Neville Alexander, placed on trial in South Africa on charges of."sabotage" [reported in World Outlook October 4 and October 18] has aroused considerable - indignation in Germany and Belgium where this Negro scholar is well known, A circular, distributed by his Belgian friends, provides the following information about his background:
Dr. Neville Alexander won two doctorates with very honorable mention in German philology, the first at Cape University, the second at Ttibingen in Western Germany for a thesis on the German playwright Gerhardt Hauptmann, He was the first colored South African student to ever receive a scholarship from’the well-known Aléxarider Vori Humboldt-Stiftung Foundation and the first colored South African scholar to win a doctorts degree in Germany in German philology. . ‘During his stay in Western Germany he won the sympathy and affection of a wide circle of professors and students both for his exceptional intel= lectual capacities, his attractive friendliness and his sympathy for humanitarian and progressive causes, above all those connected with the freedom movement of the colored peoples.
In South Africa, before leaving for Germany, Dr. Alexander was_one of the outstanding young militants in the Non-European Unity Movement [NEUM], one of the most representative movements of the indigenous South African population which was led by the writer Tabat and which sought universal suffrage and the pourehcats economic and social emancipation of the South African people. Pe Bas
The NEUM was banned by the Verwoerd government under the law passed to "suppress Communism, " but it was- reconstituted under the name of the African People's Democratic Union of. South Africa [AFDUSA]. Its Leading figure Tabat recently sought refuge in Tanganyika and was met with a warm official greeting by the government of that country at Dar-es~Salem, i The sympathy which Dr. Neville Alexander won in German university circles is now evident in the big movement egainst his arrest, Among the _ participating organizations:
-- The Verband Deutscher Studenten, the confederation of all student organizations in Germany. oa. c= The ASTA [self-governing student bodies] of the universities of Hamburg, West Berlin, Frankfort and Ttibingen.
-~ Some thirty professors of the University of Ttibingen.
-- Students of the Theology Faculty of the University of Gdttingen.
~- The Alexander Von Humboldt-Stiftung Foundation,
In addition, the big German trade union of metal workers, IG-Metall, has publicly protested the arrest of Dr. Alexander. a
.iIn Great Britain the arrest of Dr, Neville Alexander has likewise aroused protest among liberal, labor and antisegregationist circles.