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Monday, November 24, 1986 / University Daily Kansan
SOUTH AFRICA Apartheid causes pain, protest From KU natives feel turmoil
Rv SHANE A. HILLS
Staff writer
South Africa is comparable to a hydrogen-filled blimp, riddled with punctures, gradually falling to a potentially incendiary landing.
As the hydrogen escapes, people in the United States and in South Africa, some with great influence and others with little chance for answers to patch the holes.
Meanwhile, U.S. and South African officials hope that no event lights the match that could erupt South Africa into civil war.
Three KU students from South Africa, including two who said they feared for their own safety and refused to return, also spoke about the instability of a country they once called home.
A KU history professor, who is from South Africa and is a scholar of both U.S. and South African history, taught at the KU with South Africa in terms equally dramatic
Amistad the smell of cooking curry, an Indian South African student at the University of Kansas, who requested anonymity, stood at his stove before dinner and said he could not talk about South Africa.
He sat down and said nervously,
"Surely you must understand. I have a wife and children at home. You may even be an agent from South Africa. How do I know? I would like to help you, but I can't."
With striking contrast, however,
Marion Scheepers, a white South
African student at KU, spoke for half
an hour about a political system he
found repugnant.
Scheepers is working toward a doctorate in mathematics and has not been to South Africa for four years. He said he hoped to find employment in the United States.
Michael Maher, then a Roeland Park junior, was escorted to a KU police car during a November 1985 anti-apartheid protest that ended in the arrest of five students.
"I will not go home," he said. "I want to avoid the two years of compulsory military service required me in South Africa. At the moment, the military is being used to uphold a political system I do not believe in."
society. It is a country with enormous potential."
Scheepers said his father owned a company that manufactured equipment for coal mines and probably would be affected by the United States' sanctions against importing coal from South Africa.
Like Scheepers, Nana Ngobese, a black South African student at KU, said she refused to go back to South Africa, and therefore was not afraid to voice her opinion.
"If I can't stay in the United States," she said, "I'll go to another country if I have to."
"It's unfortunate," Scheepers said, "that we have a country being ripped apart by a ridiculous political system.
He said his parents were worried because the situation in South Africa was very poor.
"We have the natural resources and manpower to be a great exporting country. It could be a very happy
Ngobese, who is studying for a master's degree in business administration, said she had encountered misconceptions about South Africa among Americans.
"I've heard people say that divestment is only going to hurt blacks by causing unemployment," she said. "On the contrary, I say, because the black people have suffered enough already. They are willing to give up the little they have now if that means getting what is rightfully theirs later."
Wilfredo Lee/KANSAN
Surrendra Bhana
A native intellect's view
Bhana is an Indian South African, which means essentially that he, like the 23 million blacks in the country, has no political rights.
The South Africa fraught with violence that Americans have seen on television also is home to Surrendra Bhana, the Langston Hughes visiting professor of history.
Bhana, a scholar of both South
Bhana said when he arrived at KU two months ago that he had to be cautious when he answered questions about South Africa. Bhana said he intended to go home to his father and attend college, but was out of South Africa at Durban Westville.
He did not want to risk being interrogated or detained when he got off a bus.
African and U.S. history, sat recently at the Kansas Union cafeteria and explained with fervor what he perceived to be the situation in South Africa.
"If you look at the real purpose of apartheid," he said, "you'll find that it is there simply to maintain white supremacist rule in South Africa."
In fall 1984, the ruling white government established a tricameral parliament, in which the Indian South Africans, the South Africans of mixed descent, or colored, and the whites each had a voice in the form of its own house.
Bhana said 80 percent of the Indians and colored boys cotted the elections.
"The ratio between the houses was maintained in such a manner that neither the Indians nor the coloreds could outvote the whites." Bhana
Fall 1984 also marked the emergence of severe black unrest, which Americans started to see on television.
"Ultimately, all the blacks want is to share in the political process of the country in a unified system," Bhana said.
About 70 percent of the South African population, the blacks, have no education.
Whites also control 87 percent of the land in South Africa, Bhana said.
the land in South Africa, Bhana said. One type of violence in South Africa is perpetrated by angry black children and teenagers who single out other blacks suspected of collaborating with the whites.
The children have a pet form of violence — the flaming necklace. They fill an old automobile tire with gasoline, ring it on the suspected collaborator and set him on fire.
"The white government will never arrive at a solution until they share meaningfully. They will lose everything if they don't try to negotiate soon, because tomorrow's black leaders will be even more radical than today's."
"There are some very sophisticated black leaders who would see every advantage to peaceful negotiations.
Bhana said this image of blacks in South Africa should not create the assumption that blacks could not rule themselves, or, if given that chance, that they would only engage in chaotic rivalry.
Violence also has broken out at funerals of blacks who became martyrs because police killed them. As long as blacks have gathered for such events,
"If blacks were given a chance to vote, to rule themselves, there would inevitably be tensions," he said, "but there's always tension, rivalry.
The white government has created 10 homelands in South Africa to separate the various black tribes, Bhana said. Four of the homelands have been given "independence."
Bhana said, however, that each
months of the year, he said.
Bhana said the white government deliberately divided the black tribes to make the task of creating a unified South Africa even more difficult.
In September, when the U.S. Congress passed sanctions against South Africa, members said the South African government could get sanctions reduced if, among other measures, it released Nelson Mandela, the jailed leader of the banned African National Congress.
'Although Americans are generally better informed about South Africa than they used to be, there is still a great deal of confusion. It is essential that they do know what is happening in South Africa, because things are likely to get worse before they get better.'
— Surrendra Bhana Langston Hughes visiting professor of history
homeland still was very dependent on the white government for financial support and for employment.
