AGONY OF NYANGA Reporter's Story Which Caused Arrest

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29192, 30 April 1960, Page 10

AGONY OF NYANGA Reporter's Story Which Caused Arrest

[By NORMAN PHILLIPS] On Friday, A pril 8, the South African Government imposed censorship on outgoing Press reports. The following dispatch from Norman Phillips, Foreign Editor of the “Toronto Star,” was the first to be suppressed and the following day he was arrested in Durban. South African security police confiscated the first page of Mr Phillips’s duplicate message but he has reconstructed it from memory to the best of his ability. His report is as follows:

The agony of Nyanga is over. The South African police yesterday climaxed their four-day reign of terror over the African suburb of Cape Town, seizing 1525 of its residents and driving them two miles to a police station for screening. They later detained 162 residents of Nyanga. When I spoke by telephone to the “Star’s” Cape Town correspondent yesterday morning, he said: “It’s torture, sheer torture. They are lining people up inside Nyanga and beating them.” Nyanga’s ordeal began three ■weeks ago, and since then anly a few of its estimated 40,000 population have gone to work for their white masters in Cape Town. It has been an impressive piece of passive resistance, protesting the rigid pass laws, police shooting and the arrests of African leaders. (It must be reported that one African police constable was hacked to death in Nyanga but according to police he had first emptied his revolver into his assailants.) No Resistance Offered An unconscious tribute to Nyanga’s prolonged non-violent demonstrations was paid by Cape Town’s police chief. Although his forces claimed to have seized a vast assortment of weapons, Deputy Commissioner Terblanche stated that the “natives” had offered no resistance curing yesterday’s mass invasion. Nyanga is about a dozen miles outside Cape Town. It represents apartheid’s method of keeping cheap labour segregated, and immobile Africans are not only herded into these locations but their wages are pegged at poverty levels.

The people of Nyanga reached the breaking point on March 21, the day when police shot and killed three people at neighbouring Langa and another 70 nearly 1000 miles away at Sharpeville. Nyanga’s workers stayed home the next day to express their sympathy and protest Not until eight days later, on March 30. did they venture out en masse. This was the day when they joined Africans from surrounding locations, and marched 30,000 strong on Cape Town.’ Their leader was a 21-year-old boy, Philip Kgosana, and the demonstration was a model of the nonviolent tactics of Ghandi. Kgosana marched his thousands to the city, made their protest and ordered them to disperse peacefully to their homes. “Soothing Syrup” Prime Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd’s reply was to surround the locations with 3000 soldiers and sailors. This week the order went out for Nyanga to be beaten into submission.

This morning I listened to a radio announcer assure his white listeners that South Africa's race troubles are “blowing over.” He said that the arrest of “agitators” at Nyanga had ended the “reign of terror over peaceful natives." This is the official soothing sj-rup: the “native” leaders and intimidators have been gaoled and all is quiet. What is the real lesson of Nyanga? Nyanga has demonstrated to the world the real meaning of apartheid. The sadism of the police bullyboys has been exposed. There was no effort to conceal it on Monday, when the police went on the rampage on the downtown streets of Cape Town before the eyes of citizens, foreign correspondents and members of diplomatic missions. Nyanga stripped the sham pretence from Dr. Verwoerd’s claim to be “a Christian with a conscience.” I watched him sit bland and composed in Parliament twiddling his thumbs while his police were deliberately flailing unresisting Africans. Nyanga was the lie detector test for Voerwoerd’s Justice telling Frans -’ Erasmus, boldly telling Parliament that police were forbidden to use whips, the sjamboks they wielded on Cape Town’s streets and which I have seen ready for use on the back of a police station door.

