R v Tanya

• Jurisdiction: South Africa
• Judge: Jennett J and Sampson J
• Judgment Date: 13 December 1956
• Citation: 1957 (2) SA 65 (T)
• Hearing Date: 30 November 1956
• Court: Eastern Districts Local Division

G Jennett, J.:

The appellant was convicted of establishing, conducting or maintaining a Bantu or Native school not registered in terms of the Act, in contravention of sec. 9 (3) read with 9 (1) of Act 47 of 1953 H read with Government Notice 2568 dated 17th December 1954. The sentence imposed was a fine of £25 or 2 months' imprisonment with compulsory labour.

In the charge sheet and in the evidence appellant is described as a housewife. She lives at 48 Connacker Street, New Brighton, Port Elizabeth. The police visited that address at 10 a.m. on 21st August

Jennett J

1956. In the dining room they found 20 Native children sitting on a circle of seven chairs and two benches. Each had in his/her hands more than one lecture in writing on geography, Xosa grammar, English grammar, or history. Appellant was standing facing the children. When the police A attempted to take the lectures from them the children claimed that the lectures belonged to them.

Appellant stated that she had nothing to do with 'all this'. Her evidence that the children had come to play with her children, that she had not seen the lectures and that she was not in her dining room was rightly rejected by the magistrate.

B The question for decision is whether or not the Crown evidence referred to is sufficient to support the conviction sustained by appellant.

There is no evidence at all that anything like what was observed by the police on 21st August 1956 had occurred before or was likely to occur again. There is no evidence at all to shew that what was happening that day was part of any larger scheme.

C In my view the evidence establishes at most that appellant gave instruction or assistance to the children on this one isolated occasion.

Mr. D'Arcy, for the Crown, suggested that the fact that the lectures in the hands of the children related to more than one subject justified the inference that there had been instruction on previous occasions or that D it was intended that the children would receive instruction on later occasions. I do not think that this suggestion is...