A Double Triumph

The bells of St. Mary's Cathedral in Johannesburg pealed joyfully last week. They were ringing to celebrate the successful appeal by the cathedral's dean, the Very Rev. Gonville ffrench-Beytagh, 60, against a five-year prison term for violating South Africa's Terrorism Act (TIME, Nov. 15, 1971). "Everything looks good to me now," beamed ffrench-Beytagh, as he left for Britain to take up a new ecclesiastical position.

A British subject, the stocky dean has long been an outspoken opponent of the government's racial policies. He had been convicted of supporting violent revolution and of distributing funds for an illegal anti-apartheid organization. Last week, in a 226-page judgment, three appellate judges at Bloemfontein ruled that the mere expression of antigovernment views, "even in somewhat intemperate terms," could not be equated with terrorism. The verdict, as one clergyman put it, was a triumph "not only for the church but for the judiciary."

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