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 Times Diary: Speak up about Soyinka

  Full Text: "It is now almost a year since Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright who was arrested by the Nigerian Government after he visited Biafra, was seen alive; and in spite of rumours that he had been killed or was seriously ill, General Gowon's regime has remained silent on his fate. Now Ama Ata Aidoo, a Ghanaian playwright, has written to General Gowon asking him to break the silence. Miss Aidoo, who decided to write the letter because she felt an official explanation was needed, met Soyinka some time ago. 'I don't know whether he will answer the letter or whether he will even get it,' she says. She has addressed her letter through the Nigerian High Commission in London. 'But I felt it should be written. People should not be allowed to forget Wole Soyinka's disappearance.' If General Gowon is worried about federal Nigeria's reputation for justice, he would do well to clear up this serious matter."
• The language for poets

  Louis Heren interviews Adam Small on life in South Africa under apartheid. Adam Small, a black South African, discusses the way in which people who speak Afrikaans are "the true South Africans," and that "the whites...were obsessed with colour." He describes the limitations his children will face: "You cannot send your children to the best schools you can afford; only the second-or third-rate. They were bogged down in life despite their talents, from the word go."
• 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]
• Playwright's denial on Biafra

  Nigeria's leading playwright, Wole Soyinka, aged 33, has smuggled a letter out of his prison cell here, denying emphatically that he confessed to aiding the secessionist regime of the former Eastern Region. In a 202-word note written on a small piece of paper, Mr. Soyinka, who has been in custody since August 17, accused the Government of seeking to discredt him and his efforts to bring about a cease-fire in the civil war. Chief Anthony Enahoro, Federal Commissioner for Information, told journalists here on October 28 that Mr. Soyinka had admitted agreeing to spy for the Biafrans, to help them buy arms and to work "for the overthrow of the Federal Government." The commissioner said the playwright confessed to meeting Biafran leaders in their acpital at Enugu on August 6, and in the Mid-West capital of Benin three days later when it was seized by rebel forces under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Victor Banjo....
• 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: Tananarive still wants US Link

  [Full Text] Mr. Jacques Rabemananjara, the Malagasy Foreign Minister, said today that his country still wanted good relations with the United States, but they "can only be based on complete confidence in the staff of the embassy." The State Department on Friday announced that it was withdrawing its ambassador in Tananarive as a protest at accusations that the embassy had interfered in Malagasy internal affairs. Mr. Anthony Marshall, the Ambassador, had earlier worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.
• 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.
• Mr Hain aims for Springboks' Achilles heel

  [Excerpt]: "SUPPORT has snowballed beyond our wildest dreams,' says Peter hain, 19-year-old chairman of the Stop the Seventy Tour Committee formed recently to co-ordinate opposition, to next year's visit to Britain of the South African cricket team but now in the thick of the furore over the current Springbok rugger tour... It was through Denis Brutus, black South African president of SANROC (the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee) that Hain met 22-year old Hugh Geach, a Reading University student in Soil Science who is now honorary secretary of STST. Brutus is one of the few activists now hounding the Springboks with first-hand knowledge of het grim realities of Apartheid..."
• More arrested in South Africa

  Cape Town, Sept 16 -- At least four whites and an African have been detained under the Terrorism Act, in a new wave of arrests by South African security police. The latest arrests are connected with the detention some weeks ago of Breyten Breytenbach, an Afrikaner poet, James Polley, a Cape Town University lecturer, and a number of student leaders.
• 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..."
• London Diary

  President Senghor of Senegal, who left London yesterday after a conspicuously successful five-day official visit, had a lively discussion on English and French literature with the Queen at a luncheon party in his honour. Both agreed that State duties made it difficult to devote as much time to reading as they would wish. The President said he insisted on spending from 9 to 11 each morning at his books. M. Senghor, an outstanding French poet, is an admirer of Stephen Spender and Dylan Thomas and has translated both into French. He would like to do the same with T. S. Eliot but finds him "too difficult for translation." He hopes the British Council will send poets and writers on lecture tours of Senegal. President Senghor was captured while fighting with the French Resistance. A brilliant linguist, he became the prison camp's interpreter.
• Letters to the editor: Nigerian author

  From Mr. Ronald Bryden and others... Sir,-- It has been reported that Wole Soyinka, Nigeria's leading poet and playwright, has been imprisoned for signing a letter to a Nigerian newspaper proposing a truce in the present hostilities. We, the undersigned, are deeply concerned over Mr. Soyinka's predicament. To imprison him merely for suggesting a way out of the present unhappy situation can only do harm to Nigeria both at home and abroad. We therefore appeal to those with the power to do so to release him. Yours faithfully, Ronald Bryden, Andre Deutsch, Dennis Duerden, William Gaskill, Dan Jacobson, Joan Littlewood, Roland Penrose, Kenneth Tynan
• Kidnap plot warning to cricket club

  [Full Text]: "A warning of an alleged plot by anti-apartheid demonstrators to kidnap Mr. Jack Baddiley, chairman of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club, was telephoned to Mr. Ron Poulton, the club secretary, yesterday. He treated it as a joke but his caller, a man with an educated voice, told him: "It's no laughing matter." The police, however, took the threat seriously, and set out to find Mr. Baddiley, who was working on his 1,000-acre farm at Worksop. A police spokesman said later that special precautions were being taken. Wilson in race complaint. The Prime Minister and six other men were named in a complaint laid at Bow Street police station yesterday under the 1965 Race Relations Act. Mr. Peter Tombs, of Evans Road, Eynsham. Oxfordshire, a writer, said statements inciting unlawful race discrimination had been made on the B.B.C.'s Panorama programme by Mr. Wilson, Mr. John Arlott, Mr. Peter Hain, Mr. Jeffrey Crawford, the Bishop of Woolwich, the Right Rev. David Sheppard, Mr. Denis Brutus and Mr John Darragh."
• 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."