The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Tensions in South Africa

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Jim Lehrer, who has the voice, is away tonight. Police in South Africa reported today that twenty four people had been killed in three days of fighting and rioting among blacks in townships near Cape Town. Militant blacks reportedly fought others reluctant to join a commercial boycott of all Christmas activities. The boycott was to symbolize mourning for blacks killed in earlier racial disturbances. In the past year nearly five hundred people have died in racial strife in South Africa. At least one hundred and fifty of these deaths occurred in the current holiday season. Tonight we look at the mounting political and racial tensions in South Africa, but from an unusual perspective: how do white liberals feel about the future of their country? Can they work towards political representation of blacks through peaceful means, or is much greater violence inevitable? In particular, can liberal South Africans be more effective inside their country or in self-exile? We talk tonight with two of them; one has chosen to stay in the United States, the other is returning to South Africa tonight, after six months here. He`s a well-known journalist, Benjamin Pogrund. Steve Nevas, of Boston Public Television, reports:

STEVE NEVAS: Benjamin Pogrund, an honorary Neiman Fellow in journalism at Harvard, writing these past six months for the Boston Globe and about to return home. Pogrund is an assistant editor of Johannesburg`s Rand Daily Mail. Benjamin Pogrund, who has enjoyed a professional freedom here that is narrowed at home by a series of laws governing the press, describes it as like walking blindfolded through a mine field.

MARGARET MARSHALL, Attorney, South African Citizen: What he`s remembered for, though, and what he`s best known for, perhaps, is reporting events and patterns of behavior in South Africa which are somehow avoided -- conditions in prisons, for example...

NEVAS: Speaking of the unspeakable.

MARSHALL: Exactly.

NEVAS: And that is interpreted as being in opposition to the government?

MARSHALL: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it`s one thing to simply say, "I oppose the policies of the government." It`s quite a different thing to actually investigate and give publicity to specific policies -- or the implementation of policies.

NEVAS: At Harvard`s Nieman Foundation, its curator, James Thompson, sees South Africa`s English language press as playing the role of the opposition party, disliked by the government, but tolerated.

JAMES THOMPSON, Nieman Foundation, Harvard University: The government needs a free press to prove that it is a parliamentary democracy. Free press is a very useful instrument to the government. One wonders why, when they put people under detention -- under ban, when they jail people -- indefinitely without trial, abolish jury trials and the like, how they can tolerate the kind of criticism that comes out of the Rand Daily Mail and many other newspapers in their own country. I would think that it`s useful window- dressing, up to a point. At some point it may become a threat, at which point they will turn it off. But so far, they can point out to those who say this is a police state -- South Africa -- "Look at our press. How can it be a police state?"

NEVAS: Benjamin Pogrund has been arrested three times in South Africa in connection with what he has written or for printed material in his possession. But even in America he must feel as though his government is watching over his shoulder.

MARSHALL: Of course, there`s no question that the South African security forces will watch very carefully, for example, people like Benjamin in their public appearances in the United States.

NEVAS: You`re saying that South African security forces are operating in this country?

MARSHALL: Without question. And so that even somebody like Benjamin is not totally free to speak in this country. If he speaks publicly here, it will be reported back in South Africa; he`s conscious of that and aware of that. I think that what he says here he says at home. I mean, he doesn`t have two different viewpoints. The kind of evidence emerges not so much at this end but at the other end, before government commissions; for example, letters that were exchanged between people in the United States were referred to in investigating commissions in South Africa.

NEVAS: You`re saying they`re opening the U.S. mail, or somehow getting access to it?

MARSHALL: I think that that`s a very strong possibility, yes. Somehow getting access to it in a variety of ways, I`m not sure how that happens. Certainly, I have had very strong suspicions. I`ve been a graduate student at Harvard and a law student at Yale, and on several occasions have felt that South African students who have spoken to me and tried to ascertain information about anti-apartheid activities in this country were probably not doing so entirely for their own use. They may simply be supporters of the government, they may be employed by the government; it makes no difference to me. One is simply careful about what one says.

