Items

• Witness to man's inhumanity

  "Antjie Krog, the author of Country of My Skull, is a South African poet and journalist who headed the SABC's team that reported, daily, for two years, on the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She did an excellent job at some personal cost. As the stories of torture, shootings, burnings, and maimings roll on, she suffers stress-related hair loss and facial rashes. She learns quickly what can and cannot be broadcast..."
• Winning struggle to reestablish African culture alongside the economic revolution

  "Although economic considerations now outweigh most others in the minds of most African people and their leaders in their quest for national images, there is in Nigeria, as in many other African countries, a growing cultural awareness in the face of the political turmoil that plagues most of the continent....Haunted by the knowledge that these ancient kingdoms [of Africa] had well-developed cultural and political organizations of their own, today's African countries are at the crossroads...The dilemma of most African countries is to find that way forward which involves a marriage between economics, culture and politics..."
• Why South Africa put its leading Afrikaans poet on trial

  One of the most important political trials to take place in South Africa for some time began on Friday when Mr. Breyten Breytenbach, the avant-garde Afrikaans poet and writer, appeared in Pretoria's palace of justice on charges of terrorism and furthering the aims of communism - both capital offences. He has pleaded guilty to some of the charges and the trial is expected to end this week. Mr Breytenbach, who is arguably the greatest living Afrikaans writer and whose works are required reading in most South African universities, faces 14 main allegations by the state. Chief among them is that he planned to set up an illegal organization known as "Atlas" or "Okhela," whose aim, according to the 18 page charge sheet, was to hand over power to Black Africans or set up a "Communist" society. [Article continues with an exploration of unrest and political arrests in South Africa.]
• Violence Hits Central Johannesburg after Execution of Moloise

  International outrage and violent demonstrations in the centre of Johannesburg followed the execution yesterday in Pretoria of Benjamin Moloise, a black South African poet. The execution - carried out in spite of pleas from around the world for clemency - prompted an angry response from Commonwealth heads of government, meeting in Nassau. Efforts are under way there to draw up a joint policy aimed to end apartheid in South Africa. [Article continues to describe Margaret Thatcher's involvement, and the meeting of the Commonwealth leaders/how they plan to work to end apartheid.]
• US Negroes asked to boycott Games

  [Excerpt]: "The possibility of a boycott of the United States Olympic team next year by American Negro athletes has become more likely with statements by the sprinters, Tommie Smith and Lee Evans, that Negro leaders have asked them not to participate in the 1968 Olympics at Mexico City. In San Jose, California, Smith, who holds seven world records, said: "It is very discouraging to be in a team with white athletes. On the track you are Tommie Smith, the fastest man in the world, but once you are in the dressing rooms you are nothing more than a dirty Negro." ... Denis Brutus, the president of the South African Non-Racial Open Committee, told me last night: "It seems likely that the Negro political leaders in the United States are seriously considerin the boycott, and I do know that one document on the question of racial intolerance in sport--which was drawn up by the American baseball player Jackie Robinson--was also signed by Stokely Carmichael." ..."
• These tarnished Olympics

  [Excerpt]: "If anyone does not believe the repercussions of apartheid stretch far and wide, they should be present at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where it has tarnished the Games as they have never been before. One only had to see last week a departing team from Afria waiting with their baggage for transport to the airport...Everywhere was a feeling of sadness and futility... This was a seminar organised by the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid and held in Havana, attended by 200 delegates including the crucial nucleus of leading African sports officials and SAN-ROC. It was at this stage that Dennis Brutus, the president of SAN-ROC, a professor of English in the African Studies Department at the Northwest University of Illinois, threw his own acknowledged ability and experience and that of SAN-ROC unequivocally behind the African protest. Brutus, an exiled coloured South African, who was imprisoned in South Africa as a result of his views on apartheid, was portrayed in oarts of the British and foreign Press last week as a somewhat sinister figure. Yet, it is he who turned to de Broglio in Havana to say: 'If they (the African countries) are prepared to go through all this--which is much more than we would ever ask--who are we to quarrel? We're with them.'"
• The arrest of Ken Saro-Wiwa

  [Excerpt]: "At three o'clock on the afternoon of June 21, the President of the Nigerian Association of Writers, Ken Saro-Wiwa, was arrested in Port Harcourt, and has been held incommunicado ever since. He had long been expecting such a move against him. He had also long had doubts about the value of literature as a vocation in a social and political situation as critical as Nigeria's. For the past two years, he had devoted himself to promoting the interests of the Ogoni people, the ethnic group to which he belongs... Born in 1941, he attended Umuahia Government College, the school from which many eminent Nigerian writers--Chinua Achebe, Elechi Amadi, Christopher Okigbo among others-- graduated...."
• South African poet faces the death penalty

