. Whilst in other European and African countries he started an organization which helped bring publicity to the African National Congress's cause in South Africa. Some of the defendants were later convicted in the Rivonia Trial in 1964.
Chief Luthuli has said of the Treason Trial:
- "The treason trial must occupy a special place in South African history. That grim pre-dawn raid, deliberately calculated to strike terror into hesitant minds and impress upon the entire nation the determination of the governing clique to stifle all opposition, made one hundred and fifty-six of us, belonging to all the races of our land, into a group of accused facing one of the most serious charges in any legal system."
Read more about Treason Trial: Defendants, Other Notable Figures Involved in The Treason Trial, Defence and Aid Fund, Significance of The Trial, Trial Time Line
Famous quotes containing the words treason and/or trial:
“The treason pleases, but the traitors are odious.”
—Spanish proverb, pt. 1, bk. 4, ch. 7, quoted in Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605, trans by P. Motteux)
“Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident—the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.”
—Edward C. Banfield (b. 1916)