Michael Scott: A man of conscience (1907 to 1983) - by Catherine Sasman
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WINDHOEK – Guthrie Michael Scott was a prominent and active campaigner for human rights in Southern and Central Africa, administered by the South African and British authorities.
Guthrie Michael Scott was born in Sussex, England, on July 30, 1907. He was the son and grandson of Anglican clergymen, raised in a poor parish near the Southampton docks.
He was first educated at the King’s College in Taunton. When he contracted tuberculosis, he was sent to Switzerland and then to Grahamstown, South Africa, where it was hoped that he would recover from his affliction.
In Grahamstown, he studied at the St. Paul’s Theological College and thereafter went back to England to further his studies at the Chichester Theological College.
Scott was ordained as a deacon in 1930, and as priest in 1932, and served as curate in a parish in Sussex.
Sent to South Kensington in London, Scott participated in marches protesting hunger and poverty.
This was the time of the Great Depression, and when he was sent to South Kensington in London, he partook in poverty and hunger marches in 1934.
There, it is recorded, he also experienced fascism, to which he responded with an attraction to communism.
Scott moved to India in 1934 to serve as chaplain first to the Bishop of Bombay (1935 to 1937), and then at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Calcutta from 1937 to 1938.
While in India, Scott learnt to fly and acted as courier for the communists, but he became disillusioned with the communists with the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1938.
A new political influence was Gandhi’s pacifism and doctrine of non-violence.
When he returned to London, Scott joined the Royal Air Force at the outbreak of World War II in 1940. Despite his pacifism and studies in philosophy of non-violence, Scott trained as a rear-gunner. He was, however, dismissed the following year due to ill health.
He had Crohn’s disease, an intestinal illness that would last his lifetime, and was advised to return to South Africa on medical grounds. Here, he became the assistant priest at St. Alban’s Coloured Mission outside Johannesburg.
In 1946, he took part in a passive resistance campaign by Indian protesters in Tobruk in the Durban area against the Asian Land Tenure and the Indian Representation Act.
He was arrested for his participation and sentenced to three months imprisonment. This experience bestowed on him the infamous reputation of becoming the first white man in South Africa to be jailed for opposing the apartheid regime.
In the former Transvaal (now Gauteng), Scott was threatened with lynching by angry white farmers when he exposed near-slave labour conditions on farms there.
When he was released from prison, his parish licence was withdrawn. Scott came to the former South West Africa (SWA) where he met Khama the Great at the request of Tshekedi Khama, and was asked to draw up and publicise a petition against the incorporation of SWA into South Africa.
With funds contributed by the Herero people, Scott travelled to London where he began a close association with the Society of Friends (or the Quakers), and established his headquarters at the Quaker International Centre in Tavistock Square. There, he founded an organisation called the African Bureau.
Scott then travelled to New York to petition the United Nations (UN) on behalf of the Herero people. He was backed by an Indian delegation and the New York-based International League for Human Rights of Man.
Scott would return to the UN on a yearly basis to exert pressure for Namibia’s independence for the next 36 years, a celebrated effort thought to have thwarted South Africa’s drive to incorporate Namibia into its folds.
Equally, Scott appeared three times before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, The Netherlands, on behalf of SWA, albeit unsuccessfully.
Scott was banned from South Africa after being declared a prohibited immigrant by the government there, and in 1948, he was also banned from coming to Namibia. Notwithstanding, Scott’s unrelenting petitioning of the UN and subsequent campaigning in the West were considered a crusade to save the downtrodden in not only Namibia and South Africa, but also the independence of the Nagas from India, the Eritreans, and the anti-nuclear campaigning.
After suffering from cancer, Scott died in London on September 14, 1983, without seeing the fruits of his labour.
And it was a protracted and arduous battle, of which he had written: “It has been such a long grind – uphill all the way without any chance to rest and survey the direction of one’s coming and going. But what we have been trying to do had to be done and few people know what it has all cost us – but once you start counting the cost and one is forced back into a little puny world of one’s own egocentricity and that way lies some form of madness for one can’t combine two sets of values, two ways of life in one existence.”
