EXPLOSION IN SOUTH AFRICA

...These were later confiscated by the government...

...Just the opposite course has been pursued...

...One of the tragic blunders of the government has been its stubborn refusal to confer with the African leaders concerning their people's grievances...

...the conditions of life of urban Africans...

...The government has jailed the responsible leaders and tried to discredit them as Communists...

...Headlines were devoted to the statement of a group of ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church urging an end to apartheid...

...The great tragedy is that this revolution could have come peacefully and gradually, but the blindness and rigidity of the present government seem to doom it to a revolution of violence and haste...

...There was some indication of what would happen if black labor were withdrawn from the cities when many Africans recently refused to go to work as a protest against the government shootings and repression...

...Africans started to run in all directions, followed by the police who continued to hit them...

...One of the lawyers defending Chief Albert Luthuli of the African National Congress told me that he was greatly concerned about the official inquiry now being conducted into the riots at Sharpeville and Langa...

...It led the recent anti-pass campaign that culminated in the Sharpeville and Langa riots and forced the government temporarily to suspend the carrying of passes...

...There the police went berserk, creating a reign of terror by assaulting law-abiding Africans who just happened to be on the streets during working hours...

...She has helped hundreds of Africans to get permission to live in the urban locations...

...At both places, the natives had gone to the police station to surrender their passes and offer themselves for arrest...

...There are many differences of opinion among the European population, both in the Dutch Afrikaner group and the English...

...In every main center of the Union the deep, bitter hatred of the apartheid laws and of the whites who enforce them has blazed out in mass protest and in violence, arson, and murder...

...A white woman suggested that we walk to the next block to get the bus...

...The crowd was peaceful and orderly, and the only subject of conversation was that they were going to get an answer from the police officials...

...Scarcely any whites in South Africa perform heavy or disagreeable work...

...We have signed a pact with history...

...On another occasion, while waiting for a bus one afternoon in Cape Town, an African who had been drinking began talking to me...

...Oblivious of the inconsistencies and absurdities of the apartheid policy, Prime Minister Hendrik E. Verwoerd and his cabinet—aptly described as "a fake giant, surrounded by real pygmies"—are convinced that the current troubles are not a sign of unrest among the majority of the Africans, but merely the work of agitators who magnify and exaggerate the grievances of the natives and demagogically goad them into resisting the whites...

...You may have been told that passes are really just identification cards," she said, "but they are used to brow-beat the native...

...The police, having no place in the jails for thousands of Africans, told them they would confer with the authorities and give the people a report that evening about what should be done...

...An English army captain in the lobby of a hotel in a small country town said he did not blame the Africans for resorting to violence, considering all the hideous outrages they have suffered for so long...

...Fortunately—and this has not been generally reported in the rest of the world—the views of the government are not shared by a great many white South Africans...

...Some of them became trouble makers who bring discredit on the rest of the Africans...

...That all is going to be as it was before...

...The English press in South Africa is outspoken in its editorial criticism of the Nationalist government...

...On March 30, 30,000 Africans from the native townships on the outskirts of Cape Town surged into the city, led not by a seasoned political agitator but by a 21-year-old college student, a follower of Sobukwe who pleaded for an opportunity to report his people's grievances to the proper authorities...

...When he was promised an interview, he asked the huge crowd to disperse and go home peacefully...

...The police were carrying out a campaign against so-called "intimidators" —Africans who tried to persuade others to stay away from their jobs...

...Widmayer, an American political scientist who recently completed two years of teaching in India, arrived by chance in South Africa just as the recent riots broke out...

...Some people found bricks and threw them back at the police...

...The people often live in squalor and poverty, and even where their conditions are somewhat better, their wages are seldom enough for an adequate diet...

...The position of the urban African is the crux of the problem...

...Almost immediately, while the crowd was still standing about, the police started hitting people...

...On two occasions I was astonished at the extreme hostility toward the government expressed by chance acquaintances...

...The need for African labor is the single biggest obstacle to the accomplishment of apartheid...

...This is the appeal Sobukwe makes to his followers: "Sons and daughters of Africa, we are knocking at the door of history . . . We have signed a pact with human worth and dignity . . . We have signed a pact with freedom and independence...

...So long as the government is in the hands of men with such views, conditions will only become worse...

...This is one of the causes of African dissatisfaction and frustration...

...The national head of the PAC is a 36-year-old former professor of African languages...

...In Cape Town the Institute assists Africans who run afoul of the numerous apartheid laws...

...they reported large numbers of people shot in the back...

