‘Message for South Africa’

Your editorial (Jan. 30), “Message for South Africa,” was a further indication of the dichotomy between thought and action in U.S. foreign policy formulation concerning the Third World.

Once again, the United States only seems willing to establish meaningful relationships with those black movements that are cast in our own image. The African National Congress (ANC) is unquestionably the most potent political force for black liberation and majority rule in South Africa. It is an organization that is representative of many diverse aspects of black political thought within South Africa. The singlemindedness of purpose of the ANC is reinforced by the collective remembrance of past cruelties and injustices suffered at the hands of the South African government.

However, the ANC is not composed of Jeffersonian democrats. It is the product of a totalitarian society, which has, through force and violence, denied them the equal protection of the law and the ability to express their political thoughts and desires freely and without fear. It is the product of the apartheid “system.” I hesitate to call it a system because the word seems to legitimize the organized terror of the South African regime.

The Reagan Administration, which suffers severe pangs of guilt in criticizing an ideological soul mate, demands assurances that the ANC is anti-Communist and nonviolent before meaningful discussions can take place. The naivete of the current Administration borders on the criminal. There are Communists in the ANC, however, the ANC is not a Communist organization. It has established a dialogue with the Soviet Union as it is trying to develop one with the United States. We may be able to influence the evolution of the ANC’s political orientation, if we throw off our ideological shackles and realize that in a war, the victim cannot afford to be nonviolent and survive.

The institutionalized repression directed toward the blacks of South Africa is morally akin to the brutality and cruelty perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews during World War II. Yet, the Reagan Administration has the audacity to demand that the ANC eliminate the use of violence as a response to the violence of the South African regime. Why is there no expression of moral outrage at the institutionalized violence of anti-Communist South Africa or anti-Communist Korea?

Prof. Thomas G. Karis in his article in the current Foreign Affairs journal may have inadvertently uncovered the real reason for the Reagan Administration’s uneasiness in negotiating with the ANC--an almost hereditary district of black liberation movements. Historically, the U.S. record of support for Third World liberation movements has been abysmal. However, we constantly convey the message to the world that the United States supports self-determination and majority rule while “propping up” every petty dictator in the Third World as long as he or she proclaims her anti-communism loudly and often.

It appears that The Times’ editorial staff suffers from the same myopia that afflicts the U.S. foreign policy decision makers. To say that reduced ANC violence will reduce South African resistance to black majority rule reflects a frighteningly shallow perception of the realities of black survival and liberation in South Africa.

The ANC for nearly 50 years maintained nonviolence as its credo and attempted to operate as a legitimate outlet for black political aspirations. However, its leaders were imprisoned, exiled or killed and the organization declared illegal by a regime that could only define reality in terms of its hatred of black people. Those people and their descendants still reside in South Africa and although they have become more sensitive about their image, their commitment to the perpetual subjugation of black people remains strong.

WILLIAM B. ADAMS JR.

Rialto