WORLD

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Women have a long history of involve-
ment and leadership in Black South Afri-
ca’s struggle against the racist apartheid
system, a struggle that predates even the
militant African National Congress, a
touring ANC representative reported.

Ruth Mompati, a member of the
National ‘Executive Committee of the
ANC’s Women’s League, and a former

Nelson Mandela, addressed an audience in
Vancouver Nov. 11 during a national tour.

In an interview, the former teacher and
current administrative secretary in the
ANC headquarteres in Lusaka, Zambia,
related the separate but integral role of

struggle.

“Women have been struggling since
before the ANC was founded. This is so
because women have always been involved
with the family and the community,
responsible for that which is considered
‘home,’ ” said Mompati.

The first big demonstration of women
took place in the Orange Free State in
1913, Mompati related, when thousands
of women refused to carry passes issued by
the government under the country’s notor-
ious pass laws.

“You must understand that the pass
Jaws are the core of the apartheid system.
The pass you must carry is a permit telling
you where you can work and where you
can live,” she stressed.

Prior to 1913 the passes were limited to
men, but were extended to women “so

associate of imprisoned congress leader

women in the South African liberation _

that they'd fall under the strict control of
the regime,” said Mompati.

Women responded by burning their
passes publicly outside the Native Affairs
office, an action that was repeated in 1929
when the regime again moved to encom-
pass women under the pass laws, she said.

Mompati, who joined the congress
more than 30 years ago, was herself
instrumental in organizing one of the larg-
est demonstrations, when 20,000 women
from across the country marched to Preto-
ria in 1955.

“Demonstrations were banned,” Mom-
pati recalled, “but each person in the
march carried her own petition, each one
individually said they had come to see the
prime minister,” she related. .

“The government cancelled the (operat-
ing) licences of the buses we had chartered.
They theatened any taxi driver caught
transporting us with jail sentences. But
women found their way there, anyway,”
said Mompati, adding that the march was
complemented by several smaller actions
around the republic.

This year, the ANC has recognized the
important role of women in the South
African struggle. It will be a central theme
at an upcoming solidarity conference in
Toronto, at which Mompati will be a fea-
tured guest.

The current’ unrest in South Africa

revolves around the long-standing issue of
“Bantu education.” Mompati, who re-
signed her teachers’ post when the Bantu
Education Act was introduced years ago,

said it is an inferior education designed to
further the apartheid system.

“It is meant to uphold white supre-
macy, because a Black child is taught that
his role is to serve. South Africa is a unique
country, where it is a criminal offence to
give tuition to your own child,” she
pointed out.

Students have been leading the fight
against Bantu education — “which is
really a struggle against apartheid” — in
Sebokeng township in the Vaal Valley,
close to Sharpeville, the site of the infam-
ous massacre of Black South Africans in
the late 50s.

“People have been standing in front on
tanks, forming a wall of human beings.
Even Louis Le Grange, the minister of
police, was forced back by the wall of
resisting people,” Mompati reported.

The separate struggles for the rights of
Black workers to a trade union, against
high rents and inferior living conditions,
and the students fight against Bantu edu-
cation are all part of the same fight against
apartheid, as is the specific struggle of
women, said Mompati.

“Women know it’s paramount to
struggle for equality — but the primary
need is to be free. If you’re equal toa slave,
you're no better off than the slave. So the
prerequisite is to be part of the ANC, part
of the national struggle.”

Throughout the decades the ANC has
become a force with which to be reckoned.

It remains an illegal organization, working
underground, but the South African

2

South Africa: women’s equality part of liberation fight

regime also has to contend with the broad
and legal, United Democratic Front.
Formed two years ago, it is compose
of some 600 women’s groups, churches
student and youth organizations and spo!
and cultural groups. The front wa
instrumental in organizing the boycol
against elections to the recently introduce

““tricameral parliament” in which th

country’s colored (mixed race) and India
populations are given an extremely limite
form of representation. “It just furthe
entrenches apartheid,” said Mompat
pointing out that less than 17 per cent ¢
the eligible voters cast ballots.

Conditions for South Africa’s not
whites, particularly its 23 million nati\
Africans, are harsh, said Mompati, notin
the infant mortality rate of between 901
150 out of every 1,000 births. |

“Not only that, but the South Africa
‘regime has intensified its brutality t
shooting even women and children,” st
said.

The ANC wages an armed struge
against the system, but Canadians ¢4
help mitigate the bloodshed by supp?
actions, including boycotting all Sou
African products, she said.

The world support is invaluable, $f
said, particularly since the re-election :
Ronald Reagan to the U.S. presiden¢
which means continued U.S. support f
the regime.

“But,” Mompati declared, “the peo
of South Africa are prepared to contin!
their struggle, even against the Reagans'
this world.” :

—

Biased coverage carries war threat—Zwicke!

The danger of nuclear war is increased by
media coverage of the Soviet Union that
feeds hatred rather than understanding, a
leading Toronto journalist and media critic
told some 150 people in Vancouver Nov. 15.

