The South & South Africa

In the U.S. South, it is "segregation." In South Africa it is apartheid. By either name, it means racial trouble. What does the Southern press have to say of recent conflict in South Africa? And what does the South African press say of Negro sit-ins in the U.S. South?

With rare exceptions, Southern papers carried full wire service accounts of South Africa's violent scene, generally gave the story the news play it deserved. But the prickly matter of editorializing on a foreign problem so close to home has been met in gingerly fashion.

Most Southern editorial pages simply ignored South Africa. Some took refuge in the obvious: observed the Richmond Times Dispatch, "The attempted assassination of Prime Minister Verwoerd emphasizes once again the explosive nature of South Africa's dilemma." There were a few scattered voices of reason. Inquired the Tampa Tribune: "How could the white supremacists expect the Negroes to submit indefinitely to degradation and oppression in their own land?"

The voice of white supremacy rang defiantly in the Birmingham News, which referred to South African Negroes as "extras from a Hollywood safari movie." The Charleston News and Courier ("South Carolina's Most Outspoken Newspaper") used the assassination attempt to draw a parallel with Southern white integrationists: "The fact that it was a white man, not a native, who shot Verwoerd should surprise no one. Though racial revolution has spread across the Dark Continent, it would be easily put down but for the white men whose feelings of guilt, fear or misplaced idealism drive them to fight against their own breed." The Dallas News, while sympathizing with the extremist view, wistfully acknowledged that white domination was gone with the winds of change: "That idea may not be as dead as the dodo--South Africa proves it is not--but it is as little respected nowadays as the divine right of kings."

If the Southern press had trouble charting an editorial course through South Africa, the South African press, in turn, discovered that the racial tension in the U.S. South was no editorial problem at all. The easy solution: silence.

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