OPINION Page 4 Wednesday, December 11, 1985 The Michigan Daily e ad m rbtnan tichigan Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan 'The beast' in Pretoria + Vol. XCVI, No. 68 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board An ugly alliance N A RATHER disturbing trend, Britain appears eager to imitate various American initiatives. Last Nyeek, the British government of- fcially withdrew from UNESCO - thie United Nations Educational, scientific, and Cultural Organization; an action paralleling 3 U.S. move last year. Ad- $itionally, less than a week ago, Britain chose to become the first jountry to sign an agreement to participate in the Reagan ad- pninistration's Strategic Defense Initiative program. In both cases Britain's actions Piave been a partial response to J.S. pressure. Secretary of State Qasper Weinberger, has said that the U.S. was "very eager" to bring tn other European nations in research for the "new generation Of weapons." Mr. Weinberger also sees this pact as ammunition against "Star Wars" opponents in Washington, by demonstrating a high level of interest and support for the program among allies. British Defense Minister Michael Heseltine and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher view this agreement as a potential boon to the British economy - by providing jobs and opportunities for British scientists as well a plus for in- dustry. In securing this agreement, Heseltine and Weinberger are un- doubtedly feeling equally accom- plished. It should be noted however, that other British leaders are expressing some very valid concerns regarding their country's new committment. Various Labour party leaders are questioning the implications of the use of British technology as a possible violation Day of r COME SAY it is the erraticism natural to youth and others at- tribute it to just plain laziness, but whatever its cause, there can be no denying that college students have a tendency to postpone. Procrastination is perhaps too unkind a word to describe the phenomenon which manifests itself equally in all-night, one-night 12 page papers as it does in study groups wherein each member assumes the others have done all of the readings. Whatever the name of the syn- drome, it has reached its logical fend. Today marks the beginning of the day of reckoning, when the following ten calendar days seem like one long mid-morning. Exams blend in with one another as various lasts - last papers, last finals, last parties - fall in sequen- ce like so many dominoes. But the real reckoning comes af- ter the academics are finished. The three week winter vacation is as much a repository of delayed aspirations as the exam period, yet there isn't the impending prospect of academic failure providing that vital caffeine-like impetus to con- tinue working. Think back on all the supplemen- of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty. Others have called the "Star Wars" project "destabilizing and and dangerous." The UNESCO pullout is another ugly U.S.-British "joint venture" deserving of further examination. Essentially the reasoning appears to be consistent; Britain together with the U.S. challenged UNESCO's basic philosophies regarding the "institutions of a free society" and objected to the diver- sion of funds from cultural and educational programs to other Soviet-backed programs, such as problems of peace and disar- mament. The American and British withdrawals do nothing to put UNESCO back on track. The U.S. was the largest single source of funding for UNESCO - which has been unable to make up this loss. Britain's action will only fur- ther the organization's financial problems. It is unfortunate that amidst the world-wide concern regarding the role of the United Nations in international affairs and the effectiveness of its programs, the U.S. and Great Britain would opt to deny UNESCO crucial sup- port instead of working for the im- provement of such a valuable organization. It is particularly disheartening to see the administration's "Star Wars" fever spreading among our allies. Such an alliance serves only to discourage any hopes of a sub- stantial agreement at any future summit, and shifts energy away from the aims of the most recent peace talks. Sadly, Britain's desire to get in the game may prove fatal step towards the last epidemic. eckonin "sound good, I'll have to read that over break." Conjure up, if possible, all of the many spon- taneous urges to see movies, visit museums, or write old friends that were squelched for lack of time during the school year. The most pressing concern of winter break is almost surely the brain's appetite for sleep, but by the end of the first week of vacation even the most bleary eyed exam goers have had ample opportunity to make amends with their minds. The real challenge of break comes then, when the momentum has shifted from something com- parable to an Indy 500 car to something more like a middle-aged professional's jogging pace. It comes when it's every bit as easy to turn on MTV as it is to pick up Fit- zgerald or Hemingway and when library visits mean getting in the car and going downtown. There's time, of course, for visiting high school friends and staying out until all hours - and with the chief goal of vacation being revitalization those activities shouldn't be scrapped - but there's time also, perhaps, for some of the side-paths of academia that, once explored, could make the next day of reckoning a bit less im- By Philip Smucker As the South African government steps up its crackdown on the press, it is important for Americans to continue to look into the nature of "the beast" in Pretoria today. While tools of deception are rudely enfor- ced by racist police censors, it is less well- known that the apartheid policy is justified biblically and espoused on the pulpit by many of the most powerful South African theologians. Thesevoices speak for something much more comprehensive than a minor league cult. The majority of ruling Afrikaners were raised to believe that they are the modern children of Israel who brought God to the heathen Africans and were given apartheid as a way of life sanctified by God. "Apartheid is a political as well as theoretical policy built on a heretical inter- pretation of the Bible," says the Rev. Ed Mulder, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America based in