THOMPSON: People like Benjamin are people in between, who probably are not radical enough for the militant blacks and are much too liberal for the orthodox whites. That`s not an easy position on the street to be on; you get hit by traffic going both ways. To choose exile is a possible route, and many have chosen it; and I make no judgment about the morality of choosing exile or going back. I admire the stick-to-itiveness and the love of motherland, regardless of color, that those who go back show. It`s their country, they want to go back and fight the good fight to make it a more just society; it`s probably the world`s least just society, in my view, at the moment.

MacNEIL: Margaret Marshall, who you saw on tape, is a close friend of Benjamin Pogrund`s. She came to the United States in 1968 to attend Harvard`s Graduate School of Education. She went on to attain a law degree from Yale and is now associated with a law firm in Boston. As I said earlier, Mr. Pogrund leaves after this program to return to South Africa. Ms. Marshall intends to stay in this country and become an American citizen. Can you both describe for us the white South African liberal`s dilemma, first of all, in terms of whether to go back there to be effective or to stay away? Why are you going back as a journalist?

BENJAMIN POGRUND: As a journalist, because I`m a writer. I`ve been a writer for more years than I can remember, almost; it`s nay country; as Jim Thompson said, there`s love of motherland; and South Africa is a curious place, I think. It seems to get hold of you in a particularly special way; it affects those who live there and those who travel to it. And all my adult like has been spent devoted to the country`s situation and its racial problems. Through a series of accidents I land up in the position of being able to do rather more about it, perhaps, than most people, because I`m both a writer and a very senior person on the country`s biggest morning newspaper. And that puts me in a very special position to do something.

MacNEIL: How much freedom do you have as a journalist to exploit that position that you have?

POGRUND: That`s very much a reflection of the contradictory nature of the South African society; the press, naturally, reflects the society. And on the one hand, there is a great deal of freedom -- certainly, it`s the freest press in the whole of Africa -- and there`s a great deal we can say, there`s a great deal we can investigate and report upon. And yet simultaneously with this there are all sorts of areas where we dare not step into; we are either told we cannot step into those, or we`ll simply be frightened to go into those. So on the one hand there is a stranglehold on the press...

MacNEIL: Like what -- what specific thing would you like to do or have tried to do and just can`t do?

POGRUND: Prison is the best example, the one I know best. There`s a section of the law which says that it is an offense to publish any information about prisons or prisoners, knowing such information to be untrue, or without taking reasonable steps to en sure its accuracy. And that sounds pretty reasonable, you know; you always want to publish the truth. The only trouble is that when you try and write something about that it`s an impossible onus to discharge. And the net effect is that nothing appears on prisons in South Africa. Another area, a very important one, is in the field of racial incitement -- inciting people to violence against each other. And in a multiracial country like South Africa, it sounds a very good idea to have laws like that. The trouble is, the laws are applied against those who are trying to bring about change. Right-wing whites -- white fascists -- aren`t charged with stirring up racial animosities, but people on the left are; and this is an entirely gray area. How do you know what incitement is? At which point do you draw the line? And this is the field in which the press has to operate. So the newspaper adage tends to apply, "When in doubt, leave out."

MacNEIL: You`re a friend of his Margaret Marshall; do you think he`s crazy to go back as a journalist -- not for physical danger that might threaten him, or anything, but because he could be more effective here if he didn`t go back? What do you think?

MARSHALL: No, I think for somebody like Benjamin it makes a great deal of sense to go back.I would say that is true of very, very few journalists.

MacNEIL: Why he, particularly?

MARSHALL: Because he is a man who`s prepared to take risks that other journalists, perhaps, are not prepared to take; he is outrageous, in a way. If he actually read the legislation carefully, he would know that he wouldn`t be able to get further than step one. I think there are few people in South Africa who are so disliked as much as Benjamin is. He is relentless in his willingness to expose what he considers injustice in South Africa. I`m delighted, as a South African who is not returning to South Africa, that Benjamin is returning.

MacNEIL: So why aren`t you returning?

MARSHALL: Everything in South Africa is controlled by the color of your skin -- where you eat, where you sleep, where you go to school, where you send your children to school, whether or not you can travel, where you go on vacation. I find it impossible to live in a society where the color of my skin determines every move that I make. I am not a writer, I do not have the kind of position that Benjamin has, and I think that by remaining in South Africa I, personally, would simply be part of the system, with no opportunity to really confront it.

