South Africa and Soviet Union

The extraordinary media attention that former dissident Natan Sharansky has been receiving since he was released from a Soviet jail may be going into his head, causing him to dangerously lose perspective.

In a demonstration from a mock jail across the street from the Soviet Mission to the United Nations to dramatize the predicament of Jews in the Soviet Union, Sharansky is reported (Times, Feb. 21) to have assailed Western countries for adopting a double standard when they cheer token political changes in the Soviet Union but reject similar moves in South Africa.

“Whenever South Africa makes a legal or social change to appease critics,” he claimed, “Western pubic opinion responds with skepticism. But when changes are announced by (Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev, the same Western opinion says, ‘It’s a very good sign.’ ”

In drawing a parallel between the plight of the 25 million disenfranchised black majority in South Africa and that of the 400,000 Jews in the Soviet Union, Sharansky may well be comparing apples and oranges. Sharansky is absolutely right to use his extraordinary popularity in the West to press the case of the Jews who want to emigrate from the Soviet Union. But in his zeal to do so, he should not undervalue the human tragedy that is unfolding in Southern Africa.

Just a reminder: When Soviet Jews demonstrated recently in the streets of Moscow for the release of Iosif Begun, they were roughed up by so-called home-grown Soviet vigilantes. In South Africa demonstrators on a peaceful march were gunned down in Sharpeville and Soweto by apartheid war machines.

Andrei Sakharov has returned to Moscow from internal exile in Gorky, Sharansky himself has emigrated to the West, Begun is out of jail and so are several other political detainees. Indeed, all this may be sheer tokenism on the part of Gorbachev, and Sharansky may be the best judge. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela has been jailed for nearly three decades for merely seeking freedom for the 25 million black majority.

The South African drama is an unprecedented human tragedy and deserves more than the nonchalant treatment Sharansky gives it. Until he has had enough time to carefully study that tragedy, he would do well to concentrate his energies on helping Jews out of the Soviet Union, and not confuse that with South Africa, lest he be seen by those who care about South Africa as disingenuous at the least, and hypocritical at the worst.

KWAKU ANNOR

Los Angeles