S. Africa Refuses Passport for Anti-Apartheid Activist

Activist Helen Joseph, often described as the grandmother of the anti-apartheid movement, said today that the government refused her a passport to travel to the United States to accept a human rights award.

Joseph, 81, said the Home Affairs Ministry informed her by telephone of the refusal but did not explain its action. The ministry today confirmed that the passport was denied.

Joseph was to have traveled to Houston to receive the Rothko Human Rights Award, named for the late painter Mark Rothko, on Dec. 10. She was a co-winner with activist Albertina Sisulu.

Sisulu had refused to apply for a passport because she is regarded as a citizen of the nominally independent black homeland of Transkei, and she rejects the homeland system as being a means of depriving blacks of South African citizenship.

British-born but long a South African citizen, Joseph last had a passport in 1955.

‘I didn’t want to go on my knees to them, and I finally did,” she said. “Now I’m spitting mad.”

A number of prominent apartheid foes, including Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner, have in the past been refused passports or given only temporary travel documents. Tutu’s passport has been returned to him.

Joseph was among 156 people charged with treason in 1956, along with Nelson Mandela and Sisulu’s husband, Walter. All the defendants ultimately were acquitted of the charges.

Mandela and Sisulu were jailed for life in 1964 for plotting sabotage by the African National Congress, four years after the congress was outlawed.

Tall, white-haired and feisty, Joseph has been an outspoken opponent of apartheid for 30 years.