South Africa's Voice of Opposition

"The record of the American press on civil rights," said the visitor from South Africa, "is not particularly impressive. There have been courageous exceptions. But far too many American newspapers have been content to go along with public opinion in the South, rather than guide it. Most newspapers of the North, I feel, have adopted good positions on civil rights. But they don't express these opinions with dedication and energy."

Many a U.S. editor may quarrel with such criticism, but it comes from a man who has more than earned the right to make it. As editor of the Rand* Daily Mail in Johannesburg, Laurence Gandar, 49, has persistently assailed his country's race policies with the dedication and energy that he finds lacking in U.S. newspapers.

Full Reckoning. "Apartheid is a contraction of the human spirit, an impoverishing act of self-concern, a retreat from life," wrote Gandar in one signed Page One editorial. "Come on, let's raise some hell," he urged all those who may disapprove of apartheid. "Do not allow yourself for one moment to think that protest serves no purpose. It shows an increasingly hostile world that all White South Africans do NOT subscribe to the shameful actions and attitudes of this racist government."

Nor does Gandar spare his readers a reckoning of the full cost of integration: "It means the dismantling of colour bars in every sphere. It means the likelihood of having a Black family as one's neighbours, a Black man as one's boss. Unthinkable? No doubt. But then, the history of multiracial communities is essentially the story of the reluctant accepting the unthinkable. The case for integration does not rest on the unreal assumption that everyone will live happily ever after. It rests on the plain fact that there is no practical alternative."

South Africa's government gets such criticism in the entire English-language press, but nowhere with more unremitting vehemence than in Gandar's Mail. Why Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd permits it is one of the unexplained mysteries of an otherwise intolerant land. He has the power to silence his critics, or at least to command the sort of subservience he gets from the country's Afrikaans press. But Verwoerd must also be aware that his country's English-language papers outcirculate its Afrikaans papers by 5 to 1--clear evidence of the reading preference of South Africans.

Steady Harassment. If and when Verwoerd's patience ever runs out, his first target for vengeful action is very likely to be Gandar of the Mail. Born in the sea resort of Durban, on South Africa's east coast, Gandar chose a journalism career after leaving the University of Natal. But he made no particular mark until the businessmen who own the Rand Daily Mail hired him in 1957 to succeed the paper's departing editor.

From that position, Gandar has since led a relentless crusade against Verwoerd's government. In the elections of 1961, the Mail was the only big newspaper to pledge undiluted support to South Africa's new, anti-Verwoerd, Progressive Party. "Immensely heartening," said Gandar, after the Progressives succeeded in sending a single candidate, Mrs. Helen Suzman, to Parliament.

As Verwoerd's severest critic, Editor Gandar has been subjected to steady harassment. Detectives from the government's special-branch police pay repeated visits to the paper, on one pretext or another. Two years ago, Minister of Justice Balthazar Vorster warned the owners of the Mail that if they persisted in encouraging "the current liberalism," they would "come up against something." Vorster did not elaborate --nor did the Mail's proprietors flinch. They have backed their editor to the hilt, and at some cost: the Mail's circulation has slipped from 125,000 to 112,000 in the past five years, a decline probably accounted for by readers who consider the paper too dangerously aggressive for their taste.

Hope of Change. On his current tour of the U.S., Gandar himself considered the prospect that press freedom may come to an end this year, when Parliament is scheduled to take up the question of new press controls. "Quite frequently," he said in Los Angeles last week, "you must admit to yourself that the future could be very bad indeed, that the government could win such public acceptance that it would eliminate all press opposition. White public opinion is moving steadily in support of the government, despite the press criticism. It might be that I will not be able to continue much longer. But I prefer to believe that one day, somehow, change will come to South Africa."

* Truncated from Witwatersrand--white waters ridge--a rocky outcropping near Johannesburg where the city's gold is mined.

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