MacNEIL: In what way does somebody like yourself, who is not a journalist, who`s not publishing, feel himself circumscribed in his freedom of speech?

MARSHALL: In freedom of speech, one can say a certain amount in South Africa; you`re certainly allowed to say that you disagree with the government. But, for example, if you publish a pamphlet calling for a change of government in South Africa, as a friend of mine did, you will find yourself facing a seven-year jail sentence. It seems to me that that`s a pretty basic way that one can`t say what you think. It`s a question of whether you simply oppose in sort of vague, amorphous terms the policy of apartheid as opposed to really advocating some fundamental change, especially a change which would involve a sharing of power in South Africa. You may say that you don`t like discriminatory legislation. It`s when you say what you do like that you run into problems in South Africa.

MacNEIL: Could you sort of delineate for us what you feel -and I know you both haven`t been there in the last few months, but what you feel white South African opinion is, the spectrum of white South African opinion, whether it`s changing now?

POGRUND: No, I don`t think it is.

MacNEIL: What is the spectrum, first of all, in sort of rough proportions in the journalist`s shorthand?

POGRUND: On the far left, virtually non-existent, in terms of people who are communist or anything like that. Liberals like myself, who believe in a completely non-racial, fully integrated society, totally, a small number -- I`d say perhaps one percent, something like that -- if that?

MARSHALL: Oh, very small number.

POGRUND: Very small. And then, going more to the center, a rather larger body of people, the Progressive Reformists, probably ten to twenty percent of whites, who believe in a form of gradual change. They are perhaps not entirely sure what lies at the end of the road, but they certainly are vehemently against the apartheid and the repression of the moment; and they`re a pretty good bunch. And then, in the middle, the United Party, a pale-shadow of the Nationalists, probably, what, ten, twenty percent at this stage, who generally would support what the Afrikaners Nationalist government does -- mainly English-speaking conservatives. And the bulk of the white population, who support the present Afrikaner Nationalist government and who are mostly Afrikaners themselves; and then, right over on the right, the far right, another very small group of people who are extreme right-wingers who believe that even this government is doing too much for black Africans and simply want to have clearer lines drawn all over the place.

MacNEIL: The body of opinion that still supports apartheid -dose it believe in that fervently and religiously still -- not the extremists you talk about, but the body just to the right - rigidly as the immutable faith, or does it believe in it as something to hold out for as long as possible in the face of all the pressures that are growing now?

MARSHALL: My own opinion is, it`s the latter rather than the former, and there`s considerable difference of opinion about this. I think that white South Africans who support the present policies do do so with some kind of belief, they are not totally cynical people; but I do believe that it`s their privilege and their power more than an ideological position that makes it comfortable for them to maintain their position. So, for example, somebody like Prime Minister Verwoerd...

MacNEIL: Like politics almost anywhere else.

MARSHALL: Politics almost anywhere else, in that they will happily negotiate with independent Africa when it suits them to negotiate with independent Africa, and despise independent Africa when it suits them to do that. They will push for the independence" of the Bantustans and invite black leaders of the Bantustan territories...

MacNEIL: The Bantustans being those territories that have been given to the blacks as their homelands, and the idea is that they should become independent gradually.

POGRUND: The partition of South Africa, yes.

MARSHALL: It`s a strange characterization, because to imply that whites can give land to blacks is itself flipping the whole thing on its head. But what I`m suggesting is that what has clearly happened in the last six months, especially, faced with increasing obvious, open black anger of apartheid, I think whites will modify as little as they have to modify. And I a gree with Benjamin that there has been no fundamental change in white opinion in South Africa. Depending on what the pressures are, there may be some adjustments, but it is simply a question of holding onto what you have. White South Africans are the most privileged, wealthiest group of people anywhere in the world; it is an extremely wealthy country, and they will hold onto that for as long as possible.

MacNEIL: And it`s a very small group of white people -- roughly three million.

MARSHALL: Very small -- just over three million.

POGRUND: Four and a half million.

MacNEIL: I beg your pardon, four and a half million.

POGRUND: Four and a half million out of a population of about twenty-five, twenty-six million.

