S. Africa Lifts Ban on Marx, Lenin : Censors Also Considering Releasing Works by Mao, Stalin

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —  In the midst of a national state of emergency imposed to defeat what the government calls the “Communist onslaught,” South Africa’s top censors have lifted their ban on the works of Marx and Lenin and are considering releasing those of Mao and Stalin.

“Revolution won’t come to South Africa through the ‘Communist Manifesto’ of Karl Marx or 40-odd volumes of the ‘Collected Works’ of Vladimir Lenin,” Prof. Kobus van Rooyen, chairman of the Publications Appeals Board, said in explaining recent board decisions to lift the bans on these and other long-prohibited classics of socialism, revolution and radical politics.

“Keeping them banned perhaps even adds to what potential there may be here for revolution . . . both (by) giving them an undeserved reputation and stifling debate on the country’s future.”

Despite security laws and emergency regulations that treat much criticism of the government as subversive or seditious, Van Rooyen argues for broader freedom of political expression. And his board over the last five years has lifted the ban on a substantial number of books, periodicals and films that were previously prohibited on security grounds.

“I think there must be what Americans call ‘a clear and present danger’ to national security for us to ban something on political or ideological grounds,” he said in an interview. “A great deal of what comes before us criticizes and challenges the government but does not truly endanger security.”

Perhaps the most notable political document that the board has cleared for publication after banning it for many years was the Freedom Charter, an anti-apartheid manifesto adopted by a multiracial convention here in 1955 that the now-outlawed African National Congress adopted as its basic program.

“We unbanned the Freedom Charter on grounds that it could be used to further peaceful change,” Van Rooyen said, acknowledging the action as one of the board’s most controversial in the political field. “The Freedom Charter does not propagate violence, and it does encourage political discussion.”

Earlier this year, the board lifted the ban imposed by a lower-level government publications committee on the documentary film “Witness to Apartheid,” an Academy Awards nominee, and gave permission for it to be shown uncut to multiracial adult audiences at small arts cinemas here.

Indictment of Brutality

“Witness to Apartheid” constitutes a scathing indictment of police brutality and other government actions to quell black protests, and it records such anti-apartheid activists as Archbishop Desmond Tutu saying things that local newspapers might not be allowed to print under the emergency regulations. Yet the Publications Appeals Board authorized its restricted showing in the belief that “the government should not be protected against criticism” but made to answer it, Van Rooyen said.

“ ‘Witness to Apartheid’ is tricky because, to us as South Africans, it did seem biased,” he added. “But we felt that the audiences likely to view it would be able to make their own judgments on what they saw and heard. . . . There was concern that the film might be used to inflame passions, but it is clear that was not its intent.”

“Safety valves,” as Van Rooyen calls such critical works, are needed even during a state of emergency, he contended, if opposition to apartheid is not to grow into greater political violence rather than the peaceful resolution of the country’s future.

For these reasons, he said, the Publications Appeals Board has tried even during the civil unrest of the last three years to ensure as wide a latitude as possible to black writers, lifting the ban on literary works, theater productions and academic studies while upholding the prohibitions placed on many posters, pamphlets and periodicals that seem “intended or likely to provoke violence rather than debate.”

“The government should not be above criticism, that’s not the intention of the law,” said Van Rooyen, who is also the chairman of the University of Pretoria’s criminal law department. “We have allowed works that criticize detention without trial, the forced resettlement of blacks, the new constitution, the tricameral Parliament and government policies in general.

“To ban a work on security grounds, there must be a real threat, not just an ideological threat. For example, we have banned T-shirts calling for black retribution against whites, but approved T-shirts with the slogan ‘The people must govern.’ ”

But the government publications committee, the first level of censorship here, regularly bans a broad range of political materials. More than half of the estimated 40,000 books, pamphlets, plays, movies and various other things on the index of prohibited items are political.

Possession of outlawed materials can bring jail sentences of two and three years. Among those now awaiting trial on charges of possessing banned materials is Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, former leader of the opposition Progressive Federal Party, who is accused of having a copy of “No Easy Walk to Freedom,” a collection of writings by Nelson Mandela, the imprisoned leader of the African National Congress.

Differs From Rightists

Van Rooyen’s views appear to put him at odds not only with South Africa’s ultra-right political parties, which have objected strongly to the end of the ban on the Freedom Charter and other protest materials, but also with members of the ruling National Party. Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha recently not only defended the government’s restrictions on the press under the 11-month-long state of emergency but said it was ready to take even tougher measures if it thought them necessary.

