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June 1966 Senator Robert Kennedy made an historic visit to
South Africa. It remains the most important visit an American
made to South Africa because it took place during the darkest
years of Apartheid. The architect of Apartheid, Dr. Verwoerd,
was Prime Minister, while Nelson Mandela, Chief Albert Luthuli
and other opposition leaders were in prison on Robben Island
or in exile. With rare exception, all opposition across the
spectrum of black and white South Africa- political parties,
the universities, the churches, the arts and the media- were
living under the tight control of the National Party and its
military, bureaucratic and ideological machinery.
Surprisingly, very few Americans
know of this dramatic and important visit by Robert Kennedy,
then the Junior Senator from New York, to South Africa from
June 4th to the 9th, 1966. He was invited by NUSAS, the anti-Apartheid
National Union of South African Students, to deliver its Annual
Day of Affirmation Speech to be held that year at the University
of Cape Town. He was accompanied by his wife, Ethel Kennedy,
and a small number of close aides.
The value of the visit needs
to be understood within the context of America's special relationship
with South Africa. For many Americans the pictures and news
reports coming out of South Africa in the 1960's seemed hauntingly
similar to the pictures emanating from the American South
during the Civil Rights Movement. The visit emphasized the
connections between the fight against racism in the United
States and South Africa.
In the late
fifties and early sixties, South Africa did not register on
the agenda of American foreign policy. In an Op-Ed piece in
the New York Times in 1994, at the time of South Africa's
historic first democratic election, Anthony Lewis wrote of
Senator Kennedy's visit: "In a trip to South Africa in
1966 he challenged the tyranny and fear that then had the
country in its grip. At a time when few diplomats visited
black townships or entertained
black leaders, Senator Kennedy identified with the black majority
and with all the victims of repression... he gave many South
Africans, black and
white, courage to fight injustice- and reason to believe that
some in the outside world would care." 1
The first American political
leader who showed real interest in South Africa was Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. By the time of Senator Kennedy's visit in
1966, Dr. King had publicly linked the Civil Rights Movement
in the United States and the battle against
Apartheid in South Africa. (See
1965 speech.) By the early 1960's Dr. King and Chief Albert
Luthuli, the banned president of the ANC, had long established
contacts and in 1962 they issued a Joint
Statement on Apartheid. (Senator Kennedy
made an important special trip to meet with Chief Luthuli
which is discussed later.) Dr. King had been invited by NUSAS
in 1965, but had been denied a visa by the South African Government.
Senator Kennedy and
his party had a very busy schedule while in South Africa.
They arrived just
before midnight
(film clip)
on Saturday night, June 4th at Jan Smuts airport, outside
Johannesburg, to an enthusiastic welcome by a crowd of predominantly
white English speaking students.
Readers should consult the detailed
itinerary
of the visit. There were, however, some notable events that
were organized at the last moment and are not reflected in
the official itinerary. Two of the most important of these
were the visit with the banned President of the ANC, Chief
Albert Luthuli (discussed later), and the visit
with NUSAS president, Ian Robertson in Cape Town.
Robertson, with the strong support
of the NUSAS leadership, was instrumental in inviting Senator
Kennedy. A month before the visit, he was banned
under the Suppression of Communism Act, which, among other
things, meant that he could not attend Senator Kennedy's speech
at the University of Cape Town. However, en route to his hotel
from the airport, Senator Kennedy stopped to visit Robertson
at his student apartment. Legend has it, that on entering
the apartment, Senator Kennedy asked if the apartment was
bugged. When told that it probably was, he began to stomp
his foot on the floorboards. Asked to explain, Kennedy answered
that the vibrations would disrupt the bugging mechanisms.
How do you know that ?" he was asked. "I used to
be Attorney General" he replied.
(This
story was retold 24 years later by Nelson Mandela
(film clip)
at a luncheon in his honor at the John F. Kennedy Presidential
Library in Boston, during his first visit to the United States
in 1990 following his release after 27 years of imprisonment.)