Grand Rapids, the sister church of the dominant Reformed Church of South Africa. Many South African theologians, ironically cite passages from the Tower of Babel, referring to many nations with many tongues as a justification for apartheid's "homeland" segregation policy. More disguised, however, is the in- volvement of these same religious leaders in the Broeder Bond, a secret organization, exclusive of blacks, which pulls the political strings in South Africa. The church is "part and parcel" to the political repression controlled by the Broeder Bond,according to the managing editor of the recently banned South African Rand Daily Mail, who was recently in Ann Arbor. Theologians have banded together to for- mulate government policy in South Africa since the Afrikaners took the reigns of authority over three decades ago. The bond of secrecy within the Broeder Bond is as ex- clusive as that of the KGB or the CIA. Made up of both political and religious leaders, the Broeder Bond's wrath emanates from smoke-filled conference rooms every time the status quo is distur- bed. It is not uncommon for outspoken church leaders to be threatened by both their chur- ch and their government. The Rev. Allan Boesak, head ofethe Mission Church, a coloured sister church of the Reformed sect, was cut off from his church stipend when he began to speak out against the repression. Accusing his sister church of manipulating religious doctrine to its own selfish end was one thing, but when Boesak began to attack the political reality of a theocratic mind-set, he was threatened with detention by his government. The essence of this message handed down from above goes something like this: Stick to religion black man. If you were meant to speak out on political issues God would have made your skin white! Smucker is a graduate student in journalism. But when black church leaders go about the business of preaching the Gospel's con- cern for the undereducated and malnourished, they, again, find themselves up against "the beast." "They (the gover- nment) are using the word 'communism' and they apply it to almost anybody who, on the basis of his or her Christian convictions looks at apartheid and says to the South African government, 'I'm sorry, but I have to be on the side of the poor and the weak and the oppressed,' " says Boesak in his book, "Walking on Thorns." The branding of devout religious leaders as communists, however, is not new. Americans need only harken back to the rhetoric of men like Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) who made continuous and unsub- stantiated claims that Martin Luther King was a communist in an attempt to stifle his political voice as well as his physical mobility during the civil rights struggle in this country. Repressive leaders here and abroad usually have an answer to doubters who wonder why black religious leaders should constantly turn the other cheek towards their oppressors. The Rev. Dr. James White, professor of race relations at Calvin and Hope Colleges in Michigan and a mem- ber of the Reformed sect, was "enlightened" with this logic when he asked a white churchman in South Africa if it bothered him that his church was suppor- ting apartheid. "No," he said. "We are the only Christians with a ministry to the com- munists,"he said, referring to the Dutch Reformed Church's policy of handing religious pamphlets to Russian sailors when they dock in South African port cities.' But while religious leaders deny that much of the repression in South Africa today has its roots in an inherently heretical con- viction, faith in both God and man is on the decline in South Africa. These are sad and disillusioning times for many rebellious black youths who have severed, their allegiances with the, church and a philosophy they see as perpetuating slavery. "The-Dutch Reformed Church is too con- nected to the Broeder Bond," said George, a black South African student at Grand Valley State College, who requested anonymity. "Religious teachingsiare calculated to achieve political motives. I can't under- stand how what is immoral can be justified on the basis of religion." A new generation of blacks in South Africa have come to see the idea of turning the other cheek as a means for white rulers to control the minds of blacks. They have lost the faith that once gave their parents hope for the future. But while the religious struggle for equality is undermined by the government, the fighting on the border and in the streets continues as white religious leaders offer prayers for the white soldiers they consider to be keeping the "peace." At the same time, white political leaders are meeting with these same religious leaders, branding the "communists"-and thinking of new ways to pacify the masses with manipulated religious and political doc- trine. The unique marriage of religious convic- tion and political institution is allowed to grow and flourish in South Africa today. The majority of South Africans, unlike Americans, do not have a constitution that prevents "the beast" from stifling their voices of freedom. South African leaders have made many laws respecting religion, something the framers of the American Constitution sought to prevent. In South Africa, as through much of recorded history, it is the political institution that has come to embody the repression that has sprung forth from deeply felt convictions about superiority of class, intelligence and race. Institutional mechanisms, preventing mobility in jobs, travel and education are the result. If the South African government ever gives in to concrete constitutional change it can learn a lesson from America. Only when men with a wary eye for despotism, as the writers of theAmerican Constitution, recognize the nature of "the beast" as a repressive animal, do individual rights remain protected. Separation of church and state in America is an attempt to allow for the voice of religion as a force for change, but not for the, formulation of law. A man's religious con- viction does not prevent him from lobbying for a cause, but the establishment clause of the Constitution prevents religious organizations from having a controlling voice in politics, according to visiting University of Michigan law Professor, John H. Garvey. An understanding of history allowed the framers of the American Constitution to foresee the creation