Interview With Michael Scott:
HARVEY, MARY FRANCIS
Interview With Michael Scott By Mary Francis Harvey British clergyman discusses his fight for African rights WHEN the Reverend Michael Scott first appeared at the United Nations in 1947, a...
...Scott wants very much to go back to South Africa...
...Interview With Michael Scott By Mary Francis Harvey British clergyman discusses his fight for African rights WHEN the Reverend Michael Scott first appeared at the United Nations in 1947, a dossier reportedly circulated by the Union of South Africa delegation described him as "a reserved, eccentric type of man with fanatical views [who] is financially poor and has no fixed abode...
...Such statistics are published by the African Bureau in London, which Scott helped organize...
...Brazil has been particularly helpful --and India and Pakistan...
...Scott attributes these practices to the whites' fear of the blacks: "They're afraid of them, and they have a strong feeling of guilt...
...As I see it," he says, "Britain has really taken the lead in the matter of constitutional development...
...He is 47 years old, tall and rather frail, with gray hair just matching the color of his nearly threadbare suit, which he wears with the black bib and white collar of an Anglican clergyman...
...Every year since then, he has come to the Assembly session as a one-man lobby, insisting that incorporation of South West Africa into a South Africa that practiced apartheid would be an injustice felt throughout Africa...
...First, a medical man examines them to see whether they're fit to survive it, you know...
...It was also said that he sought "personal publicity" and had a "police record" back in the Union...
...Asked how the Bureau gets its funds, Scott said wryly, "Haven't you heard...
...They know that what they're doing to these people isn't right...
...In the jails, you see the Negroes lined up for their floggings...
...then he begins taking notes...
...They're taken across to the hospital, where they have iodine applied to their wounds...
...The Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya has brought untold harm to the country...
...Native life here so shocked him that he founded the Campaign for Right and Justice and joined the Council for Human Rights and the Council for Asiatic Rights--apparently the "left-wing organizations" referred to above...
...Scott fell silent...
...Then they're taken across the prison yard...
...In vital areas of accommodation, he says, any question of apartheid is "unrealistic...
...As far as granting political rights is concerned, Britain has gone further than any other power...
...The solution," he says, "is to provide a constitution which will enable different peoples to live together.The white population should not be encouraged by Britain to believe that it is going to be placed in a position of permanent domination over local inhabitants...
...They don't expect to get everything all at once...
...There are vast stretches of land populated only by natives...
...The millions of pounds spent in attempts to drive the rebels out of the Aberdare forests could have been used for economic and social restoration projects which are so urgently needed...
...He finished training in Chichester, England before being sent to India...
...These people have learned to trust the Reverend Scott, but to the Union of South Africa's apartheid-oriented Government his name is anathema...
...A loyal Englishman, Scott is deeply committed to both Christianity and the "constitutional" methods of resolving conflicts between whites and blacks in Africa...
...He lived ten years in South Africa, first arriving there in 1926, when he was 19 years old and suffering from TB...
...We're always accused of being Communists...
...The actual flogging is done inside a building...
...Once out of jail, he investigated native living conditions on reserves and farms...
...Mary Francis Hauvey, who covers the UN for several Eastern news-papers, is on the staff of Print...
...The Council's decision to refer South Africa's legal claims to the International Court for an advisory opinion represented, in effect, a defeat for Jooste...
...If they are driven hard and have no constitutional means of redress, people inevitably resort to desperate measures...
...He is a member of left-wing organizations...
...While with missions in Bombay and Calcutta, he developed a great admiration for Gandhi and satyagraha, the philosophy underlying passive resistance...
...The task of diplomacy is to find practical solutions to these problems...
...Scott feels that there is still "considerable flexibility" in South Africa...
...He also appeared once at a London rally where singer Paul Robeson was present...
...But he seems like such a gentle, kindly person," you say to the NGO people who know him...
...What one can't get over," muses Scott sadly, "is this legalized brutality in South Africa...
...Under its terms, he may not make speeches or engage in any other political activity...
