DENNIS HIGGS
[The following statement was issued in Lusaka, Zambia, by the All-African Convention and the Unity Movement of South Africa, It concerns the sensational kidnapping in that city of Dennis Hig G8, a former lecturer in mathematics at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg for six years, who left South Africa last March as an opponent of the government's racist laws. In Zambia he married a South African Colored, a marriage forbidden in South Africa. When the kidnappers burst into the home, Mrs, T8688 locked herself in the bedroom, Ct,
[This was the second kidnapping within two weeks in pritishadministered territory, In the middle of August, Rosemary Wentzel, a South African who had settled in Swaziland, was abducted near her home. It was later reported that she had been "detained" under South Africats fascist-type 90-day~detention law,
[Under heavy pressure from the British Foreign Office, the South African government agreed to return Dennis Higgs, ]
On the morning of August 29, 1964, all Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) and the rest of the civilized world were stunned by the shocking news that Mr, Dennis Higgs had vanished from his house the previous night, having been abducted by unknown persons, The facts of this outrageous incident are now a matter of common knowledge, but there are still some loose ends that have to be tied together,
a do not propose to deal with: the more obvious questions:
(a) How and when did the kidnappers enter Zambia in the first instance? o
(b) How did they know exactly where their victim lived?
(0) How did they.manage to cross the border at least two hours after the first alarm had been raised?
(d) How did the kidnappers manage to go through all the check-points (presumably four of them) at the borders of Northern Rhodesia-Southern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia-South Africa, with their human loot in the car? It is not our task to deal with these matters, as they fall more appropriately within the ambit of police investigations,
What we are concerned with are:
_ (a) The behaviour of the Government of South Africa in this instance, tie ee es,
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(ob) The attitude of the South African Government towards its neighbouring African States.
({c) The relations between the South African Government and the gangsters trafficking in human flesh and operating within the South African soil and abroad,
(a4) The public morality of the South African Government,
The striking feature of this villainous affair has been the attitude of the South African Government, which seemed more concerned with protecting its police force rather than the fate of a man who is known to have been brutalized by his kidnappers and the violation of the integrity of a neighbouring State. The South African Minister of Justice, Mr. J,B.Vorster, announced that Mr, Higgs was in the hands of his police, While pleading ignorance of the abduction and dissociating his Government and his police from it, he nevertheless announced that: "Mr, Higgs would be detained. .. "ard the British Government would be informed of the charges against him," and that extradition proceedings would be started against him, Thus Vorster behaves like a man who says: "I did not stéal the sheep, but I will have the meat all the same," oO
We are informed that Mr, Higgs had been wanted by the South African police: who. conveniently found him bound and gagged in a combi [station wagon], Mr. Higgs himself tells us. that when the Special Branch man opened the door of the combi, he said: "Welcome back to South Africa." He was:obviously not astounded to find a man whom the police knew to be in Northern Rhodesia delivered to them in this fashion. Clearly, these gangsters knew that Mr. Higgs was wanted by the police, The Minister of Justice revealed that an’ application for an extradition order was pending. The question is, how did these thugs know unless they are themselves members of the south African police force or are working in close collaboration with t?
As if to assure the gangsters that they have the protection of the South African Government, the Prime Minister himself announced that: "The onus of investigation of the alleged abduction rested with the Government of Northern Rhodesia or the British authorities, but not with South Africa,"
Emboldened by the knowledge of this protection and in a clumsy attempt to cover up their own tracks, the gangsters now indulge in a game of mysterious telephone calls to the press, The one rushes to the call-box in Southern Rhodesia and proclaims to the Star of Johannesburg:: "What we did to Higgs, Mrs, Rosemary Wentzel, we will do to all traitors who escape across the borders of South Africa. We will do it so that nobody will in future be able to prove that they were kidnapped," Another, who styles himself "leader" of this gang, using a call-box in South Africa, conducts a lengthy interview with the Rand Daily Mail (Johannesburg), Inter alia he says: "In future
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we won't hand these people to the police: we'll bump them off," Adding that his main purpose in phoning the press was to remove the impression that his gang was associated with the police, he said: "We have no association with the police, We are not from the Republic." He went on to explain that his gang was established in the three British Protectorates and consisted of a force dedicated to "fair play and punishment of saboteurs and others. . . who cannot be touched by the law."
