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Salient. Victoria University Students' Newspaper. Volume 39, Number 25. October 4, 1976

"Stateless" Transkei Africans

"Stateless" Transkei Africans

Matazima, in a futile effort to wrest some self-respect from the process which is about to make him South Africa's first puppet premier, has tried to insist that only those who apply citizenship can be considered. But Pretoria has remained obdurate and Vorster's plan is likely soon to be enshrined in the Transkei Act - a forceful reminder to urban blacks that they are, in official terms, only "temporary sojourners" in their own homes. Their anger is understandable - and is given added point by the fact that more than half of Soweto's population is less than 20 years old.

It was after a five-week boycott of their schools by Soweto school children that the violence broke. Under scrawled banners of Asingeni—we will not go in, some 2,000 children refused to into classes, protesting at having to study mathematics and social science in Afrikaans. Leaving aside for the moment that precise issue, what was immediately striking about their behaviour was its uncompromising directness. In political terms, it revealed considerable maturity and - a point which Vorster was quick to complain at - a definite degree of organisation. Vorster had good reason to complain: the riots effectively shattered what was to be his most spectacular coup in his long-playing detente exercise: his meeting with US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.

The Minister of Justice at the time of Sharpeville was B.J. Vorster, now Prime Minister, the man primarily responsible for the introduction of the formidable array of "security laws" which have this year reached their grossest shape in the Internal Security Act - which will, in spite of Government attempts to change the name, take its place alongside other bizarre South African contributions to history under its original title, the State Security Bill, the "SS" law.