SOUTH AFRICA'S invasion of Angola last Thursday reveals once again the Vorster regime's appalling contempt for human life. Over 500 civilian refugees from South West Africa (Namibia), a territory South Africa has ruled illegally since 1966, died at the hands of the South Africans.

Ostensibly aimed at a South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) camp near Cassinga, Angola, the raid was the Vorster regime's brutal retaliation for SWAPO's rejection last month of a South African-endorsed independence plan for South West Africa. SWAPO rejected the plan, sponsored by the United States, Great Britain, France, West Germany and Canada, because it allowed South Africa to keep up to 2,000 troops in South West Africa until new elections could be held, and because it left Walvis Bay, Namibia's strategically-important deep-water port, under South African domination until further negotiations.

We support SWAPO's struggle against the Vorster regime, and we join the U.N. Security Council's unanimous condemnation of South Africa for the raid. The belligerence of the South African minority government underlines the complicity of organizations, such as Harvard University, that continue to support the Vorster regime and refuse to join in the struggle against apartheid.