Teach-In on Southern Africa Portrays Life Under Apartheid

The Southern Africa Solidarity Committee and the Black Students Association last night sponsored a South Africa Teach-In featuring one of the first documentaries made by Black South Africans.

The film, "The End of the Dialogue," was smuggled out of South Africa for showing in the West, Ann Spader, a spokesman for the International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa--which owns the film--said yesterday. The documentary won an Emmy award in 1971 for its vivid portrayal of the oppressed conditions of Black, Coloured and Indian South Africans, sharply contrasted against the affluence of white Afrikaaners.

Themba Vilakazi, a member of The African National Congress--a liberation group banned in South Africa--Joshua Gwitira, chairman of the New England branch of the Zimbabwe National Union (The Patriotic Front); and Clive Smith, a white South African who is a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also spoke at the Teach-in.

Vilakazi said South African opposition groups protest "not only South Africa but the economic links it has to the West." He added that Harvard's failure "to divest from Third World exploitative systems must be an admission that this University and society cannot do so without threatening the existence of the economy and society it supports."

Addressing the recent elections in Zimbabwe, Gwitira said people are rejoicing after succeeding in the first step of the struggle for independence. He said The Patriotic Front would play a "continued part in the liberation movements of oppressed peoples around the world."

Smith spoke briefly on the pros and cons of divestiture, refusing to completely commit himself to either position.