Have Speech--Can't Travel

The restrictions placed on Albert Luthuli, president general of the African National Congress, are the latest in a series of extreme actions by the South African government. Luthuli, who has spent time in jail for various nationalistic activities, was banned from attending any meetings or gatherings and barred from travel outside his home province. Legally, this move seems inexcusable, since the action amounts to limiting freedom on mere suspicion of intention to advocate the overthrow of the government. However, under South Africa's Suppression of Communism Act and Riotous Assemblies Act, all things are possible. (Luthuli was scheduled to be the principle speaker at a mass meeting of the African National Congress on Saturday.)

Luthuli, as a moderate nationalist, is more effective against the existing government than one whose activities and plans of action are patently dangerous and easily outlawed. Since Luthuli has never advocted "Africa for the Africans" and has used non-violent resistence as a political weapon, he is difficult to accuse of treasonous activity--unless one pushes this concept to truly paranoid extremes. Like the recent de-integrating of four universities in South Africa, this move by the government represents an arbitrary limiting of intellectual activity rarely found outside of totalitarian countries.

While it is true that one cannot fully appreciate the rationale behind apartheid and its seeming abuses without actually living in South Africa, political common sense leads one to suspect that tolerance before a moderate such as Luthuli would contribute more to the longrun stability of Africa than suppression and a subsequent build-up of resentment and latent violence. Apartheid relies on an almost feudal concept of society, of lords and meek, obedient serfs (Africans of all ages are referred to as "boys," according to the New York Times) which would seem untenable, given the fact of industrialization, no matter how ill-educated and well-trained in humility natives become. And if moderates like Luthuli are suppressed, almost anything may arise.