wpu.nu

Sida:Pol-1996-10-18 HBJ17837-00 alla-förhör-Craig-Williamson.pdf/3

Från wpu.nu

Den här sidan har inte korrekturlästs


I was already on the students' representative council and in 1973 or ... yeah 1974 I was elected as a full-time office bearer on the national executive of NUSAS.

That meant I had to leave university and go to Capetown and work full-time, because that's how it was done at that time.

So in 1974 and in 1975 I was working full-time with NUSAS: 1975 congress I was elected vice-president of NUSAS. That is the first time, in 1975, that I went overseas officially as part of student delegations, met with the International University Exchange Fund, Lars-Gunnar Eriksson and the whole connection began.

So I continued with my job in NUSAS and during 1976, as you know, there were some uprisings in South Africa. Times were very politically bad and as a result of many things, also a lot of white students on the campuses started feeling that NUSAS was too radical.

NUSAS was supporting the black liberation struggle, was supporting ... calling for Nelson Mandela's release and anyway, during 1976 the executive of NUSAS was in fact dismissed.

There were some more conservative students ... I would say liberal, but in that context conservative, because what we were, what some of us were pretending to be was very left-wing.

So towards the... at the end of 1976 basically I was out of NUSAS, but I'd made very good connections with the ANC abroad and I'd also made good connections with other international organisations


I left South Africa right at the end of 1976 and in the first weeks of 1977 I was in Gaborone. I applied for refugee status,

I got my United Nations travel documents, I went via Lusaka where I just checked in with the ANC, I spoke with and I went to Geneva and I saw

organised me a job with IUEF, which was the information officer: to publicise information against apartheid.

At that time these funds would be coming from monies donated to IUEF for anti-apartheid work in South Africa, and the idea was that I would coordinate in some way the programmes being supported by IUEF in southern Africa.

Before that I had to organise work permits and all that, so I did.

And early in 1977 I was working full time for IUEF in Geneva. In 1977 I took a reasonably low profile with anti-apartheid movements because of the sensitivity of the fact that I was white South African, and some, especially the black consciousness groups, weren't too happy with a white South African coming in to IUEF, and also from the ANC there was some concern about who I was.

3


Personer omnämnda:

HBG16609 (PM Sydafrika , Källa A, handlingar i SPC i plåtskåp)