  Breyten Breytenbach, the anti-apartheid poet, was sent for trial in the Supreme Court today on charges carrying the death penalty. Mr Breytenbach, aged 36, is accused under the Terrorism and Anti-Communism Acts of helping to set up an illegal organization to promote armed struggle in South Africa intended to overthrow the white government... Mr Breytenbach is said to have been involved not only during his latest visit, but during a well-publicized visit in 1973, when he brought his wife. They are not allowed to live together under South African's racial laws.
• S. A. Professor Resigns

  Mr. Adam Small, one of South Africa's leading Coloured intellectuals, has resigned his teaching post at the troubled University of the Western Cape, citing the enforced closure of the Coloured institution as one of his reasons. The University has been closed since June 11 following student demonstrations against alleged restrictive rules and White domination in running the institution.
• S Africa expelled from Olympics

  [Excerpt]: "South Africa were expelled from the Olympic movement on the best day of the International Olympic Committee congress here today. The voting was 35 for withdrawing recognition to 28 against, with three absentions... South Africa are thought to be the first country to suffer expulsio, though records here are not complete. The debate today lasted four hours. The case against South Africa was put by Abram Ordia (Nigeria) and Jean-Claude Ganga (Congo), representing the 39 countries of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa. The case for South Africa was put by Mr. Frank Braun, president of the South African National Olympic Committee... The president of Sanroc, Mr. Denis Brutus, making a flying visit to Amsterdam in the middle of his struggle against the cricket tour of England, welcome the decision and thought the Cricket Council would be bound to be affected..."
• Poetic Licence for Democracy

  ...President Senghor has decided to bring in a controlled multi-party system. This entails reversing the gradual accumulation of power in his own party, the Union Progressiste, which has happened over the 17 years since independence; it has already included the formation of at least two other parties, and will involve nationwide elections, to be held on the basis of proportional representation, in 1978. [Article continues to descirbe the process of developing this multi-party system and the opposition/critics of the system]
• Non-whites harbour deep suspicion

  [Excerpt]: "What I found most disheartening was the deep if understandable suspicion harboured by the non-white cricket authorities towards their white counterparts. It was as a result of this that they turned dow the South African Cricket Association's offer of about 25.000 to help them with their cricket.... A non-white team had just toured Kenya with considerable success and by doing well against Worrell's side they could have silenced, forever those who say that their cricketers are no good and that D'Oliveira is a flash in the pan. But the opportunity was missed. Since then the S.A.B.O.C. have suspended contact with SANROC. "I know and like Denis Brutus," said one of them, "but he sees in everything a political implication." ..."
• Nigeria protests grow as president clings to power

  Protesters in Abuja included Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka [photo caption]
• News in Brief: Nigerian Author on Hunger Strike

  Mr. Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian playwright and university lecturer, has gone on hunger strike after being held by the police at Ibadan for nearly a week, his lawyer said today. Mr. Soyinka, whose play The Road was staged at the recent Commonwealth Arts Festival in London, gave himself up last Tuesday. A warrant had been issued for his arrest, and the police said they wanted to question him about an illicit broadcast from Ibadan.
• Monteal and Denver Chosen: North America scoops Olympics pool

  [Excerpt]: "North America scooped the pool when the voting took place here tonight for the 1976 Olympic Games. The summer sports are to be held in Montreal and the winter variety at Denver, Colorado. The choice of Montreal was greeted with volleys of applause, that for Denver with squeals of surprise... The case for South Africa's expulsion from the movement is to be put to the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) this week, probably on Friday, by Jean-Claude Ganga (Congo) and Abram Ordia (Nigeria), respectively secretary-general and president of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, a body embracing 19 countries. The South African National Olympic Committee, headed by Mr. Frank Braun, will have the right of reply, whereupon Mr. Ganga and Mr. Ordia will have a further 10 minutes to answer the case for the defense... The South African non-racial Open Committee for Olympic Sport (Sanroc) is here in force, but unavoidably without their guiding spirit, Mr. Denis Brutus, more immediately required in England with the cricket tour on the boil..."
• Inside track

