Opportunity for Stephen

When Father Trevor Huddleston, head of St. Peter's Anglican Mission in Johannesburg, first heard the news, he knew that for one of his students it meant the opportunity of a lifetime. As a result of a visit that Author Alan (Cry, the Beloved Country) Paton had made while in the U.S., Kent School in Connecticut was offering for the first time a scholarship to a South African boy, and Father Huddleston found just the lad to take it. Last April he began to make the arrangements to send a 16-year-old Negro named Stephen Ramasodi off on his great adventure.

The son of a school principal, Stephen was qualified in every way. He is not only the brightest boy in his class; he is also a whiz in science and hopes some day to be a doctor. But all this apparently meant little to the South African government. The police first refused to give Stephen the usual "certificate of character" that most travelers carry. Then, in addition to the usual questioning that all Negro passport applicants must undergo, detectives subjected Stephen to an additional grilling on every topic, from why he wanted to go to the U.S. to what he thought was wrong with education at home. In spite of such obstacles, Father Huddleston and Stephen went ahead with their passport application. They posted the necessary -L-100 bond, then sat back and waited.

By mid-May, the passport had still not come. But every time Huddleston wrote or phoned the Ministry of the Interior, he merely got the stock answer that the matter was under consideration. Huddleston wired to a member of Parliament, and was promised an "investigation." He appealed to the Anglican Bishop of Pretoria, eventually got back from the Ministry the answer: "The matter is receiving attention." Finally he sent off one more telegram, and this time he received a letter from the Native Affairs Minister's private secretary accusing him of "crude methods." By last week it seemed obvious that the South African government wanted Stephen to stay at home. As the Minister's secretary had explained to Father Huddleston: "When such crude methods [as yours] are adopted, suspicion is raised that one may be dealing with agitators, and that most careful scrutiny of the application may be more than justified."

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