South Africa: Trouble for the Press?

When he was here at Harvard last year as a Nieman fellow, Percy P. Qoboza, editor of the black South African community's largest newspaper, said he did not worry about his government's reaction to his candid statements against apartheid during his stay in the U.S.

"The South African government will be loathe to bring the spotlight of unfavorable publicity on the country when I return," he said.

Qoboza may have been too optimistic. On Tuesday he was detained for eight hours by the South African police. Among other things, the police wanted to know the whereabouts of a black student leader whom Qoboza's paper, The World, had just interviewed.

Seven members of The World's staff were arrested in the police action, and four reporters remain in jail under laws that permit detention without trials, the New York Times reported yesterday.

Qoboza's newspaper, owned by whites but run almost entirely by black reporters, has generally retained a moderate nonviolent stance, although it opposes South Africa's program of apartheid.

"One has to make a choice whether to be outspoken and go to jail where you'll be silenced, or to take a milder platform so you can keep working," he said last year.

The 38-year-old editor enjoys a wide reputation as one of the South African black community's leading moderates. Last year, he stressed that "The whites are in South Africa to stay--we've got to devise some way by which we can all work together."

But since June, when he returned to Soweto--a black township outside Johannesburg--Qoboza's paper has taken increasingly vocal opposition to the government's policy of racial segregation, although The World has continued to advocate change through nonviolence.

Like Qoboza, Khotso Seatloho, the 19-year-old president of the Soweto Students Representative Council sought by the police, espouses nonviolent steps for change, The New York Times reported.

This summer, however, the Times said that Seatholo's group took a leadership role in the riots that flared in Soweto last June.

Qoboza told the police he does not know Seatholo's whereabouts, the Times reported yesterday.

During the entire eight hours he was kept at the police station yesterday, Qoboza was forced to remain standing. Qoboza, who suffers from high blood pressure, visited his doctor soon after his release, the Times said.

A senior officer of the South African security police said during Qoboza's retention that the interrogation was only for a routine questioning. "We want to talk to him about information he may have on what will happen in the country," another officer apparently told a World reporter.

When the police entered Qoboza's home--the police told reporters that the raid took place around 5 a.m., but Qoboza's wife Anne claimed that the time was closer to 3:30 a.m.--they searched his house for books banned from the country by the South African government.

Among the books examined were textbooks Qoboza used while attending courses during his stay at Harvard, his wife told a Reuters reporter.

James C. Thomson, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, said yesterday that Qoboza's detention will cause shock and outrage among his many friends and admirers in the American press community, in universities and in government circles.

"He is a true South African patriot who is deeply committed to the achievement of social and political justice for all the people of his nation, regardless of their color," Thomson said.

Benjamin Pogrund, an associate editor of South Africa's leading white liberal paper who spent six months working for The Boston Globe this year, said this fall that most newspaper censorship in South Africa has been internal. Members of the press must clear stories the regime considers either controversial or anti-apartheid with government representatives.

Pogrund was unavailable yesterday for comment about Qoboza's arrest.

The South African government does not insure freedom of the press, but can arbitrarily decide whether a newspaper has overstepped its privileges. Rather than face law suits and possible detention, Pogrund said, most papers prefer to take moderate stands.

Alex L. Boraine, a fellow at the Center for International Affairs who will return to South Africa tomorrow to take up his seat in the South African parliament, yesterday called the arrest "a very ominous sign."

Boraine, a member of the anti-apartheid Progressive Reform Party, said that the government has issued threats over the last few months that unless the press performed more self-censorship, the regime would crack down on all newspapers.

Until now, Boraine said, the press's relative freedom to openly criticize the government in editorials has provided "the only bright light in a very dark situation."

Nieman Curator Thomson, who has followed events in South Africa closely since his visit there last year, yesterday agreed with Boraine's evaluation of Qoboza's arrest. He called it "a serious escalation of the government's effort to intimidate the press."

Boraine called the arrest "a sign that the government is prepared to be more and more repressive in its effort to retain its dominance."

Under the apartheid system, about 4 million whites hold total control over the political system that governs a population of about 25 million.

But Boraine said he sees the situation in South Africa changing, as blacks begin to fight back. In the last six months, he pointed out, the Soweto students have shown willingness to die for their stand against apartheid.

This conviction "indicates the kind of situation they have been living in," he said.