Our View of Apartheid Matures

For a moment, while switching stations on television, I thought that, incredibly, South Africa violence had returned to network news. Then I realized I was watching a report on Haiti’s aborted elections.

In a remarkable disappearing act, hard news about the South African unrest has simply fallen off the world’s screen. Yet, in a subtle way, understanding in the United States on South African issues could be growing appreciably.

The depiction of political violence disappeared as decisively as it began in 1984 when three years of sustained black unrest got under way. This revolt, mainly by black youth, coincided with introduction of a new South African constitution that pointedly continued the exclusion of Africans, three-quarters of the population, from exercising meaningful political rights.

The front-page headlines and nightly television coverage of turmoil have subsided for a variety of reasons. Chief among these are the harsh emergency regulations (tentatively applied in 1985 and perfected in June this year) which reduced the flow of hard news to an officially approved trickle.

But the reasons go beyond that. When judged by the death rate, there has been a gradual trailing off of violent unrest in many parts of the country, though tensions remain.

I have also come across a new American preoccupation with other issues--the Persian Gulf, arms control, a problem-ridden presidency, Wall Street, fear of AIDS. Moreover, the public’s attention span is notoriously short.

It has been enlightening to witness the South African fade-out from the vantage of Harvard Yard. I have seen less hard news about South Africa than on most of my previous visits to the United States that began in the late 1960s.

Yet in the South African disappearing act lies a paradox. For interest in South Africa among thinking Americans remains high. And they remain well-informed. Conferences and symposiums are held. The major newspapers and television analyze a wide range of South African trends that go beyond the immediate violence--the economy, emerging black union power, the education crises.

What, from a news point of view, used to be a one-story country (apartheid) is now a multi-story country, and as such better known to a wider range of opinion.

There is better knowledge than ever about significant leadership figures such as Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It was ironic to see “Bishop Tutu Corner” a block from my downtown hotel when I visited New Haven, Conn. recently. This would be virtually impossible in downtown Cape Town, though Tutu is the resident archbishop and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

In the United States I also have found a burgeoning interest in the arts and culture of black South Africa, which have become new vehicles for political awareness and protest.

The Johannesburg-based newspaper, the Weekly Mail (a spirited anti-government effort born from the ashes of the defunct Rand Daily Mail) in a recent issue identified this important switch. An article entitled “The South Africanization of America” pointed to the wide public interest in films, for instance, on jailed leader Mandela and dead activist Steve Biko; plays, such as Percy Mtwa’s “Bopha” seen at the Los Angeles Arts Festival; music, including that popularized by Paul Simon and the Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The article said that the South African issue is now arguably accessible to more people: “The backdrop to anti-government maneuvering is no longer the dimly lit corridors of congressional lobbies but the movie house, theater and concert hall.”

This, I believe, is an important insight. Any comfort the South African authorities might take from the fact that some of the news is not being given should be heavily ly qualified by the growing and broader interest in South Africa. It is instructive to note that the National Union of Mineworkers, which recently took on the mining Establishment in a major strike, now has its own representative in Washington.

Perhaps the most powerful celluloid anti-apartheid stroke came from Sir Richard Attenborough, with his new film, “Cry Freedom.” The film, about banned and exiled former editor Donald Woods and anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko, brings to the worldwide screen the very action the South African government thought it had so neatly removed from public view. A decision has been announced to allow the film to be shown in South Africa, which is certainly welcome, though it remains to be see whether it will in fact be shown totally uncut to all.

I have found considerable informed interest in South Africa in the United States, almost as if thinking people recognize it as part of the unfinished business of the century.

For now, the breaking news stories are largely elsewhere. But a cultural and intellectual basis is being laid for a return of mass interest in South Africa. And this in-depth understanding could aid an important debate.