The Press THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 1966. No Abridgement Of Freedom

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31087, 16 June 1966, Page 14

The Press THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 1966. No Abridgement Of Freedom

Just on a hundred years ago the principle of equal rights for white and coloured citizens was written into the Constitution of the United States of America. “ The right of the citizens of the United States ”, the amendment proclaimed, “shall not be denied or “ abridged ... on account of race, colour, or previous “ condition of servitude ”. It might be thought Ironical that while Senator Robert Kennedy, in an anti-apartheid context in South Africa, was eloquently upholding “ the full equality of all our people ”, a Negro was shot in Mississippi for daring to assert that same equality of status. Yet Mr Kennedy was not saying in Cape Town something that he would hesitate to say publicly in any of the southern States of his own country. James Meredith, before setting out on his march through Mississippi—where in 1962 he defied the segregationists by forcing his way as a student into the State university—said this: “We “ want to tear down the fear that grips the Negroes “ of Mississippi... to encourage the 450,000 Negroes “remaining unregistered (to vote) in Mississippi”. Mr Kennedy, had he been there, would have given that aim a fervent endorsement, not as an aspiring politician but as a man of integrity and as an opponent of oppression and exploitation as major contributing causes of human suffering.

The South African Government must have been incensed by Mr Kennedy’s forthrightness in listing apartheid in a catalogue of evils—discrimination in America, serfdom in Peru, starvation in India, the denial of freedom of expression in Russia—but it did not dare to silence him. Moreover, the cheers of his thousands of listeners on the university campus would convey their own message to Dr. Verwoerd’s Cabinet room, producing small cause for comfort. There is a difference between segregation in South Africa and segregation in the United States. South African law does not recognise Bantu citizenship, except in very limited degree, whereas the American Negroes are fighting to make actual a freedom technically achieved by constitutional amendment a century ago. In America the fight is on; and the segregationists will have their answer in due course, with the courage of men like Mr Meredith lighting the way to full acceptance of the Federal Government’s civil rights programme. In South Africa there has as yet been no violence to speak of; but it is still to be proved that apartheid can survive without it, while totalitarian powers are plainly required to enforce it.

Young as he is, Mr Kennedy has skills as a political tactician that many of his elders might envy. But he has fine qualities of mind and character as well. If he has his eyes on the White House, it is not merely because politics attract him. There is in him the same will to serve that stiffened the resolution of his brother. His idealism is expressed in a courageous commitment to the public good. The “ Economist’s ” New York correspondent said of him recently that where honour, loyalty, and rightness are terms usually reserved by politicians for Fourth of July speeches, in Robert Kennedy “ they make up “ the lance that he has chosen to carry since his “brother’s death”. He will have a larger part in the Negroes’ fight for equality. The Vice-President, Mr Humphrey, put the struggle into perspective when he told Negro leaders at the White House a few days ago: “Do not expect us, even together, to put right “ in one year or four all that has taken centuries to “ wrong ”. And in the same mood the “ Manchester “ Guardian ” added: “ Change of any kind is difficult; “white men and Negroes alike are impatient. But “it is an encouraging reflection on the state of “ American opinion that a Kennedy, who must regard “ himself as a future Presidential candidate, should “ think it necessary for success to mouth what are, in “ the context of the Deep South and of Southern “ Africa, revolutionary slogans ”.