S. African Police Smeared Activist Cleric, Press Group Concludes

The South Africa Media Council ruled Wednesday that the security police publicized an extramarital affair between the Rev. Allan Boesak and a church worker in an attempt to discredit Boesak, a leading anti-apartheid activist.

The council, which has legal authority to act on allegations of wrongdoing by this country’s news media, dismissed a police complaint against the Johannesburg Star, the country’s largest daily newspaper. The complaint said the Star had defamed the police in January with a charge that the authorities were trying to smear Boesak in a program of political “dirty tricks.”

The council found that the police followed Boesak frequently, in South Africa and on some foreign trips, because of his political activities as a patron of the United Democratic Front, a coalition of anti-apartheid groups. And it found that the security police were almost certainly responsible for the distribution of pamphlets, photographs and tape recordings dealing with his relationship with a youth organizer for the South African Council of Churches.

The police wanted the affair exposed, the Star charged, in order to embarrass him as president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and a top official of his own Dutch Reformed Mission Church. This would weaken his leadership in the campaign against South Africa’s apartheid system, it added.

Boesak is Colored (of mixed race), and the woman involved, Di Scott, then a youth organizer for the South African Council of Churches, is white. At the time, interracial sexual relations were a crime under the country’s Immorality Act, which has since been repealed.

The Media Council, which held six days of judicial hearings, found that two security police colonels had admitted that police were responsible for the pamphlets, photos and tape recordings. Although the officers later denied making such admissions, the council concluded that all the other evidence indicated they had made them and that no one other than the security police was in a position to gather the information and distribute it to the press--as was done last November and December.

Boesak, who is married and has four children, has said only that he had a “very close” and “unique” relationship with Scott. He was suspended from his pastoral duties for a time, but was reinstated after writing what church sources said was a confession and asking for forgiveness.

The Media Council carefully sidestepped the issue of whether Boesak and Scott actually had an affair, focusing solely on the allegations of a police smear.

Many whites were pleased to see Boesak in trouble, but there was widespread unease over the police methods disclosed in the Star’s reports. Questioned in Parliament, Law and Order Minister Louis le Grange denied any attempt to smear Boesak. But several of the assurances he gave were proved wrong at the hearings.

Commenting on the council’s findings, a spokesman for the police said they are “not interested in the private life or personal viewpoint of any individual, unless such individual’s actions involve the security of the state.” The spokesman also noted that two public members on the seven-man council had felt that the Star’s allegations that the security police were trying to smear Boesak had not been fully proved.