...These townships are breeding grounds of native revolts...

...There are photographs showing the police opening fire on the unarmed crowd and shooting people as they ran...

...One of the things he had reported was that on the previous day police had gone into people's homes, beating up those who refused to work...

...Philip Kosogne, the student leader, was arrested immediately after his interview with the secretary of the Minister of Justice...

...Its leader, Albert Luthuli, a former Zulu Chief, is a cultured and well-educated Christian who spent nine months in the United States as the guest of a church organization a few years ago...

...The injustices, the insecurity, and genuine grievances under which the Bantu urban proletariat suffers have been made searingly clear...

...The Editors...

...He, too, is in jail, but his organization has produced other leaders...

...There are about ten million Africans and three million whites...

...Having made a false diagnosis of the malady, they are prescribing totally ineffectual and often dangerous remedies...

...Eyewitness accounts of the riots gathered by reliable and impartial sources—doctors, clergymen, and foreign and domestic newspaper men—indicate that it was not the natives who were responsible for starting the violence, as the government has charged...

...More and more whites of South Africa have come to realize that the Africans have genuine grievances which must be understood and dealt with...

...the status of civil liberties in the Union...

...Tall, vigorous Robert Sobukwe is a forceful speaker and a dynamic personality, beloved by his fellow Africans and admired by his former white students...

...This remarkable organization has thousands of members, well-paid functionaries, a handsome new building in Johannesburg and offices in the other leading cities of the Union...

...The press reported a demonstration of white students of Natal University outside the City Hall where they displayed placards reading "Freedom Is Dead," "Hitler 1939-Verwoerd 1960," "The Whole World Is With Us...

...Many single men are brought from the reserves and put in large dormitories, where they lead abnormal lives away from their families and the social activities to which they are accustomed...

...The people followed his instructions, and not a single act of violence occurred as the blacks streamed back to their homes...

...The Bantus greatly resent the fact that they have no say whatever about the laws which Herblock in The Washington Post Darkest Africa govern them...

...This is no . . . ironic analogy...

...Tuberculosis and malnutrition diseases are rife...

...The pass laws have been a special source of bitterness and a constant reminder of white domination and repression...

...The director is a vital, quick-witted, resourceful, and thoroughly dedicated woman who has the respect of the police and government officials and the confidence and trust of the Africans...

...A senior police official said he was giving the crowd three minutes to disperse...

...Women with babies on their backs, a clergyman, and a distinguished African professor at Cape Town University were among those assaulted by the police...

...Those detained may not receive visitors and are allowed no correspondence...

...Today he is behind bars, and the ANC is banned...

...During the three weeks I have been in this country, I have yet to meet one person who is in whole-hearted agreement with the policy of apartheid...

...Arrest need not be followed by appearance in court...

...We are already smugly establishing the myth that a thousand million people are wrong and we are right . . . Thus does the schizophrenic nod, grin, grimace, and blow upon his fingers or test with his thumb the point of the dagger, which later when his\ frenzy seizes him he will run into himself or his nearest victim...

...Arrests are numerous...

...Stretch out your hands and grasp the outstretched hand of history...

...This anti-intimidator drive started in the native townships, then spread to Cape Town...

...He argued that the government is trying desperately to suppress evidence about the real nature of what took place...

...Many industries came to a complete standstill and others were seriously crippled...

...Here is one of many similar accounts of what happened in the evening at Langa: "There was a crowd of 7,000 to 8,000 people...

...For a while, reporters, clergymen, and relatives were allowed to visit the wounded in the hospitals...

...Then they started singing and praying and as they finished praying the police arrived in their vans...

...There is considerable evidence that the Nationalist government is able to remain in power only because it has set up the electoral districts in such a way that the rural areas, which provide its chief support, are grossly over-represented...

...I heard Chief Luthuli testify at the treason trial in Pretoria, emphasizing over and over his belief in peaceful methods and his abhorrence of violence...

...A reporter for one of the Cape Town newspapers remarked during a conversation a few days ago, "I wonder how many people realize that what we are going through now is a revolution...

...The high South African standard of living —quite comparable to the United States, with nearly all families owning cars and a high percentage of home ownership—is built on exploited African labor...

...The South African Institute of Race Relations is a non-political organization devoted to fact-finding and fact-dissemination relating to conditions of Africans and other ethnic groups...

...The leading organization of the Africans has been the African National Congress, a group dedicated to a program of non-violence and moderation, seeking an eventual multi-racial state with guarantees for the whites...

...and sociological and psychological studies of Africans...

