1 - Student Radicals

Summary

They are, according to the evidence which your Commission has before it, and this includes the oral evidence of some of the leaders themselves, opposed to the entire existing order in South Africa, including, to mention only a few aspects, the capitalist system, existing moral norms and any form of relationship of authority, inter alia that between parent and child, teacher and pupil, and university authorities and students. They reject liberalism as a political approach. The issue here therefore involves far more than opposition to the policy of a ruling party, even the artificial division of the whole population into black and white polarities and the fanning of a confrontation between these two polarities.

— Alwyn Schlebusch, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Certain Organisations

Leadership clique

Jenny Curtis first became a target of state scrutiny in 1972, when the Schlebusch Commission determined that Curtis was one of the ‘leadership clique’ of Nusas.

The three interim reports of the commission's findings (which all pertain to Nusas) were produced rapidly – nearly a year before the final product was published – and the commission explicitly stated that this was necessary because, even during their investigation, events were unfolding that required an immediate response from the state. The commission was under the impression that the political climate was escalating at a frightening pace, which might soon spill over into some form of violent action against the state. The perceived threat of violence here was both literal and vague, paranoid and deeply rational. Given the fact that anti-apartheid organisations (including some members of Nusas) had already turned towards armed struggle over a decade prior, this fear was far from groundless. However, there seems to be no foundation to the idea that Nusas was at the time – neither in terms of individual leaders nor on a broad organisational level – participating in any form of clandestine or armed struggle. For example,

This Newsletter report on the seminar [April 1970] put it explicitly in words that were underlined, that NUSAS could have nothing to do and should have nothing to do with violent change. Why this was necessary, the Commission does not know. Possibly the fact that it was a public document, reflecting the public image of NUSAS in contrast to its secret image, had something to do with it.