One of the legacies of Senator
Kennedy's South African visit are the five memorable speeches
he delivered.
The speech he gave at the University
of Cape Town on June 6th, 1966, is by far the best known of
Senator Kennedy's South African speeches. This speech is generally
considered by most historians and biographers of Robert Kennedy
to be the greatest speech of his life. One paragraph in particular-
the "Ripple of Hope" paragraph
- remains one of the most quoted paragraphs in American politics.
"It
is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that
human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an
ideal, or acts
to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice,
he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other
from a million different centers of energy and daring those
ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest
walls of oppression and resistance." 2
audio
(Click
here for text and audio of the full speech.) The
speech
he gave at the University of the Witwatersrand on the
last night of the visit, however, although it is almost unknown-
except to those in attendance that night - is perhaps the
most political speech Senator Kennedy made in South Africa.
By the end of his trip he and his party had learnt a lot more
about South Africa and they had had an opportunity to interact
with an enormous range of South Africans. He was free to speak-
and to speak for others who could not - in a way that he could
not in the earlier part of the visit.
The Wits speech was delivered
in the evening after a dramatic visit to Soweto and meetings
and appearances in various locations in downtown Johannesburg.
By this time, the visit had begun to have a political impact
in South Africa beyond just the white liberal universities,
and Senator and Ethel Kennedy's appearances were drawing a
more diverse audience of South Africans than just a few days
earlier.
He gave three other important
speeches in addition to a number of short impromptu speeches
that went unrecorded. These other recorded speeches occurred
at the Afrikaans University of Stellenbosch, at the University
of Natal in Durban, and to the Johannesburg Bar Council. (These
speeches can be read the Speeches section.)
The visit had an enormous impact
on black South Africans at a very bleak time
in the struggle for human rights in South Africa. It gave
them a feeling of hope that they were not alone, and that
someone important in the outside world knew and cared about
what was going on in South Africa. As a black journalist wrote
in the Sowetan newspaper, the Golden City Post, under a headline
THE DAY WE WILL NEVER EVER FORGET: "He made us feel,
more than ever, that it was still worthwhile, despite our
great difficulties, for us to fight for the things that we
believed in; that justice, freedom and equality for all men
are things we should strive for so that our children should
have a better life." 3
No white people had ever received
the kind of
exuberant reception the Kennedys received in Soweto. Thousands
of people cheered them as they traveled the unpaved roads
- much of the time on the roof of their car- and visited schools,
The Regina Mundi Church and a spontaneous visit to the modest
Soweto home of Mrs. Zondi.
A particularly important moment
in the trip- in terms of both black South Africa and anti-Apartheid
circles in general- was the visit to Chief Luthuli who was
banned by
the Government under the "Suppression of Communism Act"
and forced to live in internal exile
in Groutville. Chief
Luthuli, Africa's first Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1960,
and Senator Kennedy walked through the fields surrounding
Chief Luthuli's house in order to talk freely beyond the ears
of the South African police who were present. Chief Luthuli
and Senator and Mrs. Kennedy also listened to a recording
of President John F. Kennedy's June 1963 speech on Civil Rights
on a record player that Senator Kennedy had carried with him
on the helicopter. In subsequent statements, and in an article
in Look
Magazine published shortly after the visit, Senator Kennedy
described
Chief Luthuli as "one of the most impressive men I have
ever met." 4
Senator Kennedy told Soweto
residents of his talk with Chief Luthuli that same morning-
the first news that most people had heard about their leader
in over five years. Under his banning order Chief Luthuli
could not be quoted or photographed. Senator Kennedy understood
that he, as an American Senator, could talk about Chief Luthuli
in a way that would be very dangerous for a South African.
