"Vulnerability"

By Richard N. Ostling.

If backers of South Africa's white minority regime kept an enemies list, the Rev. Allan Boesak's name would be near the very top. The holder of a doctor's degree in theology, he has emerged during the past decade as the most eloquent opponent of apartheid among the country's "colored" (mixed race) population. Boesak's influence became international in 1982 when he was chosen president of the Geneva-based World Alliance of Reformed Churches, whose constituency of 50 million includes Presbyterians and Congregationalists. At home and abroad, he has traveled widely to denounce the evils of the apartheid system.

Now the churchman's eminence is imperiled. The reason, as he acknowledges, is that "a relationship exists" between himself and Di Scott, 30, who is white, divorced and until recently was a youth worker with the South African Council of Churches. Boesak, 38, the senior vice president of the council, is married and the father of four. Last December Scott moved from Johannesburg, where the council is based, to the Cape Town area, where Boesak is student chaplain at the University of the Western Cape.

The accusation against Boesak emerged in ways that were reminiscent of J. Edgar Hoover's private allegations that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had white mistresses. Late last year an apparently orchestrated attack on Boesak began with the circulation in South Africa of anonymous pamphlets and tape recordings purporting to provide details about the supposed affair. Last month, just as Boesak was playing host to Senator Edward Kennedy, the respected Johannesburg Star reported that state security police were behind the smear campaign. But the paper went on to assert that a Boesak-Scott affair had in fact been going on for some time, and was "well known in church circles."

Boesak swiftly denied that report, thereby assuring leaders of the straitlaced Dutch Reformed Mission Church (the colored offshoot of the dominant church among white Afrikaners) that the stories about adultery were false. At the same time, Boesak's colleagues expressed fury against both the media reports and the government's malign activity. This caused South Africa's Minister of Law and Order, Louis Le Grange, to defend his department's behavior on the floor of Parliament. Secret police investigating dissident organizations had stumbled across the fact that Boesak and Scott were meeting "at various hotels," he said, but the government had done "nothing further" to publicize the discovery, though an affair would be a violation of South Africa's Immorality Act. Le Grange also filed a complaint with the national press council, contending that the Star had been unfair to the police.

The escalating mess forced the Mission Church to undertake its own official investigation, and nine days ago, speaking to thousands of supporters at an ecumenical rally, Boesak seemingly shifted ground. He contended that the rumormongers' offensive against him, playing upon "human vulnerability" to bolster "repression," was yet another sign of the "utterly sick society in which we live. Even the church has been used to further the aims of this smear campaign. If this is South Africa, then God help us." But it was true, as Boesak put it, that "Miss Scott and I have been working very closely together over the past year. She has been invaluable support for my work. I shall in no way try to explain the meaning of this relationship."

Should "the meaning of this relationship" turn out to include adultery, Boesak's career and influence would almost certainly be shattered, not only because of the affair but because he denied it. Last week, after a lengthy conference, a special three-member Mission Church panel decided to refer his case to the full Ring (regional circuit) of the church for decision. This week executives of the South African Council of Churches will hold their own emergency meeting on the situation. Any Mission Church decision to suspend or defrock the clergyman would have a wide, wounding ripple effect. Boesak would have to resign his position as the Mission Church's No. 2 officer, as well as the presidency of the World Alliance. One of the most powerful moral voices within South Africa would be gravely compromised.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Johannesburg