Will South African Students Stay Defiant?

RICHARD SUZMAN '64, a South African, attended Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg before transferring to Harvard. This summer he attended the congress of the National Union of South African Students.

Johannes Balthazar Vorster, the South African Minister of Justice, last week attacked the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) as a "cancer" that "has become the mouthpiece of Lefitists" and is "tainted with Communism."

Vorster urged the Union's 18,500 members to resign and thus destroy the organization.

Vorster's virulent smear, given great prominence in the South African press, is probably a prelude to banning NUSAS or its leaders.

In his statement, Vorster said NUSAS subscribes to Pan-Africanist ideals and cooperates with student organizations in Ghana, Ethiopia, and other Black African countries. He also assailed the Union for advocating complete integration--political, social, and biological. NUSAS favors integration of all education from kindergarten through college.

The Justice Minister pointed out that, in common with South Africa's Liberal and Communist parties, NUSAS supports the maxim: "One Man One vote." The student organization has worked closely with the banned African National Congress, Vorster claimed. At the NUSAS convention in July Nobel Prize Winner Albert Luthuli, former ANC leader, was elected honorary president of NUSAS.

After listing several Communists who were once leaders of NUSAS, Vorster added (with unusual sophistication) that not all members of NUSAS are Communists, but that all Communists were once members of NUSAS. He apparently forgot to note that almost every English-speaking student in South Africa is also a member of NUSAS.

Founded in 1924, NUSAS accepts all college students as members "irrespective of race, color, or creed." At present 19 colleges belong to NUSAS, and all students attending these colleges are automatically NUSAS members unless they specifically resign; few have done so. Member colleges include the Universities of Cape Town, Witwatersrand, Rhodes, and Natal, several teachers colleges, and two theological schools.

Afrikaners Separate

But NUSAS does not include the four Afrikaans-speaking universities of Stellenbosch, Pretoria, Orange Free State, and Potchefstroom. These schools broke away in the 1930s to form their own organization--the Afrikaanse Studentbond.

Open only to white Afrikaans Christians, the Studentbond, is not recognized by any international student group. It strongly favors the Verwoerd government and adheres unswervingly to the official dogma of apartheid.

The Studentbond also subscribes to the government's doctrine of Christian National Education. This doctrine, stressing fierce Afrikaaner ethnocentrism and strict Calvinism, has increasingly transformed schools into centers of indoctrination. The doctrine has wryly been called neither Christian nor national nor education.

For some time the Studentbond has attacked NUSAS as "liberalist, integrationist, and treasonable." Although NUSAS has tried to increase contact between Afrikaans and English students, all its approaches have been rudely turned down; the rift between the two organizations is now wider than ever.

The Afrikaans-speaking universities have always excluded non-white students. The English-speaking universities, however, were traditionally open to students of all races on the basis of merit. By the late 1950's almost 1,000 non-whites attended classes at these universities, although the universities did segregate dormitories, dances, and sports.

To the Nationalist Party government the presence of non-whites at the "open" universities was odious. For years the government, which heavily subsidizes all colleges, tried to force complete segregation. It was successfully fought off by alumni, faculty, and students, who asserted that the government sought to violate the autonomy of the universities. But in 1959, despite a march through downtown Johannesburg by 2,500 students and faculty clad in academic robes, the government passed the "Extention of University of Education Act." The law forbade almost all admissions of non-whites to "white" universities. Students coming into the universities now are deprived of the great advantages of being able to discuss South Africa's problems frankly with talented non-whites outside the usual master-servant relationship.

Tribal Colleges

The Nationalist government then set up separate tribal colleges for non-whites. These farcial institutions have as much academic freedom as a medieval theological seminary; to criticize the government is tantamount to questioning the revered Aristotle. The politics of entering students are carefully examined, any political dissidents are quickly expelled.

Although tribal college students are barred by the government from joining NUSAS, the student union has made covert contact in the colleges. Several tribal college students attended this summer's NUSAS convention, although, of course, their identity was kept secret

The present position of the English-speaking universities is precarious. They are among the very few centers of rational thought left in a frightened country, and as such are the object of frequent attacks by the government. The universities now are sad and depressed communities in which many persons are acutely aware of South Africa's approaching Gotterdammerung. Many top faculty members have emigrated; many high calibre students go overseas for graduate study and never return.