The very publication, in some English language newspapers,
of a photograph
of them together was a major challenge to the government’s
restrictions. 5
In his interpersonal contacts
with black South Africans, Senator Kennedy also conveyed an
attitude that was in sharp contrast to the way they were treated
by most white South Africans. At every opportunity- in airports,
in downtown areas and in the white suburbs, and certainly
during the visits to Groutville and Soweto- he sought out
average black South Africans to shake their hands and talk
to them. His actions and interest indicated
that they were people worth knowing and befriending and not
just faceless, replaceable natives or "kaffirs."
6
The visit was also very important
and heartening to anti-apartheid whites. As an editorial in
the liberal English newspaper, the
Rand Daily Mail said "Senator Robert Kennedy's visit
is the best thing that has happened to South Africa for years.
It is as if a window has been flung open and a gust of fresh
air has swept into a room in which the atmosphere had become
stale and foetid. Suddenly
it is possible to breath again without feeling choked."
7
The government and its supporters
were always telling white liberals, such as lone Progressive
Party M.P. Helen Suzman and Alan Paton, author of Cry the
Beloved Country, (who both met with Senator Kennedy) , that
they were a tiny minority that no one listened to. 8
The visit challenged the feelings of isolation and futility
of anti-apartheid white South Africans and renewed their belief
that they were in accord with the majority in the world, and
it was, in fact, the government and its supporters that were
an anachronistic minority. John
Daniel, the NUSAS Vice President, in his vote of thanks
to Senator Kennedy after his Cape Town speech, spoke for many
white opponents of Apartheid when he said:
" …Your talk has served as a reminder to us that
the free world associates with us and our stand for liberty
and non-discrimination. Your message shows clearly that the
world has forever turned its back on racial discrimination,
and that the South African Government's blind worship of race
theories is a pathetic and tragic defiance of the realities
of the Twentieth Century. You sir, have given us a hope for
the future, you have renewed our determination not to relax
until liberty is restored not only
to our universities, but to our land."
Or in the words of Alan Paton,
"...The Kennedy visit can only be described as a phenomenon.
It was exhilarating to hear again that totalitarianism cannot
be fought by totalitarianism, that independence of thought is
not a curse, that security and self preservation are not the
supreme goals of life, that to work for change is not a species
of treachery... It was to feel part of the world again." 9
What also made Robert
Kennedy's visit to South Africa particularly significant was
that although the South African Government refused to meet with
him (and provided no security), he
tried to not just berate Afrikaners as a bunch of incorrigible
racists, but to engage them in a dialogue. While in the Cape
he went to Stellenbosch,
one of the premier Afrikaans universities, where he had an interesting
interchange with students. He was invited to speak by the student's
of the Simonsberg Men's Residence. This invitation was strongly
criticized by the pro-government university administration but
the meeting was allowed to proceed. 10
To engage Afrikaners, he spoke
of his grandfather, Congressman Joseph Fitzgerald, who in 1901
submitted a Resolution to the US
House of Representatives to allow refugees from the Boer
War to be given asylum in the United States.
Indeed, his approach to talking
to Afrikaners, and South Africans in general, was the discourse
of America's own difficult history and struggle for racial justice.
He spoke of discrimination in Boston against his Irish-American
grandfather and father. Throughout the visit he spoke quite
openly of America's racist past and ongoing racial problems,
but in the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement - and the legislative
victories in Congress it had helped bring about by 1966- he
communicated the feeling that America in the 1960's was finally
really doing something about its racial problems and that South
Africa could, and should, do the same.
With hindsight, many of his comments
about what could happen in a post-Apartheid South Africa, and
the leadership role it could play in African political and economic
development, are quite foretelling in terms of the negotiated
revolution that occurred in South Africa between 1990 and 1994
and what has transpired during South Africa's first decade as
a constitutional democracy.
What is evident in Senator Kennedy's
speeches, the question and answer sessions he held at three
of the universities, and accounts of his informal discussions,
was the manner in which he subtly challenged
and undermined some of the pillars of apartheid ideology and
mythology.
