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- 1976 - (Creation)
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would have no undue influence on him. At this stage the court adjourned to enable the goverment to appoint a third judge. We considered Ludorf's recusal a great victory and a slap in the face for the government. They must have known that it was undesirable for judges who had already given adverse judgements on some issues covered by the present indictment to sit on a special court.
The new judge was Bekker and we felt that the application for the recusal of Ludorf was well worth the effort. Bekker had no connections knowns to us that were a source of concern and we liked him from the start. Rightly or wrongly we felt that by removing Ludorf and bringing in Bekker we had considerably weakened the link between the Nationalist Party and the Court and that from then on the proceedings would be guided mainly by the relevant legal rules and evidence rather than by ideological considerations.
Our second victory was chalked when we successfully applied for the quashing of the indictment on the grounds amongst others of lack of particularity. This involved a lengthy argument on the meaning of treason in law and, as the argument proceeded, we gained the impression that the court was of the opinion that our submissions carried a lot of weight. The Crown eventually withdrew this indictment and later issued a new one. Although we again attacketd it, the court refused to quash it and only ordered certain amendments to be made by the Crown. After we pleaded not guilty to the charge the Crown divided us into three groups of 30 each. The case proceeded against the first 30 and was remanded indefinitely against the 60 others. I was in the first batch.