In June, a European Eminent Persons Group, which included high
Many blacks either live in poor townships and work in manufacturing plants or migrate from their homelands to be laborers in the mines. The migrant workers often are away from their families nine
level statesmen from Commonwealth countries, released a report called Mission to South Africa.
The report said the release of Mandela, who has been jailed since 1962, and negotiations with the African National Congress probably would bring peace in South Africa sooner than any other measure.
Bhana said he often encountered Americans who feared communist intervention in South Africa and thought that the African National Congress might establish a communist state.
"I think that possibility is in-conceivable," Bhana said. "The ANC would have nothing to gain by establishing a communist state."
"Although Americans are generally better informed about South Africa than they used to be, there is still a great deal of confusion. It is essential that they do know what is happening in South Africa, because things are likely to get worse before they get better."
Congressional sanctions against South Africa. Bana said, struck a scandal by the country's media.
"The South African government definitely cares for legitimacy," he said. "They want the rest of the world to accept them."
Student activists regroup around divestment issue
Attie Biorge/Special to the XANSAN
Rv SHANF A HIIS
Staff writer
IOWA CITY, Iowa — Student activists applaud speaker Pedro Noguera, who from companies in South Africa. Noguera delivered the keynote address and led the movement to make the University of California at Berkeley divest the Progressive Student Network Conference earlier this month.
IOWA CITY, Iowa — College students of the '80s — a generation marked by its overwhelming concern for careers and money — are becoming watchdogs for weighty issues such as U.S. foreign, domestic and military policies.
For example, a Progressive Student Network conference in Iowa City drew more than 150 student acco- nts across the Midwest earlier this month.
Anti-Reagan banners hung on the walls, and colored-chalk slogans that denounced Reagan's policies covered the sidewalks.
Key speakers at the conference attributed most of the recently rekindled fervor among student activists to the South Africa divestment issue, which surfaced when black unrest erupted in South Africa about two years ago.
One activist at the conference wore army pants, an army jacket, a taurquoise-striped tam-o'-shanter atop his unruly hair and a yellow T-shirt emblazoned with a chest-sized picture of Africa.
Pedro Noguera, one of the conference speakers and former student body president at the University of California at Berkeley, led a movement at Berkeley that caused the university to divest completely from companies in South Africa.
"Stop protesting just for your own therapy and satisfaction." Noguera warned his audience, "and start trying to organize a movement that really makes things happen."
On his shirt, in the language of the Zulus, the dominant black tribe in South Africa, were the words: "Give up to me," and "people." Below that, "Diyest now!"
KU activists quiet this fall
The KU Committee on South Africa has remained quiet this semester. Charles Munson, Leawood junior and current president of the committee, said that the September congressional sanctions against South Africa
At the University of Kansas, activism since April has been a dead phenomenon.
temporarily had appeased the committee.
Carla Vogel, a 1985 KU graduate and former student body president, camped out with others at the April shanty town on the front lawn of the Endowment Association's office building.
Vogel, who attended the Iowa City conference, said she thought activism had dwindled at KU because several of the most ardent activists had graduated and left Lawrence.
Activists build shanty towns to symbolize the living conditions that blacks must endure in their South African homelands.
The Endowment Association did not say, however, that its decision was based on the facts.
Pedro Noquera
Vogel moved to Minneapolis this year.
Another activist, Chris Bunker,
was president of the KU Committee
on South Africa until May, when he
began his law degree and moved to
Florida.
Bunker, who organized the shanty
town, also compiled 10 volumes of newspaper clippings about South Africa, which are on reserve at Watson Library.
Berkelev as role model
Berkley has been a bastion of student protest since the '60s and has become a role model for student activists at universities across the country.
Noguera, who guided the divestment movement at Berkeley last year, received a standing ovation after he addressed the Iowa City conference.
"Student activists are a privileged group," he said in his speech. "We generally do not have to hold jobs to survive. We have the time to be activists, to share a common goal. But we must not remain isolated from the community — that is the most tragic mistake we can make.
"At Berkeley, we went to the docks to picket against South Africa ships. The dock workers refused to unload the cargo. That was fantastic."
"In April of 1985, we had almost 8,000 students refuse to attend class. Five hundred longshoremen joined
We proved to the university that
the movement to divest was not just supported by a bunch of radical students, but by a broad sector of the society.
—Pedro Noguera
former student body president
University of California
at Berkeley
'Student activists are a privileged group.'
us on the campus. A black minister brought his entire parish to be with
At the University of Missouri at Columbia, police in April arrested 17 activists and destroyed their shanty town, which stood on the front lawn of the administration building.
John Gerlach, a graduate teaching assistant at Missouri, was among those arrested. He attended the Iowa City conference.
"The American Civil Liberties Union is going to defend us in court," he said. "A federal judge recently declared shanty towns a legal means of freedom of speech. If we win, we will probably sue the police for false arrest."
Beyond South Africa
But student activism, especially at universities where divestment already has occurred, is starting to grow beyond the South Africa issue.
For example, the Progressive Student Network Conference also focused on U.S. military intervention in Central America, the Strategic Defense Initiative and sexual discrimination.
The success of a divestiture movement partly depends on where in the United States the university is located. Louisiana State University, for example, already has divested, but activists there are now fighting investments held in South Africa through state pension funds.
Sandy Arnold, a LSU graduate student who attended the conference, said Louisiana suffered the highest illiteracy and unemployment rates among blacks in the United States.
"When whites speak out on campus, we have to accept that we are an oddity there," Arnold, who is white, said. "There is so much racism on campus that you feel you might be laughed at for saying anything."
"The blacks tend to be very quiet about it. But we are going to attempt to get them motivated and organized next year."
"I think blacks question whether or not the whites in the movement against apartheid are actually making people in the United States look at their own views on racism.
"It's one thing to raise hell about another country, but quite another to take a deep look at your own."