First was the image of the 'primitive
and violent African' which the South African Government used
to try to reinforce the notion that blacks were not ready for
freedom and democracy. He reminded his audience that the greatest
savagery in the 20th century had been committed by whites like
Hitler and Stalin. In response to some of his questioner's efforts
to use biblical text to legitimize white supremacy- quite common
in pro-Apartheid Dutch Reform churches in South Africa -he asked
"Suppose God is Black ?" 11
He also challenged the government's
ongoing efforts to wrap itself in the cloak of anti-Communism
as an excuse to crush its opposition (no matter how liberal
or anti-Communist), and to fend off Western criticism. "Reform
is not Communism," he reminded them, and the means to fight
Communism were not repression and blacklisting but the promotion
of democracy and equal economic opportunity.
On a number of occasions Senator
Kennedy spoke of the common histories that bind South Africa
and the United States. These similar experiences were well captured
in the opening paragraph of his Cape Town speech:
"I came here because of my deep interest and affection
for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century,
then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a
land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued,
but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land
which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has
tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application
of modern technology; a land which once imported slaves, and
now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former
bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America."
(film clip)
He also reminded his South African
audiences that the United States and South Africa had been allies
in World War I, World War II and the Korean War. He knew, of
course, that the South African military that had fought in World
War II against Fascism was quite different to the South African
military now defending Apartheid, but by recalling these alliances,
he underlined the point that American
criticism of South Africa was not directed at the country and
its people but at its policies. Senator Kennedy made clear his
belief that as an "ally" with a special relationship to South
Africa, the United States -one of the world's leading democracies-
also had special responsibilities vis-à-vis South Africa.
On his return to the United States,
Senator Kennedy tried to shine more of a spotlight on South
Africa. He spoke about his visit in public forums and in the
Congress. In August 1966, soon after the visit, he published
an article on his visit in LOOK
Magazine. In it he was able to
say some of the things he might not have been able to say while
in South Africa. It was also the first publication in the United
States by a national politician- in a mainstream and widely
distributed magazine- on the realities of Apartheid South Africa.
Soon after his return, Senator
Kennedy wrote to the CEO's of 50 major American corporations
with operations in South Africa, seeking their ideas on how
they could use their influence to challenge Apartheid in the
workplace. This initiative had many of the elements of what
later became known as the "Sullivan
Principles." 12
It is also worth noting, as a
harbinger of contentious American policy debates in the 1980's
about what to do about South Africa, that Senator Kennedy never
called for economic sanctions against South Africa but in private
conversations he hinted that later circumstances might require
a different approach.
Senator Kennedy's visit to South
Africa, together with Dr. King's activities on South Africa,
were noted internationally and they had an influence on the
growing United Nations commitment
to confront Apartheid.
Like many other questions cut
short by Senator Kennedy's assassination in California on June
5th, 1968, we can only speculate on what US policy towards South
Africa might have been if he had been elected President in 1968.
But it is most likely that South Africa would have moved higher
up on the American agenda much sooner than it did.
The end of Apartheid and Nelson
Mandela's historic 1994 election victory, and the first ten
years of post-Apartheid South Africa, have made it possible
to reflect on America's contribution to these changes, both
positive and negative, in a way that was not possible before.
Robert Kennedy's visit to South Africa is a useful doorway to
these difficult but important times.
Within the context of the United
States' activities in Africa in the 1960's, historians will
probably judge Robert Kennedy's South African trip as one of
America's better moments in Africa.
Together with the activities
of various other American individuals and organizations working
to mobilize American opinion about the situation in South Africa
in the Sixties, Senator Kennedy's visit helped to plant seeds
-for what was to take another two and a half long decades to
bare fruit. This story is worth telling not just to record a
small but significant piece of a larger history, but because
the visit touches on important questions with which the United
States still grapples- how to promote human rights and democratic
change in the world while engaging in an honest discourse on
America's own historical problems and successes.
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