New Recruit

SOUTH AFRICA New Recruit A curly-haired British South African, awkward on his crutches after an automobile accident that shattered his right leg, hopped out of a green car one day last week at the entrance to Germiston Negro location, a sprawl of tin huts 15 miles east of Johannesburg. He was the first white recruit--and quite a catch--for the Passive Resistance campaign, organized by blacks, half-whites and browns against Prime Minister Daniel Malan's racial segregation laws.

Oxford-educated Patrick Duncan, 34, is the son of the first South African to be appointed Governor General, the late Sir Patrick Duncan. He hobbled into the location's filth-laden alleys supported by Manilal Gandhi, 60-year-old son of the patron saint of all passive resisters: Mahatma Gandhi. Both men wore the yellow, green and black rosette of the African National Congress (A.N.C.), which preaches racial justice but deplores the violent solutions of its Communist outriders.

Standing bareheaded in the location's garbage-littered center, Duncan addressed a crowd in their own Sesutu dialect. "Today," he said, "South Africans of all races have come among you with peace and love. I ask you on the long road that lies ahead not to make trouble, but to do what you have to do with love." Then he gave the thumbs-up salute of the Congress and shouted "Africa."

Both Duncan and Gandhi were arrested--exactly as they had planned--when they rejoined Duncan's wife Cynthia, waiting in their automobile. Next day, along with 36 other defendants (6 whites, 18 Indians, 12 Africans), they were charged with "inciting Negroes to resist, break or obstruct" apartheid laws. Most white South Africans seemed to disapprove of Duncan's action. Reproving him for "deluding the Negroes," the liberal Johannesburg Star coldly observed that passive resistance, by frightening the whites, "strengthens the hand of reaction and repression."

Duncan, a devout Anglican, thinks the issue is one where conscience combines with patriotism. Out on bail, he explained his mission to newsmen: "If the [racial clash] becomes a straight fight of black against white, South Africa is doomed."

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