Mungo Soggot
A WHITE South African who became a vice- president of Harvard University is at the centre of a race row over her nomination to join the highest court in Massachusetts in the United States.
The nomination of Margaret Marshall by Massachusetts governor William Weld to the state’s Supreme Judicial Court has enraged black activists, who claim Weld should have nominated a black American instead.
Marshall’s fiercest critic so far has been Appeals Court Judge Frederick Brown, who was quoted in The Boston Globe newspaper as saying: “It is a regrettable day in the history of Massachusetts when a white person from South Africa is appointed to the Supreme Judicial Court before any black person.” The judge prefaced his attack by saying her nomination was a “perverted joke”.
Marshall (52) graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, where she became the first woman to head the National Union of South African Students (Nusas). In 1968 she emigrated to Boston, where she has had a successful legal career, becoming president of the Boston Bar Association in 1991. She was appointed Harvard’s vice-president and chief counsel – the institution’s top legal post – in 1992.
Marshall’s opponents are apparently unimpressed with her anti-apartheid credentials. When she arrived in the US, she lobbied against apartheid and backed calls for sanctions against South Africa. According to the The Boston Globe, her critics resent what they see as “a privileged white woman who, while championing their causes, never would have had to suffer their indignities”.
The campaign against Marshall has included a march to Weld’s office by the Urban League, the Black Ministerial Alliance and the Black Lawyers’ Guild. According to the newspaper, the protestors claimed Weld’s failure to appoint an African-American was the last straw from an administration which had not adequately addressed the needs of “minorities and poor people”.
University of Cape Town vice-chancellor Mamphela Ramphele reportedly expressed amazement at the campaign against Marshall, and in particular the comments made by Judge Brown.
She said: “Margie was very courageous … She is not part of the herd. She wanted liberation in South Africa … This preoccupation with skin colour is ridiculous.”
Marshall, who is married to New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, declined to talk to the Mail & Guardian ahead of the October 9 hearings for the appointment.
She is by all accounts passionate about the US and is even known to have shed tears when recalling the day in 1978 when she became a US citizen.
She told a group of immigrants to the US of how, “in my anger and loneliness and despair, I discovered that my own history, my experiences in South Africa, my own dealings with apartheid were powerful resources that I had brought with me to the US. My love affair with the US has grown as I have learned again and again that here … each new immigrant can make a difference.”