of manipulative in- .stitutions like the ones so prevalent in South Africa today. Whereas the voice of the black individual, The Rev. Allan Boesak, is often silenced, the idea of racial superiority, which began as a religious conviction advocated by a relatively small band of white religious leaders,prevails condescendingly over the rights of the majority. Deep seated hatred and prejudice is disguised with a thin in- stitutional veil. Yet even when the reigns of discrimination are taken out of thehands of despotic governments, as was done in the South over 100 years ago, deep seated fear and hate can still flourish. Even the most overt attempts to ameliorate past discrimination can prove to be futile if the individual resists. People can run away from the problem, as exemplified through "white flight," or people can attribute the problem to someone else. All of which makes one wonder if real change can be affected at all by political mechanisms. Maybe all we can ask for from a good democratic government is a chance for change through the prevention of in- stitutionally enforced repression. Afterall, the framers of the Constitution were placing faith in the individual not the institution to affect change. They created a framework for equality, not equality itself, and in so doing they gave birth to an environment which would allow for revolutionary change from within. LETTERS: Call for action against segregation To the Daily: Separate and unequal education is a fact of life for black schoolchildren attending public schools in Ann Arbor. Elemen- tary schools that are primarily black, such as Northside School, receive much less in the way of resources than schools that are overwhelmingly white, and they suffer from long time policies of neglect and decay. Racist prac- tices in all the public schools, like academic "tracking" segregate children, disproportionately black and minority, into lower pre-determined slots from which there is no escape throughout their school years. Ad- ministrators, and too often many teachers, do not have any high expectations for these kids. The students themselves begin to ab- sorb the message that they will never succeed and this has a psychological effect of lowering the incentive to academically acheive in school. In addition, children whose families are con- tinually discriminated against by economic and social racism, are in need of special attention and support systems of parents, teachers, and students in order for the children to be better able to get by in the school environ- ment. Added pressures, such as racist hostility toward black children in school, and curriculum that do not teach the real history and aeheivements of black and to nearby Northside Elementary. School. Now, they would be prohibited from sending their kids to Northside and the new reorganization plan would have them bussed to either over- crowded Thurston Elementary or across town to a potentially hostile environment in white, up-' per middle-class Burns Park at Burns Park Elementary. under- standably, with educational programs and facilities so horrendous at Northside, many parents are eager to send them to what might be perceived as any type of an improvement somewhere else. But many Arrowwood parents clearly want to fight for quality education at Northside for their children, with the option of busing for those who do not want to stay at Northside. Against this background of in- stitutional racism in the Ann Ar- bor public schools, black parents have been organizing for quality education and an end to segregation in the schools. The Board of Education has been talking for 20 years. Finally, af- ter parents of Northside children filed a complaint with the Depar- tment of Justice in April 1984, the Board started to develop a plan for school closings and busing to acheive a better racial balance in the elementary schools. Under the school reorganization plan approved at the Oct. 16 Board RIBOM COUNTY meeting, seven schools would be closed and the remaining schools would range in black enrollment from 9 per cent (Hailey) to 25 per cent (Bryant-Pattengill), with a total of 17.6 per cent black enrollment in Ann Arbor as a whole. The present range is 0.7 per cent black (Freeman) to 69.2 per cent black (Northside). While this plan may make for less segregation in the Ann Arbor public schools, the special problems of black students are still not being adequately ad- dressed. Black children are ex- pected to bear the entire burden of the school dsegregation plan. They are the ones who will be get- ting up earlier to take buses across town. It is their parents, many of whom do not own their transportation, who will be less able to participate in after-school parent-child activities in a strange school on the other side of town. In order to finance the school desegregation and to continue with the operation of the schools, the public library, and all extra- curricular activities, and school busing, The Board is calling for approval of a millage renewal and increase in a special election to be held Monday December 16th. Some white parents op- posed to school integration have called for a defeat of the millage and are attempting to recall the school board. However inadaquete the Board's plan may be, and despite the financial bur- den being placed on small homeowners, it is very important that the millage be passed as a statement against racism and to immediately finance the education of Ann Arbor's children. University of Michigan students registered in Ann Arbor can make a positive contribution to this by voting 'yes' for the five millage proposals on the ballot. University students who want to fight racism in all its forms, can help in several ways. ,First, get out and vote for the school millage! Then support the paren- ts and students in their fight for decent integrated education. Th- e Committee Against Racism and Apartheid, (CARA), a multiracial group of University students and workers, is attem- pting to build support for the ac- tions of the black parents in their organizing. We are trying to build a movement by uniting students, campus workers (many of whom are also schoolchildren's parents) and the Ann Arbor community, so that all our struggles will be strengthened. - Paul Lefrak December 10 Lefmk is a member ofthe Committee Against Racism and Apartheid hbr Re.e Reathed w.