...Its studies are read not only by its members and other intellectuals but by government officials, and they are given considerable publicity in the press...

...The unfavorable reaction of world opinion was played up in the press...

...This more militant and uncompromising group talks stridently of "Africa for the Africans" and rejects white assistance...

...At this stage the police started shooting at close range...

...Ordinary householders who employ servants (almost all families here have servants) as well as factory owners and industrialists realize the utter folly of even considering a total separation of the races—the future goal envisioned by the Nationalists—which would mean that the whites would have to do the work now being performed by the Africans...

...Protests to the police and Parliament brought the callous reply: "The police are only doing their duty...

...March with us, you dusky children of the soil . . . Hitch your wagon to the star of African freedom...

...They prefer a stable labor force and not one that has to be re-trained every year...

...Moreover, it is an offense punishable by up to five years imprisonment to disclose, without written government permission, the name of anyone arrested...

...These drastic measures, and many more of similar character, constitute the government's response to the explosive resistance movement launched by the African majority of South Africa...

...Cape Town South Africa, battered relentlessly by a rising tide of black revolt, is today virtually an armed camp...

...The day-to-day developments have been widely reported in the press, but here the issue of who started the violence is still a matter of bitter controversy...

...There are two political parties which are unalterably opposed to apartheid: the Liberal Party, in which the well-known novelist Alan Paton is an officer, and the Progressive Party, which has several brilliant young members in the national parliament...

...Everywhere there are heavily armed troops and police...

...The government's answer is unconditional surrender . . ." Numerous articles are published which reflect anti-apartheid sentiments...

...The following, from the Cape Town Argus, is but one example of the hard-hitting criticisms frequently seen in leading South African newspapers: "Are we now mad enough to deserve as well as expose ourselves to destruction...

...Businessmen are not eager to support the government policy of making urban workers temporary migratory laborers...

...This fine Afrikaner woman was especially concerned lest I should be taken in by the false claims of the Nationalists about the treatment of the Africans...

...In keeping with the repressive spirit of the garrison state, any person may be arrested and detained, with or without a warrant, if his arrest is merely considered desirable in the interest of public safety...

...Nothing else in South Africa's history has shown with such shattering clarity the need for representative organizations for the Bantu as the recent terrible events...

...Yet organizations that did exist are today banned and declared unlawful...

...It is not only in casual encounters that I discovered resistance to apartheid...

...Newspapers, the Race Relations Institute, and the representatives of the natives in parliament were beseiged by calls from Africans and from outraged whites who observed the indiscriminate beatings of Africans...

...But in places like the notorious Cato Manor in Durban and Windemere in Cape Town, they live in corrugated tin shacks...

...They are increasingly skeptical of the ability of the whites to keep the black majority in a subordinate economic and political position for the indefinite future...

...There are a number of organizations devoted to abolishing apartheid and which accept the African as the equal (or at least the potential equal) of the white...

...She rode some distance with me and spoke of nothing except how unfairly the Africans are treated...

...It publishes scores of studies prepared by competent researchers dealing with such subjects as wages of Africans compared with whites...

...Luthuli's whole record of leadership in the ANC backs up his verbal testimony...

...Do our leaders and the mass of the white electorate truly believe that we can go back to the sham politics, apartheid and partition...

...He works in the large cities and must go back and forth each day from his native township, which is anywhere from five to 'thirty miles from the city...

...Impatient with the mild methods of the ANC, a new group was formed in 'the past two years known as the Pan African Congress...

...the attitude of trade unions toward the non-whites...

...Their solution is to arrest the agitators, ban all the political organizations of the Africans, and keep the natives docile by a massive show of force...

...Her first words were, "I didn't want you to get the idea that all our natives are like that fellow—he's just been drinking...

...The job reservation law reserves skilled jobs for whites alone and leaves to the Bantus the hard, unskilled labor...

...Men who have worked for ten years in the city can bring their families, and they are housed in small brick houses in the better townships...

...Sobukwe predicts freedom for the South African blacks in 1963...

...It is a mark of schizophrenia that the sufferer begins to create a vocabulary and a 'truth' entirely of his own...

...Her eye-witness report is based on extensive travel and interviews in that unhappy land...

...The Catholic Archbishop of Durban has said, "The choice before white domination is graceful acquiescence or annihilation—and graceful acquiescence must come soon, almost immediately...

...If a policeman asks an African for his pass and he doesn't happen to have it on him, he can be arrested on the spot and sent to work on a farm, without even a chance to notify his family...