  [Full text]: "A REPORT from South Africa yesterday that a new non-white sports committee has been formed to work together with the existing white South African Olympic and National Games Association (SAONGA) towards the country's fight for re-entry to the Olympics, was received with surprise and disappointment by anti-apartheid leaders in Britain. Denis Brutus, president of the South African Non-racial Open Comittee for Olympic Sports (SANROC) characterised the move as a blow to black South Africans who want multi-racial sport. There are two black sports groups in South Africa--those who agree with SAONGA president Frank Braun's proposals for organised separate black and white sports activities; and those who will not negotiate on any basis other than multi-racial sport. 'I am afraid,' says Brutus, 'that this means that the first group have agreed to co-operate with Mr Braun on what amounts to an apartheid platform.' Indeed, two members of the black group seeking multi-racial sport have been interrogated by special branch officers, adds Brutus. SANROC are retaliating by lifting their own restrictions on protests against individual athletes and officials as opposed to white South African teams."
• How is it that things haven't fallen apart

  Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian academic and Nobel Prize-winning author, spoke of belonging to a "wasted generation". Every country has its "lost generation". Some were stolen away by war, some by economic downturns, some by ruthless dictatorship. Nigeria's is perhaps the only one stolen away by too much power and money and leisure and privilege... Hope has to come from the ordinary people. Today, the most outstanding leaders are emerging not from the ranks of the ruling class, but from among ordinary people who have despaired of the government and have decided to create their own path... And yet the irony is that democracy will ultimately work in favour of the ordinary Nigerian and against the politicians who pretend to be true democrats. The genius of democracy is that it is a self-perfecting system. The laws the politicians are now enacting as if in jest, under the assumption that they apply only to the common man and not to them, these same laws are what would work against them the day one good leader decides to enforce them. Then a new era for Nigeria would begin."
• Countries wait to see if they can compete

  [Excerpt]: "From the Jamaican headquarters this morning came a voice of apparent calm which epitomized all the doubts still surrounding those few countries who do not yet know if their participation in these Olympic Games is going to be stopped in full stride...That visit does not seem to disturb the boycott organizers at all compared with the way they reacted here aginst New Zealand's rugby tour of South Africa. Indeed, Abraham Ordia of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, has already left Montreal and today Denis Brutus, president of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee, was returning to Chicago where he is a university lecturer. Obviously, both felt there was no point in trying to protest about the enormous presence here of Uncle Sam..."
• Competitors' dreams destroyed by their governments

  [Excerpt]: "As the Olympic Games began today with the modern pentathlon participants climbing into their saddles at 8 am, more than one tenth of the competitors felt close to tears. They were the members of African countries whose governments, rather than sports federations, have forced them to withdraw, after having arrived here, in protest over New Zealand's rugby tour of South Africa. They were the young men and women, many of whom had never travelled abroad before, who were left, wandering disconsolately, in the Olympic village yesterday while the Queen formally opened the games in the glittering bowl of a stadium which they will now never enter... "Why couldn't they have put off the New Zealand rugby tour until after the Games were over?" [Michael Boit] asked. He must have known, in his heart, that such a dramatic move was never contemplated either by the New Zealand or South African rugby authorities. He must have known, too, that the ment who engineered this African boycott, Jean-Claude Ganga, Abraham Ordia, and Denis Brutus, were never seekign a compromise. They wanted, at whatever price, to use the Olympics as a publicity stage against the apartheid policies of South Africa..."
• Coloured academics refuse to take part in 'witch-hunt'

  Three coloured academics have resigned from an otherwise all-white committee investigating readmissions to the Universty of the Western Cape, which was closed last week after student disturbances. The three, Mr. Adam Small, head of the university's philosophy department, Mr. G. J. Gerwel, lecturer in Afrikaans, and Mr. C. T. Johnson, lecturer in botany, had been named by Dr. Shalk van der Merwe, the Minister of Coloured Affairs, to serve on the committee with 10 white academics. A spokesman for their staff association said last night that they had resigned because the minister had already said that some students would not be readmitted and they did not want to take part in a witch-hunt.
• Clash of values

  This was a sad evening. Outside the Mercury there were a few damp demonstrators with "Free Soyinka" banners: inside, an almost equally small audience turned up for the excruciating British premiere, by the Harmony Cultural Theatre Group, of a piece in which he almost seems to have inscribed his own fat--that of a pilgrim intellectual who returns to expose himself to tribal savagery...
• Charges of Forming Illegal W. Nigeria Government: Police Seek Poet