MacNEIL: Yes. I`d just like to get your opinion on what I asked Margaret Marshall. Let me ask it in a cruder way; is the white opinion in support of apartheid because it`s convenient for their economic and social position and their security? How fanatical is it, and how possibly flexible is it under the pressures that are growing?

POGRUND: It`s a combination of all those things, but it`s become fanatical because this has been seen as the answer -- the so-called separate development -- because it`s simply apartheid; what the world has come to kncar as apartheid, which is simply "separateness", is now called separate development and -a- whole philosophy has been created around it. They talk about separate freedoms in separate areas, all sorts of things of that sort. And because this is seen as the way of meeting the moral dilemma of the Afrikaner -because there are many Afrikaners who are very worried about the straightforward, crude oppression which apartheid meant, so they found "separate development" and they can talk about freedoms -- it`s also the way they hope to get the world off their backs; because they partition the country, they have nine Bantustans separate African homelands, and so they can turn around and say, `But what are you talking about? We don`t have any Africans any more; we`re not oppressing them. They`re only visitors to our country. There are eighteen million visiting Africans whom we allow into our country." You know, this is all part of the fraud that`s going on.

MacNEIL: You must have left South Africa just about the time that the Vorster government was turning around to back -- before that, in fact -- to back the idea of majority rule, the inevitability of majority rule, for the Rhodesians, or at least to push Ian Smith towards some recognition of that. I`m wondering what effect that move by their own government had on white opinion in South Africa.

POGRUND: This has been one of the misapprehensions in America, I`m sorry to tell you. There was a great deal of euphoria built up, and complete misinformation about the Rhodesian situation; and one of the aspects of that was the notion that Secretary Kissinger had gone to Africa and he had persuaded Prime Minister Vorster to a new view of Rhodesia...

MacNEIL: No, I`m talking about before that -- I`m talking about the government`s...

POGRUND: About majority rule? This has been a...

MacNEIL: The conference with Ian Smith at Lake Victoria, and...

POGRUND: Oh, I see, over that point. Sorry. Then, of course, you`re correct, because most people have had the idea here, that I`ve found, that this was something in the last six months.

MacNEIL: That Kissinger pulled off.

POGRUND: Yes. MacNEIL: No.

POGRUND: No, in fact, this is two years old.

MacNEIL: I meant that.

POGRUND: And the reason is a very important one; it goes back to April 1974, when Portuguese power collapsed and with it the five hundred-year-old Portuguese colonies in southern Africa -- Angola in the west, Mozambique in the east suddenly faced the loss of Portuguese control. South Africa at that stage took a very hard look at the situation and they realized very rapidly that Rhodesia was finished, that South Africa supporting Rhodesia on its own put it in an untenable position, that once Mozambique went, Ian Smith could not survive for all that long. They took-another look at the situation and they decided that they could live with a black government to the north, in Rhodesia, as they would have to live with a black government to the east -- even a hostile black government -- and that, in fact has happened. So two and a half years ago South Africa took that decision that Ian Smith was a danger, that he was an embarrassment; and from that point on they have been desperately keen to have him go, and the quicker he goes, the more likelihood there is of a fairly moderate black government coming in in Rhodesia.

MacNEIL: All right, you`ve expressed it as a sort of tactical move by the Vorster government; my question is, what effect has that had on white opinion in South Africa? Does it see any principle involved in majority rule -- their government supported it -- or simply as a tactical retreat which will further secure their own situation?

MARSHALL: I think they are quite cynical about it, and I think that gets back to your initial point -- I mean, how much ideology is here, how much religious conviction? I think that white South Africans will make whatever adjustments they have to make as long as that involves maintaining their own power. It`s a calculation that they make; I personally hope that it`s a miscalculation. But I think that it`s a mistake to see them as principled people who are somehow keeping the banner of Christianity alive in southern Africa, which is how they`d like to describe it.

MacNEIL: Of course, what all this leads to is the question -to put it in terms that an American might think of it, especially as his government`s going to be confronted with some decisions on South Africa coming up -- what all this leads to is, is there still a possibility with these pressures building up of negotiating something like shared racial political responsibility in South Africa, or is the fortress -- white position -- being so drawn in that it`s inevitable that only a very bloody clash will either overthrow apartheid or challenge it?