But Van Rooyen, who was reappointed to a second term as chairman two years ago despite controversy over the board’s policies of liberalization, refused to be drawn into a public discussion of the merits of the current press restrictions. Those regulations, which prohibit the unauthorized reporting of political violence, a wide range of peaceful protests, security force actions and statements that the government deems to be subversive, are not enforced by Van Rooyen.

The Publications Appeals Board does hear appeals from lower-level publications committees that, under the country’s censorship laws, have banned or restricted works as obscene, harmful to public morals, blasphemous, “offensive to religious convictions” or damaging to relations among the country’s different racial and ethnic groups.

Dubbed the “supreme court of censorship” by writers, film makers, actors and artists, the 14-member board has tried since 1980, when Van Rooyen took over the chairmanship from a conservative judge, to broaden what may be seen and read in South Africa.

1,500 Items a Year Seen

About 1,500 films, theatrical performances, books, periodicals, posters, calendars, greeting cards and “objects,” ranging from T-shirts to coffee mugs to key rings, are examined each year by scores of three-member publications committees, which meet in secret and have the authority to ban them for distribution or even possession or put other restrictions on them.

Eighty percent of the items reviewed are submitted by police or customs officials, and 50% of the material is political. The appeals board hears about 200 cases, some coming straight from a publications committee and others involving bans that go back years.

“A bit of breast, a bit of bum or a couple of cuss words used to be enough to ban a book or cut a film,” Van Rooyen said. “I think even the most liberal opponent of censorship will grant that this sort of censorship has been greatly reduced. We have also tried to end the sort of silliness that led to the ban, briefly, of James Michener’s novel ‘The Covenant’ on grounds that it held Afrikaners up to ridicule. . . .

“We don’t have a mandate to allow real pornography, and probably never will in this society, but we don’t want to ban something of merit, aimed at an adult audience, for which there would be tolerance, if not general acceptance.”

Steinbeck, Updike Cleared

Among the writers whose works have been freed from bans are John Steinbeck, D. H. Lawrence, John Updike, Henry Miller, Iris Murdoch, Bernard Malamud, J. P. Donleavy and Philip Roth. The works of several of South Africa’s most respected writers, among them Nadine Gordimer, Andre Brink, J. M. Coetzee and Breyten Breytenbach, have also been cleared of bans.

Films such as “A Clockwork Orange,” “Pretty Baby,” “Satyricon,” “1900” and “The Canterbury Tales,” which were banned in the 1970s as indecent, obscene or simply “harmful to public morals,” are now being screened, usually with age restrictions and sometimes a few cuts, under relaxed censorship. The long-banned television miniseries “Roots” was cleared recently for showing on home videos.

The gradual liberalization has enabled the South African theater to become an even more important forum for political protest; at least half the dramas playing at any time in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban are attacks on apartheid or other government policies.

But books are still banned in South Africa, and films, plays and even cabarets are still restricted or even prohibited.

A lower-level government publications committee last year banned a political cabaret, “Famous Dead Man,” on grounds that it was indecent, blasphemous and racist in ridiculing the Dutch-descended Afrikaners who dominate the government and National Party. Van Rooyen’s board upheld the ban, but simply on the basis that most of the songs were obscene.

Detention Report Banned

Distribution of an American law committee’s report on the detention and torture of children and their general brutalization by police and troops under the state of emergency was banned last year, and the board upheld the decision.

And Sharon Sopher, American co-producer of “Witness to Apartheid,” was so incensed at the restrictions placed on showing the documentary--an age limit of 18 and audiences of no more than 200 at approved theaters--that she declared in Los Angeles that she would never allow the film to be shown in South Africa.

Concerned about what they see as increased government censorship under the state of emergency, South African writers, journalists, film makers, theatrical producers and publishers last year formed a committee to fight censorship with novelist Gordimer as chairman.

Van Rooyen said the committee’s basic quarrel is with the legislation establishing censorship, rather than with his board. Free speech is protected only by common law in South Africa, not guaranteed by the constitution, he noted.

“But I think I can claim, without boasting too much, that I am one of the leading advocates of freedom of expression in South Africa,” he added, “and that, for the person regarded as the chief censor, is no small thing.”