Benefit of Clergy

Masikoni Radebe, an amiable and middle-aged Zulu, was asleep with his wife in the servant quarters of a fashionable Durban apartment house when police barged in, herded the startled couple into a waiting van. At the station the Radebes saw scores of bewildered blacks pay a pound and depart. Those who could not pay were locked up. Radebe paid and went home.

Next day he learned that he was one of many blacks who had been arrested and fined for adultery. Radebe dug a 1925 marriage certificate from his tin trunk and went to court to get his money back.

Last week his case put an abrupt end to the latest crusade of the Durban police, who are forever rounding up poll-tax evaders and curfew violators. Thundered the Hon. A. A. R. Hathorn, judge-president of the Natal Supreme Court: "The police seem to expect a married man to wave his marriage certificate every time he wishes to exercise his marital rights."

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