Word: idaf
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Dates: during 1983-1983
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...Kenneth N. Carstens, the IDAF's executive director for the United States, explains, the organization cannot cite specific examples of people it has helped for fear of reprisals against those people, their lawyers and their families in South Africa...
Despite this constraint, the IDAF has continued to exert a strong positive influence in South Africa. During a recent testimonial dinner in Cambridge, Woods spoke in emotional terms of "the hundreds of people I know of" whom the IDAF has helped. And a Black South African studying in this area who asked not to be identified says the IDAF "has saved lives, supported countless families of prisoners, and proved to be a big thorn in the side of the government...
...United States branch of the IDAF is housed in the basement of the Harvard Epworth Church in Cambridge. Though the group has no official ties to the University, its president is the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, and Nancy Randolph, special assistant to President Bok, is a member of the board of trustees...
...IDAF was founded in 1956 to help defend 156 Black South Africans accused of treason. Its primary driving force in those days was an English clergyman, Canon L. John Collins, who raised funds in his country and elsewhere to pay for defense lawyers and to support the families of those on trial. In 1961, after one of the longest trials in South African history, all 156 Blacks were acquitted, largely thanks to the efforts of the IDAF...
Since then, however, the government in Pretoria has significantly tightened the enforcement of apartheid laws and repressed any signs of dissent. In 1966, the IDAF was banned and has been forced to smuggle aid into the country through what Gomes calls "cloak and dagger means...