REPORTER’S ARREST Price Of Telling Truth About Africa

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29193, 2 May 1960, Page 17

REPORTER’S ARREST Price Of Telling Truth About Africa

By NORMAN PHILLIPS, foreign editor of the “Toronto Star,” recently released after spending 72 hours as prisoner No. 7019/60 in Durban Gaol. My last prison meal was a hunk of dry bread, a brown swill called soup, and a beverage impossible to describe. For three days and three nights, I was confined in an ill-ventilated gaol cell, locked in for 22 out of 24 hours and sleeping on a concrete floor. This was the price I paid for reporting the truth about tragic South Africa. I have no retraction to make from any of the reports I sent to the “Toronto Star” during my 20 days in the Union. I stand by the accuracy of my last dispatch, that was censored entirely by the South African Government and confiscated by their police who arrested me.

There are only three possible explanations why the South African Government ordered my arrest without warrant or charge or, as External Affairs Minister Eric Louw tried to make the action sound less threatening, “only held for questioning:” (1) A warning to all foreign correspondents and a threat to their source of information; (2) A vindictive action revealing the jittery state of the white supremacy government; (3) Because of the investigation I had commenced into a sinister secret society called the Broederbond, that represents the elite essence of racialism. The Broederbond is a sort of South African Ku Klux Klan When I was questioned by Captain van der Westhuizen, of the Police Special Branch, he was particularly anxious to know my sources of information about the Broederbond. In a later article I will assess the importance of this organisation.

Was it only coincidence that I was thrown into gaol only a short time after I had first learned of the existence of this behind-the-scenes movement? There is no doubt that the men who ordered my arrest believed that it would have a salutary effect on all foreign correspondents and representatives of overseas newspapers. The Government that imposed emergency regulations, turning South Africa into a police state with a muzzled press and propaganda-mill radio, has neither liking for nor understanding of a free press Journalists Blamed

Nationalist fanatics have even tried to blame me and my colleagues for the regrettable assassination attempt on Prime Minister Verwoerd. They say that the would-be assassin was inspired by reading “false” reports about the South African situation in newspapers printed outside the country where Nationalist Government censorship cannot reach.

Failure to understand in advance what the consequences of its policies will be is an outstanding characteristic of the Nationalist Government. When it unleashed its police force in Cape Town on Monday, April 4, and encouraged terror tactics first on the city streets and then inside the African suburb of Nyanga, both world and internal reaction was ignored. When our reports of these wholesale beatings came back from papers in Toronto, London and New York, the Government was badly rattled. Nationalist leaders were by no means shaken in their determination to rule by force, but they were nettled and orders went out to harass correspondents. More Apartheid

Make no mistake: South Africa's Nationalist Government is entrenched. There is no sign of its fall, no reason for a coalition, and no doubt that its policy of apartheid will be intensified. It was some time during the week of April 4 that the racialist leaders selected me as their target. I was in Cape Town and saw police on a down-town street begin their self-proclaimed campaign of “intimidating the intimidators.” I visited the African suburb of Nyanga, but was prevented from entering by a cordon of soldiers and sailors surrounding it. I tried to enter with a truck load of emergency food supplies on its way to the beleaguered people. This proved impossible Surprisingly the police and military did not cut Nyanga’s communication with the outside world by telephone. This enabled the foreign correspondents in Cape Town to find out what was happening in Nyanga and report to the world Terror ruled Nyanga from Monday until Thursday, when the police mounted a final swoop carrying off 1525 Africans and holding 162 of them. I had left Cape Town on the Wednesday to visit Port Elizabeth and Durban before returning to Canada However, I was in contact with Cape Town by telephone and able to discuss the situation there with reliable observers. In Durban, I wrote a brief nessage to the “Toronto Star” Hitlining my movements and dating that I would not be writng a report for Friday’s paper On the way to the cable office I was haunted by Nyanga’s fouriay ordeal. I decided it was my duty to ‘.ry to explain the significance >f what happened there I crossed out the reference to not writing anything for Friday I would attempt an epitaph for Nyanga. Report Filed At 6 a.m. on Friday I rose and oegan writing I completed the story by 9 a.m and took it to the "’able office in Durban's Main Post Office, where it was accepted for transmission to Toronto. The remainder of the day I spent visitng people in Durban, and at midnight, after typing out notes, went to bed.

On Saturday I was up at 5 a.m.. unable to sleep. I read the morning paper, and began to write my dispatch for that day’s paper