Tossed Tomatoes Become Hot Potatoes in S. Africa

The Tomato Affair began when Sally Hutchings, a British citizen and university lecturer in South Africa, hurled two of them at President Pieter W. Botha during a cocktail party in Pretoria last Friday.

The tomatoes landed at Botha’s feet. Hutchings landed on a plane at Jan Smuts Airport the next night, with a deportation order and a one-way ticket back to London.

That might have been the end of it. But it wasn’t.

Hutchings’ husband, Graham Hutchings, a South African citizen and a chemistry professor at the University of Witwatersrand, said his wife threw the fruit to protest the slow progress of apartheid reform by Botha’s government. Recent government regulations prohibiting anti-government activity at universities were the last straw, her husband said.

His remarks were carried in the Citizen, a generally pro-government newspaper, under the headline, “Why My Wife Threw Tomato at PW.”

Then politicians and newspapers editorial writers waded into the stew.

While generally deploring Hutchings’ tactics, Botha’s political opponents accused the government of overreacting. In response, the government’s supporters said the incident once again reflected unfair and incessant criticism of their country by foreigners.

“To deport a woman for half-heartedly tossing a ripe tomato at his feet does seem disproportionate,” the Business Day newspaper said Tuesday in a critical editorial. “True, it’s not nice to throw tomatoes, but there was a time in this country when a politician was lucky if nobody hurled the furniture.”

“It’s a petulant overreaction,” said Ray Swart, the acting leader of the Progressive Federal Party, a liberal party in the white house of Parliament. “Nobody condones this type of behavior, but by deporting (her), we have made ourselves the laughing stock of the world.”

The counterattack was led by Beeld, a daily Afrikaans-language newspaper that often reflects the ruling National Party’s thinking.

Tired of Foreign Advice

“South Africans are becoming fed up with foreign ‘Joe Citizens’ and their pals who seem to think that it is their calling to come to South Africa to teach us how we should solve our problems,” Beeld said in an editorial Tuesday.

“We think the tomato thrower has received just rewards for her action,” the newspaper continued. “We don’t mind constructive criticism,” Beeld said, adding, however, that Hutchings’ show of “bad manners would not be acceptable in any other country.”

Beeld concluded, “We are only too thankful to be rid of her.”

But The Star newspaper said in an editorial Tuesday that “it was to be a gesture, causing no harm to anyone. But reacting with a summary deportion bestows on the act an emphasis and significance exceeding the thrower’s optimism.”

No Laughing Matter

F. W. de Klerk, the acting minister of home affairs, said that while Hutchings’ action had no serious consequences, it was regarded “in a very serious light” by the government.

“Should the object have contained explosives, the lives of the state president and other persons could have been in jeopardy,” De Klerk said.

But others noted that throwing such things as tomatoes and rotten eggs to demonstrate displeasure has long been part of South Africa’s robust political landscape.

“Tomato-throwing is a stock in trade of our party politics,” said Willem Kleynhans, a former professor of political science at the University of South Africa.

The Tomato Affair didn’t cause Sally Hutchings much inconvenience. She, her husband and three children were planning to move to Britain later this month anyway.