South African exile describes apartheid

PRESQUE ISLE — Apartheid is “violence,” declared Professor Aggrey Mbere of Roxbury College in Massachusetts, during a visit to the University of Maine at Presque Isle to speak about the political situation in South Africa and his hopes for the future.

Mbere is a South African who has been in exile in the United States for 28 years. Like most of the about 50,000 South Africans who have been forced to leave their homeland, Mbere is a member of the African National Congress.

The ANC was founded in 1912 as the first political party in Africa for Africans. The original intentions were that it would be strictly non-violent. This policy changed when, in 1961, peaceful protest marchers were mowed down indiscriminately by police. The subsequent rioting and its aftereffects have affected South African politics ever since.

Mbere was on campus as the featured speaker for “End Apartheid Week,” a weeklong series of movies and activities sponsored by the student organizations, World Affairs Club and New Forum, and the Social Science Division. He gave the final talk of the semester in the Global Perspectives Series, titled “Apartheid and Beyond in South Africa.” He also lectured in a class.

Mbere’s parents died prematurely as the result of health problems derived from their occupations. His father was a miner and his mother a washerwoman; neither were covered under any health insurance and there are no pensions for blacks. At the time of Mbere’s mother’s death, she was living on black land. Since that time, the government has declared that area to be for whites, and has relocated all of the blacks living there.

“That means,” Mbere said, “that if I were to go back to South Africa and wish to pay my respects to my mother’s grave, I would have to get permission from the white government. That is apartheid.”

Mbere received his master’s degree in history from Cornell University and doctorate in political economy from Harvard. He has been in exile since 1961 and is awaiting amnesty. The recent release of Nelson Mandela has excited the exiled South African population greatly, Mbere said.

Like Mandela, Mbere said he believes that education is the only way Africans can gain control of their lives. Mbere has said that he would like to return to South Africa to work in education. South Africa now has four unequal educational systems: separate schools for whites, Indians, “colored” and blacks. The system for blacks is the most underfunded, neglected and sorely lacking of the four, according to the speaker.

For whites in South Africa, education is free and compulsory. In contrast, 90 percent of blacks never finish high school. Such statistics help to illustrate some of the reasons for the current turmoil in South Africa, Mbere said.