Generally, getting arrested is not something to celebrate, but that wasn’t the case Wednesday night at the South African Embassy.
Actor Danny Glover, singer and activist Harry Belafonte, former and current members of Congress, and South African Ambassador to the United States Welile Nhlapo toasted the 25th anniversary of the protests and arrests over apartheid.
In 1984, members of Congress intentionally began getting arrested at the doors of the Massachusetts Avenue embassy to draw attention to the plight of black South Africans. What followed was passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986 and eventually an end to apartheid.
“I think they did the right thing,” Glover told Yeas & Nays. “What they did was one of many steps that led to the eventual end of apartheid.”
The actor, a black man who most recently played the president in the end-of-the-world drama “2012,” also serves as chairman of the board of TransAfrica Forum, the organization that led the embassy protests.
Glover also noted that he, too, had been arrested for protesting, back in his home state of California.
“We were arrested, and it was something that we were proud of,” he said. “Being arrested is an act of civil disobedience, it’s a nonviolent act, it’s an act of consciousness,” Glover continued.
It’s a savvy media move too, according to former Washington, D.C., congressional Del. Walter Fauntroy, who holds the distinction of first member of Congress to ever be arrested for protesting. He was the first to sit behind bars for what went down at the embassy.
“The plan was to have me arrested on Thanksgiving Eve when ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN had nothing much to report but turkeys,” Fauntroy told Yeas & Nays. “It was a slow news day, and that night I walked out of here and got arrested, it went around the world because the media had nothing to report.” Soon other members of Congress followed, including Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who happily greeted Glover at the event.
And would they do it again? Absolutely.
“End the war, peace, jobs, health care, so many things,” Glover said, ticking off the issues he would sit behind bars for today.
“Yes, but there must be a movement in part with those who were not here 25 years ago,” Fauntroy concluded.