“People’s perception of the Soviet Union
usually fits the pre-judgement they have
already been given,” Barrie Zwicker, author
of the study War, Peace and the Media and
host of the CBC program “Facing the

-Fourth Estate,” said at the Langara Cam-
pus auditorium. are eee

“At the heart of the Cold War is fear of
the Soviet Union. A perpetual enemy is
required to keep us at a state of prepared-
ness for war, and the Soviet Union is that
enemy,” Zwicker declared at the meeting,
sponsored by the B.C. chapter of the Physi-
cians for Social Responsibility.

Zwicker’s remarks were greeted by
thoughtful applause from most of the
audience. From a small but vocal minority,
however, came a litany of prepared state-
ments laced with anti-Soviet hatred, and
frequent noisy interruptions.

Sprinkled strategically throughout the
audience, the collection of home-grown
right-wingers and immigrants from East
European countries — some sporting Soli-
-darnosc t-shirts or buttons — interrupted
Zwicker’s speech several times with anti-
Communist comments, or belligerent ques-
tions.

Prominent among them was David Levy,
former CBC correspondent in Moscow and
aldermanic candidate for the right-wing
Civic Non-Partisan Association. The pres-
ence of the professional anti-Sovieteer and
his colleagues was reminiscent of the
attempted disruption, by a group which
included ultra-right Vancouver Province
columnist Ilya Gerol, of a vist to Vancouver
last year by a Soviet peace delegation.

The tactics of Levy and his cohorts did
~ not succeed in disrupting last Thursday’s
meeting, either. Organizers were able to take

BARRIE ZWICKER. . .publisher of media
magazine Sources, and author of War,
Peace and The Media, says his views

- have made him the recipient of a kind of

economic boycott, and hence a “‘west-

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 21, 1984

up a collection among the audience to help
defray costs, and afterwards copies of
Zwicker’s booklet sold briskly at the litera-
ture table.

Zwicker, who was a guest last spring at a
talk on the media and the arms race spon-
sored by the Centre for Investigtive Journal-
ism, told the audience he considered himself
a kind of “western dissident.” Owner and
publisher of the media commentary maga-
zine, Sources, he pointed out that his views
cost him $7,000 — which he considers his
profit margin — in cancelled advertise-
ments last year.

The key part of his talk on “The Media,
The Cold War and the Arms Race,” centred
around a six-month study carried out by
Zwicker and his employees of the coverage
accorded the USSR by Toronto’s three
daily newspapers. Their conclusion was that
Canada’s media gives its readers “an
abstract picture of a dehumanized society.”

An examination of 922 items clipped
found “one story about the life of an ordi-
nary Soviet citizen,” said Zwicker.

“There was not one story about the
Soviet system. ..(not one mention) of why
there is no unemployment in the USSR...

no one story of how the Soviet government

works. ..” Zwicker reported.

The largest single category consisted of
126 stories on Soviet “spies, real or
imagined,” he related. Of 146 opinion
columns only four — using the researchers’
criteria of “bending over backwards to be
fair” — could be considered as favorable,
said Zwicker.

Stories which were based at least in part
on comments from Soviet sources com-
prised one-third of one-per cent of the
items, while not one item used comments
from Soviet sources unedited, he noted.

Zwicker also observed the double-
standard western media apply to the cover-
age of Soviet affairs.

If the media cover a strike in the USSR,
the comment inevitably follows that Soviet
workers are rebelling against bad working

conditions, but if the coverage is cone
with how few work stoppages there 4
the Sqviet union, the conclusion prest
is that Soviet workers are repressed:
ilarly, if churches are observed to be at
full, its because “Communism can t
press religion.” But if the news item 74
churches are largely empty, it’s becaus
Soviet system has squelched
expression, Zwicker noted. :

i.

Western newspapers regularly *
issues and places from several angl °
newspapers are full of “non-hostile i
concerning lifestyles, culture and other
ters. “Therefore, their non-inclusion WV
ries about the USSR) would seem '®
contrary to most definitions of the:
he said. :

The conclusion Zwicker and his res’
ers drew is that “the coverage of the
Union is niether fair, balanced nor ©
hensive.. .it simply reinforces feat
thing of the Soviet Union,” he rep&™

Zwicker also had much to
other news coverage in the westerm'
hitting out at the preoccupation Wh"
of disaster and violence. j

Remarking that ‘‘the news is M4
sick,” Zwicker said an analysis 0
radio’s news broadcasts — “an
probably the best” — showed fi
seven stories were concerned with
and mayhem.”

“We don’t need all that news —
ally about disasters we can’t do
about, and it’s often about
involve individuals.”

Calling this “‘a kind of psycholo
fare against the population,” Zwi¢
that “the CIA operatives” on the
newspaper, El Mercurio, shortly #
1973 fascist coup in Chile, made *
paper was filled with “crazy, biz"
on murder and disaster. “It helped
tle the population,” he asserted