Editorials
commonweal DRIFTING TO PRETORIA IF YOU'VE READ one editorial about South Africa, maybe you ve read them all. They are depressingly similar. An outbreak of violence. Government repression. Time is...
...Gordon Zahn and the...
...Efforts are also underway to find a publisher to reissue Zahn's book, unfortunately out of print...
...Conservatives sometimes prefer to turn the whole question into another case of hypocrisy on the part of liberals who ought to be paying more attention to Ethiopia and the Soviets...
...Widespread personal involvement of middle-class citizens with those in need would create a base of support for renewed government efforts...
...Coetzee's fiction — will soon be an irreversible reality...
...Is this quiet diplomacy — or coma...
...Even tough-minded policy makers ought to realize that without such an effort, the very health and educational base of the economy is being eroded...
...Why wait until the alternatives are unpalatable...
...the kind of protracted state of seige imagined in J.M...
...Good intentions can't substitute for the knowledge and skills essential to such an undertaking, but then again it is mistaken to assume that only government or professionals possess the essential resources...
...He suggests that the American Catholic bishops, in connection with their work on an economics pastoral, should launch a massive voluntary effort, open to people of all views and callings, to meet the educational and health needs of the nation's disadvantaged children...
...The alternative future — of continuing, overt, and bloody racial struggle...
...Washington is taking all this very placidly...
...For that matter, in Geneva...
...The space, it noted, "is an indication of how press freedom has been restricted...
...The bishops themselves might have access to such advisors...
...President Botha should declare his intention to grant full citizenship to all South Africans, says the Economist...
...One lesson Washington might just learn from the South African explosion is that long fuses do eventually burn down...
...Like it or not, he concludes, voluntarism is the only available remedy for a "social epidemic of juvenile illiteracy and handicaps stemming Commonweal: 420 from deprivation, disease, or ignorance of health symptoms.'' He envisions a crusade mobilizing millions (himself included) to bring the three Rs to deprived youngsters along with the child care and medical information needed to identify health problems and obtain treatment...
...In the Philippines, South Korea, Chile...
...The July 21 decree giving sweeping emergency powers to police in thirty-six local districts also hit those regions with what one pro-government paper called "total censorship...
...But no less dangerous is a preference for drifting with potentially explosive situations rather than risking any new initiatives...
...Janeway has very limited confidence in Washington's current economic policies, to put the matter mildly...
...Not necessarily for the white apartheid regime — that, we are told, has plenty of weapons and the will to use them ruthlessly — but for any chance of a relatively peaceful South African future...
...Answers can only come from those with experience in large-scale organizing and with first-hand knowledge of educational and health problems...
...At a time like the present, no plausible proposal for countering the current waste of human talent and spirit should go unexamined...
...Previously, the current bishop of Linz expressed interest in initiating the process for possible canonization...
...429), note that government pressures on the press in South Africa "often tend to be more subtle" than elsewhere...
...There is no possibility of peaceful devolution to a constitutional, democratic, fair government," concludes one writer in the New York Times, and the same paper's editorial column comes close to agreeing: "A monumental tragedy is at hand, and there is not much that good people elsewhere can do to prevent it...
...This proposal raises a number of questions...
...Indeed, Chester A. Crocker, the veteran exponent of the administration's South African policy, was reported on vacation...
...The award was granted by the president of Austria in response to a nationwide popular petition...
...Well, time is running out...
...Organize the European powers, the U.S., and Japan into a group that can wield economic sanctions together, says Andrew Young...
...Here the editorials diverge as to what forms and degrees of pressure would most likely further that evolution...
...No longer...
...But what about the feasibility of the bishops' sponsoring such a "crusade...
...William Steif and Tom Mechling, in their report on press freedom in Africa (p...
...And so the proposals keep coming...
...There comes a moment when the clock cannot be set back...
...Could tutors and caregivers without professional training really meet literacy and health needs...
...Eliot Janeway, the distinguished economist, business analyst, and publisher, has sent us a proposal...
...Janeway thinks the results would be quite the opposite...
...Time is running out, says the West, and white South Africa must be pressed to evolve toward recognizing the black majority's rights...
...The Center is presently seeking foundation funding to have the film dubbed into English so that this story can be made more accessible to young people...
...If it's up to the good people in South Africa itself, they need support...
...In Central America...
...Free Nelson Mandela, jailed head of the African National Congress and most respected black leader in South Africa, says just about everyone...
...Janeway himself replies in advance to one of them — would a call to massive voluntarism effectively excuse government from its social responsibilities...
...Word has reached us that Franz Jaegerstaetter, the Austrian peasant beheaded in 1943 for refusing service in Hitler's army, was issued a posthumous Award of Honor this past December...
...So, too, are the chances, at least in the near future, of getting much from government except, as Janeway puts it, "malign neglect...
...The perception that time is running out can be dangerous in international politics, leading to precipitous actions...
...9 August 1985: 419 ETC...
...In Iran...
...Enter into negotiations with Mandela, respond to the pleas of Bishop Desmond Tutu, take up the regional multiracial governing plan offered by Zulu Chief Gatsha Buthelezi — these are all ideas that must be acted upon soon, before such moderate leaders are swept away in a tide of uncompromising militance and anger...
...Some people are even saying that such a future is already here...
...Another paper, with a black readership, greeted the emergency decree with a front-page headline saying "COMMENT"— followed by a blank space...
...It was accepted by Jaegerstaetter's widow in a nationally televised ceremony...
...he believes that economic prospects are dim...
...Pax Christi Center on Conscience and War have been circulating the prize-winning Austrian film, The Refusal, based on Zahn's book In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jaegerstaetter which "discovered" this contemporary martyr...
...Constructive engagement" is in tatters, but "we're not undertaking a basic policy review," said a White House official...
Vol. 112 • August 1985 • No. 14