Through a long list of repressive legislation the government is systematically crushing dissident oponion. In violation of the rule of law, foes of apartheid can now be jailed indefinitely without trial. Under the Supression of Communism Act opponents, not all of whom are Communists can now be "banned"--a state in which they are confined to their own neighborhood, prohibited from attending meetings, and forbidden to be quoted in the press.

Many persons are also intimidated by Vorster's Red-smear campaign against such groups as the Liberal Party and NUSAS. These bodies are still too respectable to be banned out-right. But the smears are clearly directed at preparing public opinion to accept a ban on the leaders of these groups or of the groups themselves.

Many Liberal Party leaders, who are strongly anti-Communist, have already been banned. And even the more moderate Progressive Party and the English opposition press are coming in for not so subtle hints that the government considers them unpatriotic. There is, however, still some freedom of speech; the English press and the Progressive Party continue to criticize the government strongly. But the range of permissible critics and criticism is fast decreasing.

The Effect of Fear

The general atmosphere of fear in South Africa has begun to have a serious effect on the attitudes of University students. At the English-speaking universities the students have split into essentially four main groupings.

First, a growing body of students are beginning to accept the government's pleas for white unity behind its policies. They believe that the country is facing a dire Red-Black threat. In the face of terrorism and Black nationalism, they accepted the delusion that the government's program of territorial separation--in which many Africans would have to live in Bantustans--is a workable solution.

Secondly, there is a small body of students who assert that nothing effective can now be done to avert a bloody clash between Black and White nationalisms. These students believe that a situation analogous to Algeria will ultimately develop in South Africa, and that in the end the present White racist government will be supplanted by a harsh Black racist government. These students leave the country or lapse into cynicism.

The third and probably largest grouping are those who feel something should be done, but do nothing. They remain silent, cowed by fear of the consequences of any radical anti-government activity. The perils they confront are delineated in an editorial the student newspaper at Witwatersrand University wrote last year after 2,000 students and faculty demonstrated against the sweeping Sabotage Act.

The paper commented that it was probably the last mass protest the government would permit. It wrote: "The days when students could protest, secure in the faceless anonymity of a crowd are gone; he who protests now must stand single and alone, fanned by a cold wind of censure from a ruthless and intolerant government." The editorial concluded that "the choice between silence and protest has been made infinitely more difficult."

The Opposition

Lastly, a few students still do what little they can to oppose the government. Some realize the government has blocked every avenue of peaceful change and that violence is the only path left open to the Africans. Nevertheless, almost all these students feel that they themselves could not indulge in any violence.

The active members of NUSAS belong to this grouping. A very few of them may indeed be Communists, as Vorster says, because NUSAS is open to all students The great majority of NUSAS members, however, certainly are not Communists. Many leaders of the student union are anti-communist. Vorster is doing the Communists a favor by crediting them with the ideals NUSAS upholds.

In his Presidential address to this summer's NUSAS congress, Jonty Driver, summarized the bitter dilemma and strong idealism of the NUSAS leadership.

"I do not say that we should not be afraid. I do not pretend that I am not afraid--nor that you are not afraid," Driver said. It is not easy to lose a passport nor to be confined to a place, however the Minister of Injustice chooses to define it, nor to be deported, nor to be imprisoned, and I for one, am afraid of all these..."

"But whatever our fear, we must not capitulate," Driver concluded. "We must not bow to these agents of silence who rule us."

Despite the brave words and actions, NUSAS can, however, do little to prevent the Grecian tragedy of South Africa from playing to the final act. For the most part, the principled stand of NUSAS, while demanded by the conscience and idealism of its members, can only be symbolic.

Editorial note: In South African usage the word African refers to Negroes; the word Afrikaner refers to the white descendants of the Dutch settlers and the Boers. There are about 10 million Africans In South Africa out of a total population of 16 million. The Afrikaners, who speak the Afrikaans language, compose about 60 per cent of the white population of 3,100,000.