Interview With Anti-Apartheid Activist Albertina Sisulu (1989)

job, ready in case the police arrest her. Her trip here marks the first time the government has allowed her to leave the country. Mrs. Sisulu met today with President Bush at the White House, a session she called a milestone in the fight against apartheid. She urged the President to impose stronger economic sanctions against South Africa. Mrs. Sisulu, welcome. What was the message that you brought to President Bush today? Well, actually, to be here, I was invited by President Bush to begin with, and apart from that, I had a message to give him. I told him about the problems we are having in South Africa, problems that are of concern to us, especially the parents, because now what is worse is that the government has declared war on children in South Africa.

Children are being detained at an age of nine years, and when they are released, they are not allowed to go back to school. And these children are supposed to go and report to the police station twice a day, and they must be at home at about 2 p.m. Which means now, from 2 p.m. to 6 a.m. the following day, this children are house arrested. And these children are restricted. That is part of their restriction, that they must be reporting to police stations and be a house arrested. Now, that causes, you know, a problem to us, because these children are harassed by the police, and they are afraid of the police. They run away from their homes. And when they are arrested, they are being charged, put back to jail again. So we have got a lot of displaced children, and in the process, the children are dying

of poverty. They are hungry, because there is nobody who is looking after the children, when they are displaced. Apart from that, the state of emergency, which has made, you know, thousands of our people to be detained, means, you know, an increased, you know, problem on the children. The two parents will be detained, leaving the small children alone. Who is going to look after these children? And they suffer, and they are displaced. In fact, in South Africa, there isn't an intact family, men are torn off from their families, by taking men and lock them in hostels, far away from their homes, and they will be away from their homes for a period of about six to five years, a person is working, you know, cannot even take

a holiday, because that money for holiday must be sent home to the children. It is causing such-- And you told President Bush this, what you just said, right? Yes, oh yes. What did he say? Did you see, did it seem to you as if he was hearing this kind of thing for the first time? Was he aware of this? He wasn't aware, according to him. He wasn't aware of this. He knows that there is apartheid in South Africa, but he didn't know the extent apartheid here has gone. What did you ask him? Did you ask him to do something? Is there something you want him to do? Yes, there are so many things we wanted him to do, because apart from the children being detained and tortured whilst they are detained, they come out being mentally confused, and nobody is really to look after these children.

And again, the people are restricted in our country. And all we are asking from this government -- because we feel that all what is happening in our country is because of the apartheid laws, which we think are the source of evil -- we want the scrapping of apartheid in our country, the unbanning of our organizations, the release of our leaders who are in jail, especially the political leaders. You will know that Nelson Mandela has been in jail for the last 26 years, and many others, and my husband, and many others. We want the government to release those people, and we want the government to unban ANC, which has got the majority support of the people in our country. That's the African National Congress.

African National Congress That was the people's organization. That was the only mouthpiece of the people. Do you believe that the United States, through the President and the Congress of the United