Armed conflict in South Africa “inevitable”

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32873, 23 March 1972, Page 6

Armed conflict in South Africa “inevitable”

An armed struggle in South Africa was “inevitable” — and the majority would eventually take over the government of the country, Miss Frene Ginwala, a South Afri-can-born Indian, said in an interview yesterday.

It might be a long time before this happened, she said. How long, no-one could estimate.

“But we have never said we will take power for the non-whites only. We will take it for all South Africans,” she said. Miss Ginwala, a barrister of the Inner Temple, London, and a former daily newspaper editor, represented the African National Congress at the conference on apartheid held at Wellington last week-end.

Because of South Africa’s apartheid policy, the African National Congress worked illegally inside the country to achieve its purpose — a South Africa that belongs to all South Africans. It was a political movement with a guerrilla wing, Miss Ginwala said. Both politicians and guerrillas were trained for their specific jobs to bring freedom. NON-VIOLENCE

Non-whites — Africans, Asians, and Coloureds — had been involved regularly in non-violent struggles, such as passive resistance, from the turn of the century to 1961, Miss Ginwala said. Since that time, all activity against apartheid in South Africa had met with a twb-fold response from the Government. The Government responded, in extreme cases, by having protesters shot at or beaten up by the police, and it “plugged every loophole for legal protest.” Legislation introduced in 1961 made protests illegal. Anyone who broke the law had to face five years imprisonment “plus strokes”,

whereas in the past a protester would get about a three-month sentence. “When all protests became illegal, non-whites decided there was only one thing left for them to do — to begin an arms struggle,” she said. “We did not introduce violence and the use of arms; the Government introduced them against us.” Asked if Africans, Asians, and' Coloureds were pulling together in the African National Congress, Miss Ginwala said: “I am here, a member of a minority group, representing the A.N.C. This speaks for itself. Yes, they are pulling together, and have been for many years.” Members of the A.N.C. living outside Africa, like Miss Ginwala, meet wherever they are. JOURNALIST, BARRISTER Miss Ginwala is well equipped to be a leader in the movement. She was educated at Indian schools in Johannesburg before going to Britain to read law at London University. She eventually became a barrister of the Inner Temple, London, then took up journalism. She had worked for most of the African Liberation Movement publications before her appointment in 1960 as correspondent for the British newspapers, the “Guardian” and the "Observer”, in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). Het next move was to the editor ship of the first African nationalist magazine, “Spearhead”, published for East, Central, and South Africa.

Miss Ginwala was doing research on South African politics at Oxford University when she was invited to go back to Tanzania in 1970 as managing editor of the “Standard” and the “Daily News”, the two main Eng-lish-language newspapers there. “The Tanzanian Government nationalised the chain of English-language newspapers, which owned the ‘Standard’ and the ‘Daily News’ and gave it a charter to run independent publications with the duty of criticising, analysing, and discussing national policies,” she said. Her job, unusual for a woman in any country, was to set up the newspapers under the new policy and to train Tanzanian journalists. RADIO PRODUCER

Miss Ginwala has also worked in radio journalism in London as a script-writer, interviewer, and producer. Since leaving Tanzania last October, Miss Ginwala has been working mainly for the A.N.C. in London.

Will she ever return to South Africa to live? “I intend to, and I hope to do so soon,” she said.