Disapproved Persons

When the Nationalist government jammed an anti-sabotage act through South Africa's Parliament last spring, anti-apartheid Author Alan (Cry the Beloved Country) Paton asked, "What will be next? To make lists of disapproved persons? To confiscate their property and make them wear a yellow star?" Last week a list of disapproved persons was indeed issued by the South African government, and Justice Minister Johannes Vorster explained blandly that the list merely "closes certain loopholes" of the law.

The 102 listed persons (including 52 whites) may attend no meetings, and any editor whose newspaper even quotes one of them is liable to three years' imprisonment. If reporters were to ask Chief Albert Luthuli whether he will apply for a passport to attend the International Cultural Conference in Copenhagen, they could not print even a yes-or-no reply; Luthuli, South Africa's only Nobel Peace Prize winner, was the most prominent name on the disapproved list.

The gag applies even if the listed man lives outside of South Africa. The Liberal Party magazine Contact is no longer able to print articles by Party Leader Patrick Duncan, who edits it from exile in Basutoland. Actor-Playwright Cecil Williams may appear in other people's plays -as long as he does not ad-lib -but no one can appear in his. Two Capetown city councilors are allowed to attend council meetings, but their remarks must be left out of the record. No one may publish cross-examination -or even scholarly legal briefs -by Abraham Fischer, defense counsel in South Africa's mammoth treason trial and grandson of the Orange Free State territory's first Prime Minister.

In South African newspaper offices, desk men have begun keeping the list next to their style books and headline charts. Reporting the trial of Union Leader Leon Levy, charged with attending a meeting, the Johannesburg Star said, "Magistrate H. J. Bosnian asked, 'How do you plead?' Levy: (He did plead but his words cannot be published)."

At week's end, Vorster granted newspapers permission to print a listed man's direct court testimony "as long as it is not abused to provide a forum to such persons." Most editors were not inclined to test Vorster's interpretation of abuse. Said Author Paton, who was still surprisingly unbanned: "What astonishes me is that a minister with so much power, more power than anyone has had since Hitler and Stalin, can take such savage action against people who have no power at all. It reveals to me the great anxiety of our rulers."

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