African Replies To Apartheid View

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30478, 27 June 1964, Page 14

African Replies To Apartheid View

Statements made by Mrs Joan Sandison on South African apartheid plans and reported in “The Press’ on Thursday were both miscalculated and unfortunate, according to Mr F. K. Isingoma, a delegate from Tanganyika at the International Student Conference being held in Christchurch.

Mr Isingoma, a final-year law student at the University College Dar-es-Salaam in Tanganyika, said Mrs Sandison’s remarks should not have been made by a person who claims to have been in South Africa for 16 years. It was also unfortunate that her remarks were made at a time when people who know much about South Africa happened to be in Christchurch. "It is unfortunate to hear such remarks from a person of the ability of Mrs Sandison. It is unfortunate because the question of apartheid is noticeable to any person with humane feelings as soon as they see non-whites ill treated in South Africa,” Mr Isingoma said. “It is wrong to say that South Africa is trying to work out a policy of self-determina-tion for its peoples, both black and white. The general acceptance of this would mean a genuine realisation by the colonial power of the need to educate the indigenous people known as the Bantu in South Africa so that they would be able to govern themselves.

“In South Africa the opposite is true because the aim of the tyrannical government of Dr. Verwoerd and his associates is, in fact, to destroy the indigenous population and replace it by the white minority. The natives have been subjected to torture and all kinds of ill-treatment calculated to subjugate them. The so-called propaganda to which Mrs Sandison refers is in fact the real truth about South Africa.

“Mrs Sandison said that this propaanda was based on the fact that few people knew much about South Africa. She is one of the victims of this ignorance and is trying to express what other people have told her about South Africa and not what she has seen. “Mrs Sandison said she has been living happily in South Africa for 16 years. This could be true only because she is not an African or because she has tried to identify herself with the doctrines put forward by Dr. Verwoerd and his Government.

“It is also clear that whoever opposes apartheid cannot have a happy stay in South Africa and I’m sure Mrs Sandison could not be an exception.

“Mrs Sandison said the Bantus’ own land, which they originally occupied. This is ■ sweeping statement, because history shows that such things as the great trek and the Boer War were mostly caused by clashes over land holdings and eventually the natives were deprived of their land. System Continues “Furthermore, the Union of South Africa tried to remove to the north the Africans who remained and bring in Boer settlers. This system still continues in the setting up of the Transkei state, so any statement that Africans occupy their original land is fallacious.

“Mrs Sandison’s statement that it is the incompatability between African nationalism and the European personality that renders multi-racialism impossible in Africa is based on ignorance of the African states because it is obvious that most states are multi-

racial. It would be more correct to say that it is incompatability of apartheid and African nationalism. “In fact, Mrs Sandison questions the compatability of states, whether African or not, which have constantly attacked South Africa in the United Nations and who are in a better position to judge South Africa than she is.” “Coming To Aid”

Mr Isingoma said that what Mrs Sandison described as the work of outside agitators was the action, of the independent African states in coming to the aid of their fellow brothers under the tyranny of the Government of South Africa.

Commenting on Mrs Sandison’s statement that the leaders of some of the newly-independent states had not succeeded in proving their ability in politics or administration, Mr Isingoma said he would like to ask Mrs Sandison where she would like Africans to prove their ability in administration. “The African administration is designed to suit local conditions and it is therefore wrong for Mrs Sandison to call them inefficient simply because they don’t conform to a high idealogical administration. To us, on the black continent, we are fully satisfied with the administration enhanced by our leaders,” Mr Isingoma said.