( World Mews
Secret Police oversee
South African politics
JOHANNESBURG — A white
South African journalist here
says he always packs a suitcase
and takes it into the office with
him every time he is working on a
story which might involve people
who could get him into trouble
with the Bureau Of State
Security, known as BOSS.
“Of course, I know if they
really wanted me badly enough I
probably wouldn’t have time to
pack anything,” he said. “But at
least when I do it I feel that I am
not just sitting back waiting to be
picked up.”
Despite the publicity its ac
tivities inside and outside South
Africa get overseas, to most
South African whites BOSS is
about as relevant to their lives as
an earthquake in Patagonia.
The elderly Jewish owner of a
small ieatherware shop in
Loveday Street who emigrated to
South Africa from I London’s East
End in the ‘30s just as the first
Jewish refugees from Nazi
Germany were moving into his
neighborhood -offered the sort of
(comment you might have ex
pected a good living German of
the period to make about the
Gestapo.
"I don’t think about politics
much. There are all these sub
versive elements, you see, and
they have to keep an eye on them.
Really, this iB god’s own country,
you know -a great country for a
young man ”
But during the last few days not
even the most complacent white
South African could be unaware
of the extensive and complex
secret police machinery that
plays such an important role in
maintaining the status quo in his
country.
A three-volume report on state
security has just been presented
to Prime Minister Balthazar
John Vorster by Justice H. J.
Potgieter. It took Justice
Potgieter, a one-man commission
set up by the government, 14
months to make his report, which
recommends giving BOSS more
powers and generally increasing
its status within the government
framework
Justice Potgieter says that
BOSS, which was formed in I96B.
should have sole responsibility
for telling the Prime Minister
what the entire national in
telligence picture is “in regard to
the threats to the survival of the
state “
This would mean that Gen H.
J van den Bergh, head of BOSS,
would be in the all powerful
position of collecting and
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analyzing all intelligence
material collected by other
government agencies such as
military and police intelligence.
But, obviously not unaware of
the doubled-edged dagger he
could be creating—for it is
thought that most of the report’s
recommendations will be ac
cepted—and possibly with his eye
on some future South African Bay
of Pigs — Justice Potgieter adds a
cautionary note.
He says: "I do not discount the
possibility that one body which
has been established to preserve
the security of the state, from an
intelligence point of view, might
in itself pose a threat to the
security of the state.”
Neither have South Africa’s
white liberals, who are all con
vinced that their activities are
closely watched by one security
agency or another, found the
report entirely without comedy,
particular amusement being
provided by the recommendation
that “postal articles and
telephone conversations may be
intercepted only in the interests
of the security of the state.”
“That would be a bit of
retrospective legislation if ever
there was,” said a member of an
anti-Apartheid church group.
Otherwise, most people op
posed to the government’s racial
policies find precious little to
laugh about in the report, which
Gen. van den Bergh has already
described as “excellent.”
The atmosphere in what might
loosely be termed the "radical
white opposition" has grown
steadily more wary since the
Security police’s famous
November swoop when 45 known
arrests were made and the Indian
schoolteacher Ahmed Timol
mysteriously fell to his death
from a lOth-story window at
police headquarters in John
Vorster Square while undergoing
interrogation.
Now Vorster’s announcement
that he wants the National Union
of South African Students, the
University Christian Movement,
the Christian Institute and the
South African Institute of Race
Relations investigated, is
regarded as further evidence of a
hardening in the official mood
The distrust is not confined to
the public. Rivalry between the
Police Security Branch, which
has power of arrest denied to
BOSS, is said to have reached
quite bitter proportions. The
main reason for this seems to be
the feeling that BOSS is staffed
by a bunch of whiz-kids who have
not had enough experience of
hard detective work.
BOSS, on the other hand,
believes that the security police
are a bunch of plodders whose
methods are dated and often
crude. The Rand Daily Mail
recently devoted almost a whole
inside page to details of torture
allegations by people who have
been arrested by the security
police.
The judge says that apart from
aptitude, dedication and being
well versed in the techniques
“peculiar to intelligence func
tions,” he must be “a man of
great intellectual integrity.”