These last words have a familiar ring, for as early as June 1963 we learned that a secret (underground) branch of the Security Police was about to be formed, Its function would be to liquidate all those opponents of the Government who could not be convicted by the law courts, There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this information for every bit of it has been proved to date, This was the story and circumstance: one of the loquacious young recruits was put onto an official of our organization, In order to gain the oconfidence of the official, he pretended to be interested in.the organization and gratuitously offered information that could be verified, He said that a top-ranking officer in the Security Branch, notorious for his brutality in dealing with African politicians, would soon retire from the force, His retirement would be published in the newspapers, but this was only a cover. What was in fact going to happen was that the man would be seconded to a secret force, with the formation of which he was entrusted, It would be the duty of this force to hound, intimidate and, if necessary, liquidate, "all those opponents of the Government who could not be convicted by the courts of law." True enough, in time the press:did announce the retirement of the high-ranking official, and now we are witnessing the process of "hounding, intimidating" and the threat of "liquidatinge
Bush Morality
We have already referred to Dr. Verwoerd's equivocation on | this matter, but what we find even more striking is the moral code propounded by a Prime Minister of a State. Dr. Verwoerd is not concerned with apprehending the culprits who perpetrate so heinous a crime against a human being: in fact he says it is not his business to do so, though he mows that the criminals are or were on the soil of South Africa at the time he made his statement, His main concern is to pat himself on the back for his high standard of morality, "Tere had been nothing," he said, "to compel South Africa to return Dennis Higgs to Northern Rhodesia, except our own moral sense and the Republic's respect for international usages." Continuing in this self-righteous way, he said: "We shall now see, irrespective of whether or not there is an extradition agreement, whether decency in international relationships is expected only from South Africa and not also from the other. countries concerned." .
But his vaunted sense of decency is not outraged by the brutal abduction of Mr, Higgs. It does not go against his moral grain when.
a human being is treated like a wild beast. He is not revolted by the very idea that a citizen of another country has been subjected to humiliation and degrading treatment by gangsters in his own country.
A closer examination of the facts reveals the reasons for this strange species of morality. The Government of South Africa is caught on the horns of a dilemma, In its desperate attempts to silence criticism and to crush all opposition, it has abrogated the rule of law and instituted a police state, But now the police force, drunk-with power, is running amuck, to the extent of even transgress-~ ing international or territorial boundaries. But the world holds the Government of South Africa responsible for these outrageous acts of its police force, There are unfortunately still international codes of behaviour, It-is this dilemma that compels Verwoerd to mount his peculiar breed of moral horse,
Dawie, an authoritative columist of a Verwoerdian party paper (Cape), expresses without equivocation the views of his party, the ruling party in South Africa, Let us quote him: ". ... there are countries in Africa where would-be saboteurs and guerilla fighters receive training, and, officially and o enly we cannot get at them, If underground action is taken against them. . . then I refuse to be over~meticulous, Naturally counter-terrorist adventures can cause embarrassment for South Africa. .. . When this happens, we . must express the necessary disapproval and make the necessary restitution, We must act correctly at all times. I do not think that South Africats interests are served by encouraging the terrorist intriguers outside the country to believe that they can continue peacefully and undisturbed with their dirty work. I am not going to hinder unnecessarily anyone who wants to keep an eye on them and |... frighten them. Only if it is going to cause international diffiocul-~ ties for South Africa which will outweigh the advantages of his actions, will I have to say to him, 'Steady, old chap.'" (Our ow emphasis, )
Now this is the clearest exposition of the public moralty of the South African Government -- a bush morality.
The question still remains, why did they return Mr, Higgs? The truth of the matter is that Mr, Higgs. is not a South African citizen and therefore could not be legally throttled or incaroerated and allowed to perish in their dungeons in terms of one or another of South Africa's inhuman laws, He is not a citizen of a weak Black State either, He is a citizen of a powerful State -- Britain -- which virtually controls South Africa itself, They therefore had no choice in the matter but to moralize and send him back.
Let there be no mistake about it. The Higgs incident, Like the others before it, is not an exception nor an isolated episode, It flows from the fundamental position of a Government that considers that a Black man is sub-human, Thus it follows that any —
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State with an African Government is less than a State and therefore cannot be accorded the respect and dignity on a-par with other states, In its own country the South African Government has devised a system for the legalized violation of the dignity and personal integrity of every Black man, woman or child, a system which has engendered an attitude of mind in the white population that regards the Black man as little more than an animal whose only function is to minister to the needs of the Master Race and who can be disposed of at will, It is this attitude of mind that enables the South African Government to release a reign of terror on the whole Black population without a serious protest from the White Master Race. It is the same attitude that makes. it possible for the Government. to imprison without trial, to sentence for life and to hang so many African people for no other reason than that they dared to ask for ordinary human rights in the country of their birth,
So long as South Africa is a White Police State, so long will it continue to violate the integrity of the African States, This is not merely a matter for those States bordering on South Africa, but is the concern of Africa as a whole, It is the concern, therefore, of the Organization of African Unity to which South African Herren~ volkism has become a real threat as the Congo incident has shown,
“WALL STREET JOURNAL"