As early as November 1964 our brothers began to run into difficulties in relation to the flag-salute and national-anthem issue. A patriotic hysteria, doubtless excited by the speeches and celebrations of the new independence era, swept the country. Now the immediate target was the children of the Witnesses in the schools around the country. As though diabolically planned, the issue was bandied about in the press and the Watch Tower Society and the Witnesses were put in the worst possible light. Adding to all the unfavorable publicity, there was then a case of some of the Witnesses who had been severely injured in a highway accident. In the public press the reports of the accident highlighted the fact that the injured Witnesses flatly refused to accept blood transfusion.

Some officials of the new administration got the idea that the neutral, integrity-keeping course of the brothers and their children was due to following a man, so they contrived to have the branch servant, Harry Arnott, removed from Zambia. Sadly, he and his wife Zennie took their leave of the country in December 1965, and J. S. Mundell took over the responsibilities of branch servant. There were 700 congregations in the whole land by now, and at the Memorial celebration earlier that year the attendance for the first time topped the 100,000 mark, the actual figure being 100,088.

In 1966 harassment of Jehovah’s witnesses continued, special police agents questioning them on their stand as to participation in politics. Also that year the Witnesses were receiving attention in legislative circles. After considerable debate The Education Act, 1966, was put in force, this providing that in all schools the pupils would be required to sing the national anthem and salute the national flag, with expulsion from school as the only alternative. Then followed another statute, The Public Order (Amendment) Act, 1966, requiring that all public gatherings must be opened with the singing of the national anthem. That statute went into force on January 1, 1967. Many parents and children found it difficult to understand how freedom of conscience could exist side by side with government edicts such as these, edicts that went so far as to determine how a person’s conscience should view these national symbols.

The Court’s judgment was handed down on November 20​—a decision adverse to Jehovah’s people, a decision that denied Witness children the right to an education in the public schools of the country. That meant that reading and writing classes for the benefit of the expelled children had to be arranged. By August 1968 the records showed that 5,755 children had been expelled.

Early in 1970 it became a matter of published comments that in some rural areas there was difficulty in filling the desks in recently built schools. Some inclined to blame Jehovah’s witnesses, but the fact of the matter was that the Witness children had been expelled from school. But events now began to take a new turn. Some schoolmasters were reinstating Witness children. Insistence on the singing of the anthem and saluting the flag was being relaxed on the simplest of pretexts. Some of the Witness children were again able to enjoy a secular education, provided they exercised wisdom when it came to ceremonial school days.