Whites Antagonized, Blacks Divided : Kennedy Trip Leaves Foes of Apartheid in Disarray

Whatever Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s recent trip to South Africa does to mobilize U.S. public opinion against the policy of racial separation here, his controversial visit left this country’s anti-apartheid opposition--black as well as white--in disarray.

Kennedy, as an American politician and as a white, divided blacks here on his suitability as a spokesman for their cause and on the basic strategy for their struggle against apartheid.

Because of his flamboyance and simply because he is a foreigner, Kennedy split South African whites over his right to preach to them--diverting attention from what he was saying and bringing many to the government’s defense for reasons of patriotism, even though they, too, are opposed to apartheid.

And the Massachusetts Democrat, as a liberal sometimes suspicious of big business, angered South African executives, whose companies represent the major U.S. presence here and who have been in the vanguard of recent labor and social reforms.

“Most of us are now wishing that he had never come,” said a prominent member of the United Democratic Front, a multiracial alliance of 645 anti-apartheid groups. “There may be benefits in the future--we hope so--but the costs were very great.”

Those costs include:

--A strong backlash among moderate whites, antagonized by Kennedy’s “arrogant talent to outrage,” in the words of a leading newspaper that rallied to the government out of the conviction, “My country, right or wrong.”

“Despite all his posturing, the main result of his visit has been to make the South African government appear a great deal more tolerant and reasonable than it did the week before,” the Sunday Times said in an editorial.

--Resentment among South Africa’s liberal white opposition, particularly within the Progressive Federal Party, which saw only government gains from Kennedy’s harsh criticism from the white backlash it provoked, and from its own decreased ability as a result to promote reform from within.

“Kennedy’s done untold damage to my party and to the prospects for early and accelerated reforms,” a Progressive Federal member of Parliament said. “He played directly into the government’s hands, though I doubt the government had enough wits to plan it that way.”

--Hardening of the feud between black “progressive democrats,” who advocate a multiracial struggle against apartheid and a multiracial government later, and the “black consciousness” groups, who believe that the nation’s black majority must take the lead and not rely on whites--in or outside the country.

The Azanian People’s Organization, an important black consciousness group, demonstrated against Kennedy almost daily and forced him to cancel his final speech Sunday in Soweto, Johannesburg’s black sister city.

--The political diminution of his two hosts, Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate and Anglican bishop-elect of Johannesburg, and the Rev. Allan Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, who are two of South Africa’s leading anti-apartheid advocates.

Tutu was shown Sunday to have little personal following, even in his own community of Soweto. “What do you say of a man who gets a bigger crowd in London or New York than in his hometown?” a black journalist asked as Tutu was unable to sufficiently quiet a rally to enable Kennedy to speak.

Boesak, meanwhile, became the target of a smear campaign, apparently inspired by the police, involving charges of adultery with a staff member of the South African Council of Churches.

None of these were among Kennedy’s intended results, and his eight-day trip to South Africa may still be counted a success if it leads to an American campaign against apartheid that brings meaningful change here.

Tutu, as much a bruised victim of the Kennedy visit as a host, expressed his confidence on the senator’s departure that this strategy will work. He believes that Americans will rally against apartheid as Kennedy speaks out on what he saw here, that the United States will then make clear its unwillingness to shield South Africa’s white minority regime any further from outside criticism and internal pressure and that this will hasten not just reform, but apartheid’s collapse.

The Kennedy trip was planned largely on this basis, targeted principally on the United States rather than South Africa. The senator’s appearances here were the carefully arranged media events typical of U.S. political campaigns. His speeches, resonant with the rhetoric of his late brothers, John and Robert, largely went over the heads of his local audiences and were really pitched to American audiences.

Sometimes billed as a “fact-finding trip,” Kennedy’s visit was instead meant to galvanize America in its opposition to apartheid and to provide Kennedy with the ammunition that he will need to lead this campaign.

Thus, he toured the sprawling black city of Soweto, a squatter area outside Cape Town and a resettlement camp in what were generally brief and impressionistic visits.

Those Who Fight He met with the downtrodden and disenfranchised, with those who fought against the system and lost and with those who fought just for their homes, their families and their human dignity. These meetings were short but often emotional, and frequently Kennedy showed emotion.

He also conferred with a number of opponents of apartheid--from black labor leaders to theologians to liberal white businessmen, from former political prisoners to members of Parliament.

And he met with government officials, including three senior Cabinet ministers. They later expressed their distress at how “closed” Kennedy’s mind seemed to their arguments, and Kennedy expressed his own amazement at their lack of appreciation of the crisis confronting their country.

“Your motive was to use your visit as a forum for a set of preconceived value judgments,” South African Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha said in an open letter to Kennedy on his departure Sunday. “You arrived with your mind made up, and you will depart with it made up.”

This was never denied by the senator or his aides, and “fact finding” was really not the point of the trip.

Kennedy had come, it was clear from the outset, to launch a broad anti-apartheid campaign in the United States, to make South Africa one of the top American foreign policy issues and to move the Reagan Administration from “constructive engagement” to full confrontation if possible.

The visit thus was conceived largely in terms of U.S. politics, and its far-reaching and unforeseen ramifications in South African politics were not taken into account.

“We have to deal with Tutu, we have to deal with Boesak and we really don’t know what these Azapo folks (the Azanian People’s Organization) are all about,” a Kennedy aide said as the senator began his tour. “Frankly, we did not realize the complexity of politics here. We thought--can I say it?--it was just black and white.”

In U.S. terms, recalling America’s own civil rights campaigns, the politics might have seemed a matter of “black and white” but, as Tutu explained, South Africa’s blacks are as politically divided as its whites--and the recurrent anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Kennedy demonstrations by black militants proved it.

When questions were raised about the strong bias against the government in Kennedy’s tour, both in the places that he visited and the people he met, another aide commented: “This is not a research project, some staff study or a doctoral dissertation. This is a high-profile senatorial visit, and the senator is Ted Kennedy and the place is South Africa.

“We are not here to probe or calm the fears of a few hundred thousand Boers (Dutch-descended Afrikaners) but to work for the liberation of almost 30 million blacks. Probably there are two sides--or three or four--to this matter, but we are weighting it, seven or eight blacks to a white, to take into account the population.”

This offhandedness, a matter of style more than of substance, was taken as arrogance here and compounded the South African view--black almost as much as white--that Kennedy thought he could solve the country’s problems.

And the result here was virtual political hysteria, implying that many thought Kennedy powerful enough to impose some solution, or at least to try, and their belief that this would be a disaster only narrowly avoided.

The reality was less frightening. Kennedy only implied support for economic sanctions, and aides said that these would be conditioned in new legislation on giving the vote to all blacks, restoring South African citizenship to those blacks who have lost it and ending forced resettlement--all within a certain time period.

“If there is progress on key issues, then no sanctions,” an aide said. “If there is no progress, then our legislation would begin to bite.”