Activist S. African Cleric Boesak Honored for Anti-Apartheid Effort

Thousands of South Africans have tried desperately to apply the non-violent strategies of Martin Luther King Jr. in their fight against apartheid, activist South African clergyman Allan Boesak said in Los Angeles Monday night, but “the government leaves no room whatever for non-violent protest.”

Every attempt at peaceful protest since 1960, Boesak said, “has resulted in some kind of massacre. . . . If this continues, we must face the possibility of a violent explosion of gigantic proportions.”

Boesak made the grim observation to reporters before he received the Martin Luther King Jr. International Award at the annual dinner held by the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to commemorate the slain American civil rights leader.

Boesak, 40, is president of the Geneva-based World Alliance of Reformed Churches and a founder of the multiracial United Democratic Front coalition of anti-apartheid groups.

Until South Africa lifted subversion charges last November, Boesak faced a possible prison term for advocating international economic sanctions against the government and for organizing a march on the Cape Town prison holding black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela.

The banquet at the Bonaventure capped more than a week of observances here for the assassinated King, whose birthday was officially marked Monday as a state, local and federal holiday.

The South African minister was selected to be this year’s King Award winner, said Mark Ridley-Thomas, executive director of the SCLC’s Los Angeles chapter, because “without question, Dr. Boesak is one of the leading exponents of Martin Luther King Jr.’s thought.”

Last year’s winner was another clergyman in the forefront of the movement to obtain full citizenship rights for the black majority in South Africa, Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Boesak told the estimated 2,000 people attending the dinner that he fell under the influence of Martin Luther King Jr. when in his teens.

He cited the succession of violent crackdowns on supposedly non-violent, anti-apartheid protesters, beginning with the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, when South African police fired on a black African crowd, killing 69 and wounding 180. He said the resulting outbreaks of mob violence in response to the situation have created a dilemma for him as an advocate of King-style non-violence.

Earlier Monday, Boesak told a news conference at the Union Evangelical Church that it is “no longer possible to relate Martin Luther King Jr. Day just to civil rights.” He said King’s struggle was similar to today’s efforts by black South Africans to free themselves from the oppression of apartheid.

He said that if Western nations put more economic and political pressure on the South African government and moved beyond “little sanctions,” actual change could be brought about. He said U.S. congressional sanctions angered, but did not hurt, South Africa.

Also honored by the SCLC Monday night were Virginia Taylor-Hughes, founder of the Merchants for Community Improvement; Anthony Thigpenn, executive director of the Jobs With Peace campaign; Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica); St. Brigid Catholic Church, and Coca-Cola U.S.A., which has divested itself of its South African holdings.