POGRUND: I think my response there would be a distinction between what I hope and what I fear. I still hope, with my outlook, that the time for coming together and being together remains; but my terrible fear, especially after the last six months, is that a fundamental turning point has been reached. Until the last few months I would almost have spoken of South Africa as being a white problem.

In South Africa the whites always talk about the black problem, the racial problem, but it fact it`s been a white problem, because whites were not prepared to share and to extend power and privilege. Blacks have always been accepting of whites, but not in reverse. Now I think the terrible tragedy of the last six months is that blacks have probably just had enough. There`s been too much shooting, too much killing. The shooting of young school children, in particular, from what I`ve been able to see, has pushed people beyond a point, perhaps, of no return; and blacks are simply no longer prepared to extend a hand as they were in the past. And this is the terrible situation that South Africa now goes into. How do you feel about that, Margie?

MARSHALL: I`d like to take a slightly different tack; I don`t know whether the point of not being able to exert any pressure has been reached. I do know that to the extent that major governments, such as the United States and Great Britain, continue to give open support to the present government in South Africa they entrench that government`s power more and more. And I would like to think that, at least, with a new administration in this country, that the United States make a fundamental commitment to human rights and justice in South Africa. I find it extremely disturbing that people on the one hand abhor violence, by which they mean the recent racial violence, and on the other hand are not prepared to take the kind of steps that would weaken the present government in South Africa or force it to reevaluate its position.

MacNEIL: Let`s go into what those steps could be. They`re clearly going to be strong challenges to the South African position in the United Nations, which is immediately going to confront the United States with a dilemma, and its new Ambassador, Andy Young, with the choice of abiding by the principles we express and going the route of what has been the policy so far -- South Africa`s government is officially deplored by the State Department in this country, which is the strongest language it uses to any country; but as you say, there are all sorts of arrangements. What can the United States do, in realistic political terms, taking into consideration its defense interests and its business interests, to support the principles it espouses in South Africa?

POGRUND: You`ve got some basic problems here. Andy Young, whom I personally admire a great deal and I admire also the reason why he`s going to the United Nations -- I think he`s going almost as a missionary. He sees a certain function which it is necessary for the United States to perform, particularly in regard to southern Africa, and he sees himself as the instrument for that, with the backing, obviously, of the Carter administration. But unfortunately, the interests you`ve just referred to in my view are going to dominate. You have got security interests -- you`ve got strategic economic interests, and even though yours aren`t all that powerful because, for example, your trade with South Africa is, what, just over one percent of Americans foreign trade, so it`s peanuts to you. But the interests of your closest western allies are affected. You do anything to South Africa to disturb the stability -- in other words, white rule -- and Britain would go down the drain. The profits it gets from its investments are...

MacNEIL: So you`re suggesting it`s going to be very difficult in any realistic, real politic terms, for the United States to do anything that would go the direction you`d like. What do you think?

MARSHALL: I think it will be difficult, but I think that it`s imperative that the United States, given that it itself does not have tremendous economic interests in South Africa although it does have major strategic interests, support, for example, the resolution that was passed in the last sitting of the General Assembly calling for sanctions against South Africa. I think that if the United States looks first at the economic protection of the western countries involved in South Africa it cannot then stand back and abhor the actions taken by black South Africans to change that government. That is to say, you can`t have your cake and eat it; you can`t say, "We don`t want to take any action because our allies will be affected, neither do we want black South Africans to act." I think the two things go in concert.

POGRUND: I think this is where Margie and I somewhat disagree. Perhaps my view is more realistic -- or more cynical, whichever it might be...

MacNEIL: Can you be cynical in about fifteen seconds?

POGRUND: (Laughing.) Sure. I think your problem is, you don`t know what comes after. South Africa and Rhodesia -- South Africa says they oppose communism. They are the bulwark against communism. So you accept that. If the white government goes in South Africa, what replaces it? You don`t have an answer to that yet.

MARSHALL: Benjamin, the white government is so bad that I think that almost any government would be better; it is the most unjust government in the world.

MacNEIL: I think we`ll have to leave it there. I wish you a good trip back.

POGRUND: Thank you.

MacNEIL: I wish you well. Thank you.