...But he notes that in East and Central Africa, where there are comparatively small settlements of whites and millions of indigenous people, "the temptation is strong, where there are pressure groups of white settlers, to concede too much power to them...
...Concerning the Union Government's contention that it is encouraging "progressive" development among the natives, Scott cites the need for native schools and the problem of malnutrition in South Africa: "They say they are so very good because they spend more money per capita for their natives than do some other African territories...
...Today, Scott is a familiar figure around UN headquarters, where he is officially an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) representative for the International League for the Rights of Man...
...The Reverend Scott sits daily in the observer's gallery of Conference Room 3, where the General Assembly's Fourth (Trusteeship) Committee meets...
...Scott returned to Africa in 1948, but the following year the Hereros financed his second trip to the General Assembly...
...Nevertheless, a resolution was passed asking South Africa to conclude a trusteeship treaty with the UN and submit annual reports on the progress of natives in South West Africa...
...In a 70-minute speech before the Trusteeship Council, he attacked the arguments presented by His Excellency G. P. Jooste, currently South African Ambassador to the United States...
...Scott followed through on the case at The Hague in 1950--but found himself barred by the Union Government from returning to South Africa...
...In Africa," he says mournfully, "we are losing the moral initiative to the Communists...
...At Lake Success in 1947, the Reverend Scott challenged the South African Government's contention that it had a right to bring a once-mandated territory under its rule...
...Yes, it was rather embarrassing...
...For getting knocked down by young "hooligan" whites, he spent three months in a Durban jail...
...In Africa, of course, they think that only the Communists and the Islamic countries are in favor of racial equality...
...Scott drew up a petition to the LIN stating the Hereros' opposition to having their territory incorporated into the Union...
...He now has the full support of his church in England...
...and they will reply, "Oh...
...Usually, but not always, he sits alone...
...For a year, he worked with leprosy patients in a mission, and the next two years he trained for Holy Orders in Cape Province...
...I saw this every day in a jail in Durban...
...This year, the General Assembly, thanks partly to Scott's efforts, will have before it a resolution offering South Africa all the facilities of the UN's specialized agencies to help surmount its problem of housing and feeding the natives and educating them for eventual self-government...
...Committee members nod hello to him as they come in and he nods in return...
...This caused quite a stir in the press and led to his meeting with the Herero chief in South West Africa--an ex-German colony mandated to the Union Government after World War I. After talking with the chief...
...Born in England, Michael Scott is the son of an Anglican priest...
...Regularly, when his day's observing is done, he proceeds to the UN cafeteria upstairs and buys a container of tea-with-milk, a roll with two pats of butter, and a little paper cup of jelly He is wary of people, because he is in this country on a limited "metropolitan" visa...
...If I've done anything wrong," he says, "they should let me stand trial and defend myself...
...There are men standing around practicing their strokes with those long canes...
...But when war broke out, he "had qualms of conscience" and returned to England to enlist in the RAF...
...Ever get support from the United States, England or France...
...They say we get it from Moscow...
...No, but I do get a great deal of help from the smaller countries...
...Indeed, it is his obvious sincerity that has brought some measure of success to his dogged campaign on behalf of the natives in South and Central Africa...
...Invalided out of the RAF, Scott returned to South Africa in 1943 and gave religious instruction to mission orphans in Sophiatown, the slums of Johannesburg...
...but he is...
...But this is relatively nothing at all in proportion to the role the natives play in producing the wealth of the country...
...So far as the UN is concerned, Scott says wearily, "It's no use these people going on year after year with resolutions condemning South African policy with fine moral denunciations...
...The theory of gradualism is strong among the opposition...
...Shortly after passage of one of the first apartheid laws, the Asiatic Land Tenure Act, Scott became involved in a passive-resistance demonstration staged by the Indian-origin minority in Capetown...
...Actually, we have nothing to do with them," Picking up this question of Communism, I said, "I notice that the last time it was the Czech representative on the Fourth Committee who requested that your report be heard orally...
...When they come out of it, they can't even walk...
Vol. 37 • November 1954 • No. 48
