In the 1970s, the apartheid regime of Balthazar Johannnes Vorster ruled South Africa with an iron hand and, despite international pressure, refused to grant basic rights to millions of people simply because of their race, denying their inherent equality.

During the height of that repression, a man selling windowpanes became lost in a desolate section of the Transvaal. Eventually finding his way to a mining compound, he sought directions back to the main road.

Imagine his bewilderment when a screaming, naked black woman raced from the compound’s administrative offices, chased by uniformed staff.

Later, the man brought word of what he had witnessed to the South African offices of Freedom magazine in Johannesburg, which began an investigation.

Freedom learned that the mining compound was, in fact, a psychiatric facility—the Randfontein Sanatorium, housing some 1,500 black female “patients.” This proved to be, however, but a tip of the iceberg.