My dad is a white American and has always had a United States passport. When he was 23 years old, he embarked on an attempt to walk from Cape Town, South Africa to Cairo, Egypt.
He landed in Johannesburg in spring of 1985, flying in from London via Lusaka, Zambia. When he was going through customs, an agent told him they had to search his belongings and for my dad to follow him. My dad followed the agent through the innards of the airport while the agent held on to his belongings. The agent held open a random door in a deserted hallway and told my dad to enter. My dad walked in and before he could think the door was shut behind him. It was locked and had no inside door knob.
My dad describes the room as a low-budget hotel room with a bed, T.V., full bathroom, and no windows. He spent a little more than a full day in this room banging on the door yelling, watching T.V., sleeping, and showering. He was not fed but was able to drink tap water.
Roughly 24 hours later, a customs agent entered the room. He returned my dad's belongings and told him he had seven days to leave the country and to never come back. My dad didn't ask any questions and walked free. He assumes they thought he was either a journalist who came to write about apartheid or someone who had come to work illegally.
Does anyone know how common this practice was in South Africa? I've done some google searching but haven't come up with anything. How much worse would things have been for my dad if he was Africa-American? Just looking for any information surrounding this type of behavior in South Africa around this time.
It is very difficult to give a specific reason why your dad was detained, but there are a number of options. First is that the government felt, as you suspect, that he was a journalist. Remember, this is before the ANC was unbanned, and tensions were pretty high, especially in the townships. Foreign journalists were almost invariably writing negative pieces about the government. Also, the idea of walking would probably have sounded like a flimsy story. Coming via Lusaka didn't help. I would say this is the most likely scenario.
Two other options were that they thought he was putting his life at risk (and in my opinion, he was - he would not have gotten further than 50 miles out of CT without an escort) and didn't want him in the country. Finally, perhaps he actually was entering the country to observe on behalf of the USA.
Being African-American would not have made much difference to the outcome, but would have made a difference to how he was spoken to and treated, and perhaps where he was detained.
1985-1986 I was in Lusaka. We tend to analyze in terms of apartheid's insidious bureaucracy, but other nefarious activities occurred as well, and of course customs and border guards are looking for geographically suspect activity.
At the time, maybe still ongoing, there was a lot of smuggling between southern Africa countries, typically into and out of SA. Probably most common was stolen vehicles and car parts. Zambia had a law that all vehicles typical parts (glass, body panels, engine parts) required indelible marking of the VIN via engraving or etching.
There was a huge drug trade, mostly marijuana (dagga), both locally produced and from the Middle East, and heroin, colloquially from Afghanistan. An American showing up, stories of "walking, man, from Cape town, man, to Cairo, man" were not uncommon, also "camping in ___ Park" were a somewhat common itinerant traveler's excuse.
Illegal immigration was an issue, hundreds of thousand's from neighbouring countries trying to get into SA. In 1985-1986 a lot of remaining young white Rhodesians, Kenyans, etc. were becoming aware their future was elsewhere, hence itinerant travelers into SA with unusual itineraries were a cause for suspicion.
Lastly, "spies, spying" remains a perverse and common accusation for anything out the ordinary. Zambian news frequently had stories mentioning so-and-so was detained at airport/border for spying.