Out Goes the Bishop

Until last spring, South Africa's Nationalist government considered Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg Richard Ambrose Reeves just another irritating and ineffective critic. But when the police guns mowed down hundreds of unarmed blacks at Sharpeville in March, Bishop Reeves rushed to the hospital to interview the wounded and inspect the dead, publicly announced he had evidence that many had been shot in the back, even accused the cops of using dumdum bullets. The government decided that Bishop Reeves had 'become a threat to its security. Tipped off that his arrest was imminent, the bishop slipped away to England* to tell his story rather than be silenced by the walls of a jail.

Last week, anxious to resume his work and stung by whispers that he should not have fled, Ambrose Reeves flew back to South Africa, declaring, "I am back for good!" But he had not counted on Premier Hendrik Verwoerd's determination to put down critics he found troublesome, even if the critic was a bishop. Forty-two hours after Bishop Reeves landed, detectives, led by the chief of the special branch, showed up at his simple room in the Priory of St. Benedict and handed him a deportation order signed by the Minister of Interior. He was given half an hour to pack. Reeves was assured that he could consult a lawyer before departing, but before his aides could get through to one, the bishop was on his way to the airport, where a South African Airways plane was due to leave for London within a few minutes. Ten detectives stood around the plane until it taxied away.

"Unbelievable religious persecution!" cried the Archbishop of Cape Town. Most Reverend Joost de Blank, and the chief rabbi of the Transvaal, L. I. Rabinowitz, appealed to the government to revoke the deportation order.

As usual, such protests had no visible effect on the men of apartheid. But the Nationalists are frankly jittery about the outcome of next month's referendum, when Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd will ask the voters to approve his plan to make South Africa a republic and, tacitly, to approve his apartheid policies. In Pretoria's Supreme Court last week, Farmer David Pratt went on trial for firing two shots into Verwoerd's head last April. Chief business of the court was to hear psychiatric evidence that Pratt was mentally unbalanced. Before being led away for examination by mental specialists, Pratt leaped to his feet to make a statement: "I felt the violent urge to shoot apartheid . . . this slimy snake that is gripping the throat of South Africa and preventing her from taking her rightful place among nations," he cried. "My Lord, I think I was shooting at the epitome of apartheid, rather than at Dr. Verwoerd." Mad or not, his words might have an effect on voters on referendum day.

* He was born in Norwich, was appointed to the Johannesburg See in 1949.

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