Teen Coalition Conducts Anti-Apartheid Protest in 2-Mile Walk

About 300 students chanting anti-apartheid slogans demonstrated in front of the South African Consulate on Monday and called on the government to stop “denying blacks in that country their basic human rights.”

The Los Angeles Student Coalition, a group with members from more than 30 junior and senior high schools, walked 2 miles from Pan American Park in West Los Angeles to the consulate in Beverly Hills.

As they walked, the students, out of school on spring break, chanted “Free South Africa . . . Free South Africa,” and “Reagan, Botha, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” The students took encouragement from motorists who sounded their horns as they drove past.

“I think it’s much more important to protest than get a tan in Palm Springs,” said Sonia Slutsky, 15, a Beverly Hills High sophomore. “We want to pressure the U.S. government to put stricter sanctions on South Africa.”

“You don’t need to be an expert on South Africa to know what they are doing is wrong,” Susan Goldberg, 14, a student at the 32nd Street USC Magnet School, told the crowd.

But the South African vice consul said Monday that he believed the students had been put up to staging the rally.

“None of these kids are alone in this . . . it is teachers that bring these innocent kids over here,” said Chris R. Liebenberg, the South African vice consul. “I would like to know if it’s their own motivation . . . or their teachers.

“I find it surprising that kids of that age are so politically inspired. We are a country trying its best to reform and to bring equality to all its people . . . Why us?

“Why aren’t they protesting the Soviet Union and their invasion into Afghanistan?”

The student coalition’s rally--its first--was to include a sit-in at the consulate on La Cienega Boulevard, but the managers of the building, anticipating the demonstration, had locked the doors before noon.

Students got the idea of forming a countywide coalition two months ago when they met at an anti-apartheid demonstration at the South African Consulate on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Students attended that January protest as members of Sholem Youth Group, a Jewish social and educational organization, and Children of War, a group of Central American, Cambodian and South African refugees and Americans.

The students wanted a voice of their own, and a couple of weeks later about eight students who had been at the January protest invited everyone they knew to attend a meeting about forming their own coalition. They now have a mailing list of more than 300, Slutsky said.

Father Experienced

Art Goldberg, a lawyer who was active in the Free Speech Movement of the ‘60s, has four children involved in the student coalition. He describes his role as that of a “counselor.”

“I encourage them . . . but I never tell them who should speak and what their T-shirts should say,” Goldberg said.

Dylan Berkey, a 17-year-old senior at the private Crossroads School in Santa Monica, said ideas, promotions, activities and fund-raisers are handled entirely by the student coalition.

She said Goldberg “gives us tips on where we can get flyers printed, but that’s about it really.”

“I’m knocked down by what I see,” Goldberg said. “We never had anything in the ‘60s with this many junior and high school kids.

“These kids are the next generation coming up, not today’s college kids.”