  Following a clash between police and undergraduates at Ibadan University, all students there have been restricted to the campus. They were demonstrating against the outcome of the regional elections. In Lagos market women were dispersed by police with tear gas while on a protest march to the Prime Minister's residence from Mushin, which is the Western Nigerian suburb of the Federal capital. Police in Ibadan toda declared Mr. Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian playwright and poet who featured in the recent Commonwealth arts festival in Britain, to be a wanted person. They have asked for public cooperation in finding Mr. Soyinka, in connexion with an incident which prevented a message from Mr. Akintola, the regional Premier, being broadcast. It was stated that the recorded message was seized in the studio by an armed man, who took it away. The regional Governor has reappointed Chief Babatunji Oloweku Justice Minister and Attorney General. This is the first portfolio to be allocated so far. Chief Remifani Kayode, Chief Claude Akran, and Chief Adebiyi Adeyi have been reappointed ministers.
• Boycott threat to Games

  [Full Text]: "A mass boycott of the British Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh next July has been threatened by the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa and the South African Non-Racial Committee for Olympic Sport if the South African cricket tour of England is not called off. The Supreme Council for Sport in Africa which includes 36 countries in its membership has cabled the British Government stating that African countries will withdraw from the Edinburgh games in protest at what they regard as racism in cricket. Mr. Denis Brutus, the chairman of Sanroc, said in London last night: "At a recent meeting of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa which was held in Cairo our representatives had never seen such militancy expressed on the question of the visit of the South African cricketers. We in Sanroc are now proposing to cable all member countries of the Commonwealth Games Federation asking them to boycott the games. The latest development in the controversy over the cricket tour indicates to us that many very prominent people in Britain are giving their support to the M.C.C. We feel so strongly about this blatant racism that we regretfully have to fight back," he said. The chairman of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa is Mr. Abraham Ordia, a member of the Nigerian National Olympic Committee and the secretary is Mr. Jean-Claude Ganga from Brazzaville. It was, at first, the Kenyan Minister for Sport who suggested that no sportsman from his country would run in Edinburgh against anyone who had competed in the all-white South African games last year. He has been given the full support of black Africa and it is felt that Asian and West Indian members of the Commonwealth will soon follow suit. Mr. Brutus said: "I hope that even at this late date it is not too late for a change of mind in Britain. But the most recent developments suggest the South Africans will still play here with far-reaching effects upon international sport."
• Apartheid and Sport: The Logic of Denis Howell's Approach

  "If the Minister for Sport, Mr. Denis Howell, has his way we will be deprived next year of the opportunity of seeing the South African cricket team in action. Choosing his words with care, Mr. Howell said in a television interview at the week-end: 'I personally don't think the South African team should come. I Have no time for sport based on racial considerations. Their sport certainly is, and the selection of their team certainly is." ...By this I mean far more than the cancellation of the New Zealand rugby tour in 1964, or the fiasco over the MCC tour last year. I could take the story back as far as 1956, when the International Table Tennis Federation excluded from membership the all-white official South African Table-Tennis Association in favour of an unofficial group whose rules allowed ping-pong across the colour line. But it is best to begin with 1962, when the "South African non-racial Open Committee for Olympic Sports"--Sanroc--was formed. This group worked originally inside the Republic but it has since exiled itself to London since its president, Denis Brutus, left his home country in 1966 after a 22-month term served mostly on Robben Island..."
• 19 nations join in Olympics protest

  [Full Text]: "The number of countries which have withdrawn from the Olympic Games in protest at the New Zealand rugby tour of South Africa increased to 19 yesterday with the news that the team of Mali has been instructed to return home by their Minister of Sport. Thirteen countries have formally notified the International Committee of their withdrawal. They are Congo, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, Cameroon, Guyana, Niger, Togo, Uganda and Swaziland. Algeria, Iraq, Libya, and Upper Volta have verbally informed the IOC that they will not be taking part, and news was received yesterday from Cairo that Egypt is also pulling out. Before the news was received of Mali's marching orders, 303 competitors and 60 officials were listed as leaving the Olympics. This still left 6,934 competitors and 2,825 officials from 100 countries taking part with, in most cases, undiminished enthusiasm. Two of the chief boycott organizers have already left the battlefield. Abraham Ordia, of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, has flown home to Nigeria, and Denis Brutus, president of the South African Non-racial Olympic Committee, has left the Queen Elizabeth hotel, where his bemused elderly victims in the IOC are also housed, to return to his university in Chicago. Both men have obviously decided to leave the possibility of further withdrawals in the hands of the remaining uncommitted Caribbean, French-speaking African and Arab governments."