Blacks Sit In to Protest Apartheid

Seven Los Angeles black community figures Thursday began an anti-apartheid sit-in at the South African Consulate in Beverly Hills, saying they will remain until the consul general meets with them.

Bishop H.H. Brookins of the African Methodist Episcopal Church told reporters that he and the others were there to pray for the 24 million “prisoners who must be set free” in South Africa.

Brookins called the racial separation policies of South Africa worse than the famine gripping Ethiopia because “in South Africa they’re dying slowly--a little every day.”

The protesters, including Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), arrived equipped with folding chairs, water, a radio and sleeping bags.

Late Thursday evening, they were still there and Beverly Hills police said no effort to evict them was planned.

The demonstrators said they realized they might be arrested, but were determined to stay until they could talk to Consul General Les Labuschagne with reporters present.

They were aware that Rep. Mervyn Dymally (D-Compton) had just been arrested in Washington for taking part in an anti-apartheid demonstration outside the South African Embassy there. Dymally reportedly was taken into custody and handcuffed after speaking to demonstrating members of the Caribbean Action Lobby. He was later released.

Envoy Declined Meeting

Also taking part in the sit-in at the consulate in the Gibraltar Savings Building at 9107 Wilshire Blvd. were Mary Henry, Compton school board member and director of a Los Angeles community service agency; Danny J. Bakewell, executive director of the Los Angeles Brotherhood Crusade; Abenaa Poindexter, chairwoman of the education task force of the Black Women’s Forum; Bernard Walker, president of the Black Student Union at USC, and public relations man David Mixner.

Waters said she spoke to the consul general on Wednesday, but was told he would not meet with the group because he did not want the kind of situation that confronts the embassy in Washington.

Thursday afternoon, three hours after the protesters arrived in the lobby, a spokesman for Labuschagne told reporters there would be a meeting. But with the demonstrators insisting that the press be invited, no meeting had been held by late in the day.

Beverly Hills police closed elevators and stairways to reporters for several hours, but by mid-afternoon they relented, reportedly after determining that the area in which the demonstrators were camped was not actually part of the consulate. In the meantime, Waters and others made occasional trips down to the main floor to deliver statements, but each time declined to step off the elevator for fear of not being allowed back upstairs.

Waters emphasized that the protest--the fourth at the consulate since Thanksgiving--was in conjunction with those in Washington, Seattle and other cities. She contended that things are getting worse in South Africa and promised: “You will see a continued escalation” of demonstrations.

Mixner said: “If we are arrested, there will be more back here to take our places. There will be more to take their places. We are dead serious.”