Labor Leader Sees Revolution In South Africa

We realize the power to bring about revolution lies in us," Drake Koka, a black South African educator in self-exile, told an audience of more than 100 last night in Longfellow Hall.

Calling white Rhodesian and South African leaders "thugs," Koka said "oppressors and oppressed cannot sit together and bargain." Instead, he said, spontaneous armed revolution is the way to end "the political domination of legalized prejudice" in South Africa.

Koka, founder of the Black Allied Workers' Union is South Africa, fled to Botswana in 1976 to avoid arrest. He had played a leading role in the strikes and demonstrations that began in Soweto in June of that year. Koka said the government had constantly harrassed him since 1973 for his role in organizing black workers.

Koka has also been indicted as a co-conspirator in the current trial of 11 Soweto student leaders charged with sedition and terrorism.

Koka likened the choice for black South Africans to Shakespeare's Hamlet, by saying that it is "nobler to take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them."

The audience cheered and applauded when he called for all foreign investors to get out of South Africa.

Koka said that in his tour of the U.S. he is attempting to make Americans aware of injustices and violations of human rights by the white minority government in South Africa. He also said he wants more support for sanctions such as divestiture of stock in corporations operating there.