UVCC College Times, 1989-01-11

              (To Utah VallejCommuhity College Weekly Student Newspaper Volume Seventeen Number Thirteen Wednesday, January 11 , 1 989 r d) rzrx La 5 Kra Aagard This song was written in a hotel room in New York City, right about the time a friend of ours, Little Steven, was putting together a record of Artists Against Apartheid. This is a song about a man in shanty-town, outside of Johannesburg. A man who is sick of looking down the barrel of white South Africa. A man who is at the point where he is ready to take up arms against the oppressor. A man who has lost faith in the peacemakers of the West. For they argue. And while they fail to support a man like Bishop Tutu and his economic sanctions against South Africa. . . Am I bugging you??? Don't mean to bug ya. . . Silver & Gold Rattle & Hum U2 - " j We no longer have time to atomize principles and beg the question. We fill too many gutters while we argue unimportant points and confuse issues. The Negro. The South. These are the details. The real story is the universal one of men who destroy the souls and bodies of othermen (and in the processdestroy themselves) for reasons neither really understands. It is the story of the persecuted, the defrauded, the feared and detested. I could have been a Jew in Germany, a Mexican in a number of states, or a member of any "inferior" group. Only the details would have d if fered. The story would be the same. If some spark does set the keg afire, it will be a senseless tragedy of ignorant against ignorant, injustice answering injustice- a holocaust that will drag down the innocent and right-thinking masses of human beings. Then we will all pay for not having cried for justice long ago.' John Howard Griffin Black Like Me Understandable concern is shown when the Dutch Afrikaners contemplate a liberated South Africa. The total abolishment of apartheid would unleash 23 million blacks, not including the coloreds and Indians, all of whom are way past the ripening stage for brutal revenge on 4.8 million whites. Decades of semi-holocostic wronqdoing echo scar South Africa's troubled hir.tory; injustices drenched in generations of bloodshed, shocking humiliations and violence. South Africa was settled in 1652 by Dutch colonists (Dutch East India Company) whose task was to provide food to passing ships en route from Europe to India. These settlers, the first Afrikaners, were devoutly religious people who believed white supremacy was divinely inspired doctrine. Britain eventually annexed the Cape in the 1 830's and abolished slavery, forcing the Afrikaners to move north to Pretoria. Two republics were formed, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Gold and diamond mines were discovered in the 1 9th century, and Britain, led by Cape Colony Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes, began expansion of their empire. War between Britain and the Afrikaners soon followed, and the Afrikaners were defeated after fierce waring in 1910. Britain granted independence to a new Union of South Africa, forming British colonies and Afrikaner republics. Thus, the Afrikaners had lost the war but gained control of South Africa. In 1 91 3 the Natives Land Act was passed by the ruling whites (northern Afrikaners). Thousands of native Africans were forced out of their homes and sent to live in designated "reservations" (grouped according to tribal background) called native territories. But it was not until 1948, when the National Party (inspired by Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, Minister of Native Affairs in 1950 and Prime Minister in 1 958. Verwoerd was also anti-Semitic during the Second World War and crusaded heavily against the British. He was later assasinated in 1 966) came to power that the policy of apartheid was written into the statute book. The first major law was the Race Classification Act which divided everyone into four groups: white, black, colored and Indian. Under the Population Registration Act, physical appearance, language and parentage were used to define each category. The apartheid policy decreed that Africans who were not needed for the economy of white towns and farms were to be sent to appropriate homelands; in essence, a reservoir-in-waiting "Blacks accused of collaborating have had rubber tires put around their necks, which are coated in gasoline and then lighted." if lahnr fnr white areas Several major building blocks of the apartheid system soon followed: the Mixed Marriages Act (which made marriage between races an offense) and the Group Areas Act (which confines 23 million blacks to 14 percent of the land, leaving the rest for only 4.8 million whites) and the Pass Laws (in which blacks were also forced to carry identity cards, which intentionally restricted their movement into "white areas." The major laws quickly branched out to form "petty" laws including segregation of park benches, cinemas, bridges, roads, buses, swimming pools, parks, hospitals and schools. Schools are particularly hard-hit by the apartheid policy. In state schools, 1 0 times as much money is spent on a white pupil than on a black pupil. Schooling is free and compulsory for whites and Indians up to the age of 1 6 but is not enforced for blacks and coloreds. Only two percent of black children complete primary and secondary education. Half of African and colored pupils leave school with four years' or less education. A major source of unrest in South Africa, schools have become a focal point for black demonstration. The 1976 riots in Soweto ended the lives of many black school-children, after government police resorted to gunfire when tear gas failed to disperse the protesters. Blacks Indians and coloreds are not allowed to vote under the "Whites Only" rules. P.W. Botha is criticized by liberal and conservative Afrikaners alike for his gradual reform policies. In 1984 Botha set up parliaments for representatives of the colored Monday, January 16, Observance of Bithday of Martin Luther King We've come a long way, or have we?