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Guthrie Michael Scott was born in Sussex, England, on July 30, 1907. He was the son and grandson of Anglican clergymen, raised in a poor parish near the Southampton docks.
He was first educated at the King’s College in Taunton. When he contracted tuberculosis, he was sent to Switzerland and then to Grahamstown, South Africa, where it was hoped that he would recover from his affliction.
In Grahamstown, he studied at the St. Paul’s Theological College and thereafter went back to England to further his studies at the Chichester Theological College.
Scott was ordained as a deacon in 1930, and as priest in 1932, and served as curate in a parish in Sussex.
Sent to South Kensington in London, Scott participated in marches protesting hunger and poverty.
This was the time of the Great Depression, and when he was sent to South Kensington in London, he partook in poverty and hunger marches in 1934.
There, it is recorded, he also experienced fascism, to which he responded with an attraction to communism.
Scott moved to India in 1934 to serve as chaplain first to the Bishop of Bombay (1935 to 1937), and then at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Calcutta from 1937 to 1938.
While in India, Scott learnt to fly and acted as courier for the communists, but he became disillusioned with the communists with the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1938.
A new political influence was Gandhi’s pacifism and doctrine of non-violence.
When he returned to London, Scott joined the Royal Air Force at the outbreak of World War II in 1940. Despite his pacifism and studies in philosophy of non-violence, Scott trained as a rear-gunner. He was, however, dismissed the following year due to ill health.
He had Crohn’s disease, an intestinal illness that would last his lifetime, and was advised to return to South Africa on medical grounds. Here, he became the assistant priest at St. Alban’s Coloured Mission outside Johannesburg.
In 1946, he took part in a passive resistance campaign by Indian protesters in Tobruk in the Durban area against the Asian Land Tenure and the Indian Representation Act.
He was arrested for his participation and sentenced to three months imprisonment. This experience bestowed on him the infamous reputation of becoming the first white man in South Africa to be jailed for opposing the apartheid regime.
In the former Transvaal (now Gauteng), Scott was threatened with lynching by angry white farmers when he exposed near-slave labour conditions on farms there.
When he was released from prison, his parish licence was withdrawn. Scott came to the former South West Africa (SWA) where he met Khama the Great at the request of Tshekedi Khama, and was asked to draw up and publicise a petition against the incorporation of SWA into South Africa.
With funds contributed by the Herero people, Scott travelled to London where he began a close association with the Society of Friends (or the Quakers), and established his headquarters at the Quaker International Centre in Tavistock Square. There, he founded an organisation called the African Bureau.
Scott then travelled to New York to petition the United Nations (UN) on behalf of the Herero people. He was backed by an Indian delegation and the New York-based International League for Human Rights of Man.
Scott would return to the UN on a yearly basis to exert pressure for Namibia’s independence for the next 36 years, a celebrated effort thought to have thwarted South Africa’s drive to incorporate Namibia into its folds.
Equally, Scott appeared three times before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, The Netherlands, on behalf of SWA, albeit unsuccessfully.
Scott was banned from South Africa after being declared a prohibited immigrant by the government there, and in 1948, he was also banned from coming to Namibia. Notwithstanding, Scott’s unrelenting petitioning of the UN and subsequent campaigning in the West were considered a crusade to save the downtrodden in not only Namibia and South Africa, but also the independence of the Nagas from India, the Eritreans, and the anti-nuclear campaigning.
After suffering from cancer, Scott died in London on September 14, 1983, without seeing the fruits of his labour.
And it was a protracted and arduous battle, of which he had written: “It has been such a long grind – uphill all the way without any chance to rest and survey the direction of one’s coming and going. But what we have been trying to do had to be done and few people know what it has all cost us – but once you start counting the cost and one is forced back into a little puny world of one’s own egocentricity and that way lies some form of madness for one can’t combine two sets of values, two ways of life in one existence.”
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