African Press Association circulated confidentially the reports appearing in London newspapers from their correspondents in Cape Town. There had been no first-hand reports, describing the carnage, circulated internally. South African editors work under the risk of gaol without charge or prosecution in the courts if they cast aspersions on the success of the emergency regulations. Under this threat their coverage of Nyanga has left most readers with only the faintest impression of what happened at Nyanga. Ask any white South African on the street, and he will parrot the Government version that the events at Nyanga were the work of “agitators.” Censorship Move Nyanga also provided the pretext for the Johannesburg Afrikaans nationalist paper to announce that the Government may take steps to censor foreign correspondents reporting from South Africa. The paper "Die Vaderland” complains that reports and photographs sent abroad are finding their way back into this country. Nyanga’s refusal to go back to work also made its mark on businessmen, both England and Afri-kaans-speaking. Some showed their willingness to double their African helps’ inadequate wages. For the first time leaders of the Afrikaan Chambers of Commerce were heard to say that perhaps the African had grievances and it might be advisable to consult with moderate African leaders. Such talk as that is pure heresy to the white supremacy Government. Dr. Verwoerd told them to keep quiet while he enforced a solution on the Africans. Sole Protest Nyanga was also the crucible for the official opposition United Party. It sat silent in Parliament making no protest. On the question of law and order, the United Party voted with the Government, thereby choking off possibility of a Coalition Government to end the crisis. Why form a coalition when the Opposition votes with the ruling party? In Parliament the task of protesting the shameful police conduct fell to the 12-man Progressive Party. In making their stand, including a request for a Parliamentary delegation to visit the troubled area, the Progressives further exposed the Government’s low opinion of Parliament. No members of Parliament would be allowed in to Nyanga. Nyanga may appear quiet today, and the average South African may feel assured that the trouble is over with the arrest of the “agitators.” The Africans may appear submissive, but it would be a fool who thought that South Africa’s problems had been solved.

The arrests mean that there are about 200 families left in Nyanga without a breadwinner. What will happen to these women and children? Will they forget? And the hundreds who suffered police bullets, whips and batons? Their wounds may heal, but in the future will it be possible for their leaders to hold them to the course of non-violence? (To Be Continued.)

Nyanga was an opportunity for the South African Broadcasting Corporation to prove its claimed independence. It acted as a government mouthpiece. South Africa's Press made only a slightly better showing. An editor on one of the papers had told me that the first he had heard about police brutality at Nyanga was when the South

January 5 and 6, 1961, was ten:atively set for the society's ■,avf annual twn-dav show.

nomy was increased and this actually strengthened the desire for co-operation between the Regions. At the same time as this delicate route-finding towards national unity was proceeding, power was steadily passing into the hands of the Nigerian people. By 1957, yet another conference agreed on internal self-government for the Eastern Region and the Western Region (the Northern Region secured the same status last year). It was at the historic London Conference in 1958 that the decisive final steps were taken. It was announced by the Secretary of State for the -Colonies, then Mr Alan Lennox-Boyd, that Britain would introduce a bill to enable Nigeria to become fully independent on October 1, 1960. if the Nigerian Parliament passed a resolution early in 1960 asking for independence. Proud Impulse The election has resulted in a coalition government of the Northern People’s Congress and the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons under the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, with the Action Group, under Chief Awolowo, forming the Opposition. But what will always stay in my mind as the dramatic highlight in the story of modern Nigeria is that remarkable London Conference of 1958, when a proud impulse for independence seemed to sweep away overnight the daunting obstacles of the past.. The credit goes largely to the patient and sympathetic Mr Len-nox-Boyd, and to the statesmanship of the Nigerian leaders—the experienced and astute Dr. Azikiwe, the hard-working Chief Awolowo, the cautious yet farseeing Sardauna of Sokota, and that pledged and sincere man, the Prime Minister of the Federation. They put Nigeria first, not sectional interest, and that is the policy that will guarantee success in the future. As the Prime Minister said when I talked to him in Lagos a little while ago: “Unity is the great need. We must get our own house in order —that is our first task.” S.I. CARNATION SOCIETY Mr W. B. Olorenshaw was elected president of the South ■ Island Carnation Society at the ' annual meeting. Other officers elected were: patroness, Mrs W. B. Wood; vice- ; president, Mr N. E. Fehsenfeld; i secretary-treasurer, Mr N. McL. I Shaw, committee, Mesdames W. ; B. Olorenshaw, N. McL. Shaw, J. H. Sutton. Messrs C. J. Baxter, < H. P. T. Archbold, C. Hayward, 1 W. Newman, E. G. Edwards, W. i D. Carpinter, G. Osborne; audi- 1 to’ - . Mr S M. Duff. Mr J. B. Kearton, who was i chairman of the society for seven < years, was elected to life mem- I bership.