“This means,” adds the judge,
“that first and foremost he must
have the courage to give the true
picture—not the picture he
thinks the authorities would
” Los Angeles Times
Washington Post News Service
News Roundup
From AP Reports
MIAMI BEACH — Labor leader George Meany said Thursday
that President Nixon is going to Communist China to help boost his
own re-election chances, and that “he might leave a tab over there for
the American taxpayer to pick up.” But Meany, leading a stepped-up
AFL-CIO political campaign aimed mostly against Nixon, said he
didn’t disagree with Sen. Henry Jackson, who wished Nixon success on
the trip. Jackson, one of the large field of Democratic presidential
contenders, said after meeting in closed session with the AFL-CIO
Executive Council that he hoped Nixon could get Red Chinese help to
end the Vietnam war.
HONOLULU — President Nixon set off on his “journey for
peace,” to China Thursday—a historic mission he said he was un
dertaking for all mankind in search of a common ground with the long
hostile and isolated Asian Communist power. The President arrived
here on a clear sun-drenched day for a two-day stopover before con
tinuing on to Guam and then to China. The President’s jet touched
down at 8:30 p.m. EST at Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station after a
ten-hour flight from Washington.
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Superior Court Judge Richard Amason
rejected defense motions Thursday to move the Angela Davis murder
kidnap trial and have the state pay defense costs. He then set a Feb. 28
trial date for the black revolutionary. Asst. Atty. Gen. Albert Harris
Jr. announced that Amason had set the date and rejected the motions
after emerging from an in-chambers conference with the judge and
defense attorneys. Miss Davis is charged with murder, kidnap and
conspiracy in the Aug. 7, 1970 escape attempt at the Marin County
Civic Center in which Superior Court Judge Harold Haley, two con
victs and an accomplice were killed.
McCloskey accuses President
of using trip as ‘gimmick’
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep.
Paul McCloskey, R-Calif.,
criticized President Nixon’s
China trip Thursday as a
“gimmick” while another
presidential hopeful, Democratic
Sen. Vance Hartke, expressed
concern about the trip’s potential
impact on U.S. imports and
employment.
McCloskey said in a radio in
terview in Berlin, N.H., that the
trip was “a gimmick to divert
people’s attention just before the
election away from the problems
at home,” and ne warned it may
backfire.
“I think the Chinese are
smarter than we are, and they
are going to take advantage of
this visit. They’re going to drop
Mr. Nixon’s trousers neatly
around his ankles and he may
never even know it,” said Mc
Closkey, challenger to Nixon in
the March 7 New Hampshire
primary.
Hartke voiced his concern in a
challenge to Sen. Edmund
Muskie, D-Maine, to take a public
stand on the possible reper
cussions of Nixon’s trip, as
pertains to U.S. employment.
“I have not gotten a peep out of
Muskie on my plan to close the
tax and tariff loopholes that are
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helping export American jobs to
Taiwan and other low-wage
countries,” Hartke said in a
statement released in Man
chester, N.H.
“Now that the President is on
the verge of opening the gate to a
whole new flood of goods
produced by Communist slave
labor, I think Muskie has an
obligation to the voters to take a
stand on something meaningful
to American wage earners,” he
said.
The senator did not address
himself directly to Nixon, nor did
he elaborate on what he thought
the trip’s impact might be.
Gov. Ronald Reagan, mean
while, said California would send
two delegations to support Nixon
at the GOP national convention—
a broadly based voting group «nH
a 96-member honorary
delegation.
In the regular delegation,
Reagan said, about 30 per cent
are women, 14 per cent are
persons under 30 and 9 per cent
represent minorities. The
honorary group includes actors,
industrialists and top party
contributors.
Muskie, a leading cm tender for
the Democratic nomination, was
home Thursday following the
death of his son Steven’s mother
in-law. He planned to rejoin the
campaign circuit Friday in
Florida.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars,
meanwhile, released a letter
from Muskie in Fitchburg, Mass.,
containing his response to their
query regarding his stand on
amnesty for men who refused to
be drafted for Vietnam.
“I think the time to consider
the amnesty questions is after the
war is over,” said Muskie.
“All In The Family”
13 comedy selections from
the television program.
Tonight — 7:59 p.m.
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