UCLA Professor at Center of S. Africa Dispute

Prof. John Hutchinson, a little-known faculty member in the Graduate School of Management at UCLA, stands at the center of a dispute over the South African government’s policy of limiting news coverage of anti-apartheid violence in that country.

At a Sept. 18 seminar in Johannesburg, Hutchinson urged South African officials to eliminate television pictures of policemen wielding sjamboks (long whip-canes, usually made of rhinoceros hide) because such television coverage was eroding American support for the South African government.

Government spokesmen later said they depended in part on Hutchinson’s advice in drafting the new policy of curtailing news coverage, especially television coverage, of the continuing civil strife.

Under the restrictions imposed a month ago, photographers and television crews are barred from scenes of political unrest in 30 magisterial districts under emergency rule, and reporters need police permission to be present.

Hutchinson said his remarks were misunderstood and that a report about them in Monday’s Los Angeles Times “caused considerable concern” on the UCLA campus.

Clarifies Remarks

“What I did say was they ought to get rid of the sjamboks, but I meant get rid of violence, not censor the news,” Hutchinson said in an interview this week.

The veteran professor of industrial relations said he was “so disturbed by the pictures of sjamboks on television” that “evoke . . . what you imagine slavery was like” that he added his remarks about television coverage to the end of a talk about South African labor relations.

“Get those riot sjamboks off the TV screens,” Hutchinson said at the seminar. “They are doing the same damage to South Africa’s case overseas that TV scenes of the Vietnam War did to the morale of the American people. . . . If I were your government, I would really have tried to do something about it.”

The seminar at which Hutchinson spoke was one of a series sponsored by the Human Science Research Council in Johannesburg, which receives most, if not all, of its financial support from the South African government. The professor said the research council paid his travel expenses, but he received no fee for the talk to government officials and academicians.

Just an ‘Aside’

Hutchinson referred to the comments as an “aside” or an “afterthought.”

“It’s absurd that an aside of mine should be taken as proof that I was an important factor in a major South African government decision,” he said.

But Hutchinson acknowledged that he felt that the sight of South African police beating blacks with rhinoceros-hide whips on the evening news would have “roughly speaking, the effect that pictures of the Vietnam War had on the public in this country.”

He added, “The use of heavy violence on television has an effect on the public mind, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.”

Although Hutchinson said he was urging the government to eliminate violence, not television cameras, notes taken by a Times reporter at the Sept. 18 talk do not indicate any mention of police brutality or other governmental acts of oppression against blacks.

In his speech, the professor made a number of other suggestions unrelated to his seminar topic of labor relations.

For instance, he urged the South African government to “make a declaration of purpose which American television viewers would understand” and then buy time on American television to convey the message.

Doesn’t Recall Suggestion

“I don’t recall saying that,” Hutchinson said in this week’s interview. “I don’t think it would be a bad idea. . . . “

In the September seminar, the UCLA professor said President Reagan would like to support the South African government but that Pretoria must project a more favorable image in the United States to make such presidential support possible.

South Africa should do this soon, he said, because Reagan has only three more years in office and “I can tell you there is nobody else near the White House with the same ideas.”

This week, Hutchinson said, “I don’t remember saying that President Reagan would like to help the South African government. I don’t know.”

The new press policy is “abhorrent but we have to understand that it is an act of desperation,” Hutchinson said.

The South African government is “frustrated” because foreign journalists overemphasize violence and ignore the “very serious constitutional debate” that is going on in the country over how to provide “constitutional rule based on equal rights” for all racial groups, the professor said.

This debate “is given insufficient coverage on U.S. television and in the press,” he added.

New-Found Prominence

Hutchinson’s reported role in the formulation of South African press policy has given him a campus prominence that had largely escaped him in more than 20 years as a UCLA industrial relations professor.

“I never heard of him until now,” one high-ranking campus administrator said.

Now many people have heard of Hutchinson and are calling the campus to inquire about his role in South Africa.

UCLA Chancellor Charles Young said Hutchinson is as free as any other faculty member or any other citizen to travel to South Africa and say what he likes.

“I don’t see this as an academic freedom issue, I see it as a freedom of speech issue,” Young said. “I don’t necessarily agree with what he said--I don’t know what he said--but I don’t see how we could proscribe him saying it.”

Times staff writer Michael Parks in Johannesburg contributed to this report.