OTTAWA REPORT

Page 2

I didn't think I'd ever find myself taking Brian Mulroney's side in an argument with Native leaders but I am now. The South African ambassador to Canada recently criticized Mulroney for neglecting Canadian Native people. Glen Babb also said the life of Blacks in South Africa was no worse than the life of Native people in Canada.

Several Native leaders jumped on the publicity bandwagon and quickly agreed with the ambassador. In fact, one Native leader (Manitoba chief Louis Stevenson) went as far as to call on the ambassador, congratulate him and say "Right on!" He and other Native leaders said the situation between Canadian Natives and South African Blacks was "comparable" or "similar."

The comment infuriated Brian Mulroney. There was no comparison, he said. The Native remarks, he said, were false and misleading.

I agree. I'm on Mulroney's side, for a change, because the people who made the comparisons were wrong - on three separate counts. First, they don't know what they're talking about. Second, their comments have damaged Native credibility in Canada. Third, the comments are hurting Blacks in South Africa.

Let me explain. First, the situations in Canada and South Africa are not "comparable" or "similar" because there is absolutely no comparison. Imagine, for example, what your life would be like if Native people here had to live as the Blacks in South Africa do.

For starters, you'd probably be moved - by force - from where you're living now. You'd be forced to live -and stay in a barren jobless ghetto. If you were lucky enough to get a job in some faraway spot, you wouldn't be allowed to take your family with you. If you were a schoolteacher, you'd get one-tenth of the salary a white teacher receives.

If you got a job with a company in the city, you wouldn't be allowed to live there. Instead, you'd have to live 40 miles outside of town in a slum. You'd have to obey the curfew and leave the city by nine p.m. You'd have to carry identification papers with you at all times. If you got caught without them, you'd be arrested, jailed and fined. You'd be forbidden to stay in most of the hotels, forbidden to eat at most of the restaurants, and forbidden to swim at most of the beaches.

If you didn't like living like that, you wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Native political organizations would be outlaws and you wouldn't be allowed to vote. If you took part in a demonstration, you'd be arrested. Once you were in jail, there's a good chance you'd be tortured, maybe even killed.

That's just a small sample of what apartheid is like. Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not saying that Native life in Canada is a picnic. It's not, because Canada still has a long way to go before it fulfills its many moral and legal obligations to Native people. But it is obscene for anyone to say that our situation is "comparable" or "similar" to apartheid.

Canadian Native leaders were wrong, factually, when they compared Canada and South Africa. But I think they were wrong to do so for another, more practical reason - their comments have hurt the Native cause at a critical point in history.

The First Ministers' Conference is less than two months away. It could be the last chance to nail down a constitutional deal on self-government. The "comparisons" have inflated and degraded the language of Native politics. What's worse, they've damaged Native credibility at a time when Native leaders need all the credibility they can muster. They might even trigger a backlash.

There's one last reason why I think it was wrong to make the comparisons. They have hindered the fight against apartheid and hurt the cause of Black South Africans. Although I've been hard on Native leaders, I don't intend to let Glen Babb off the hook. Unlike the Native comments, his were no accident. He made them to shift Canadian energy and attention away from the fight against apartheid. Babb has absolutely no interest in improving Native life in Canada. He jus exploited the problems of Native people here to help his racist government keep a stranglehold on the Blacks in his country.

This whole mess has made me uneasy because I think I understand the reasons and the frustrations that led Native leaders to make the comparisons in the first place. But if Native leaders want to help end apartheid and if they want to achieve their constitutional goals, they must be extremely careful about what they say because the stakes - in Canada and in South Africa - are just too high to do otherwise.