Contents

Introduction  The Search For The Just Society

South Africa's Present And Future

This account of South Africa is given to you by a white South African, born there in 1903, who has tried to live his life in the service of his country, and in that endless struggle for the just order of society.  If this account had been given to you by a black South African, its substance would in many ways have been different, and would have dealt not so much with white domination as with black resistance and black suffering.  If it had been given to you by a Marxist black or white, it would have had a good deal more to say about the economic exploitation of the black by the white, about the great disparity of wealth and possessions, and about the folly of expecting any change except through revolution.  If it had been given by a white Afrikaner Nationalist, it would have been ruled by an obsession with racial identity and racial separation--because in this view you cannot have the first without the second--and it would have defended indefensible laws.

However,  I am not a nationalist, white or black, and I am not a Marxist, and what I say to you is dictated to me by my personal history, by my temperament, and by my moral and religious beliefs.  I do not suppose for a moment that you expect me to talk like somebody else.

Let me also say by way of introduction that the population of the Republic of South Africa is twenty-six million.  Of these, eighteen million are black Africans, and half of them live in what used to be called the reserves and are now called the homelands.  The other half live on the farms and towns and cities of what we shall call "white South Africa".  Of the remaining eight million, over four million are white, two and a half million are colored and nearly one million are Asians.  Of the four million whites, some two and a half million are Afrikaners, and some one and a half million are English- speaking. Before written history, this beautiful country teeming with game, rich in flora, was the home of the diminutive hunters, the San or Bushman, and the semi-nomadic herdsmen, the Khoikhoi. Their fate was sealed by the entry of black tribesmen from the north, as early as about four hundred AD it is now established, and by the entry of white Dutchmen from the sea in 1652 at the point where the city of Cape Town now lies under the great mass of Table Mountain.  The Bushmen fled to the Kalahari Desert, and the Khoikhoi with Malay slaves and the aid of their white masters became the progenitors of a new people, the Cape coloured people, who are, if one wishes to be uselessly precise, our only indigenous people.

The farming Dutch moved out farther and farther from Cape Town.  Their first masters were the Dutch East India Company; their second masters, the British who took the Cape by conquest in 1806.  The Dutch farmers, the trekkers, the Boers, who were finally to be called the Afrikaners, speaking the new language Afrikaans which is in the main a highly simplified form of Dutch, disliked the British Government even more than they had disliked the Dutch East India Company.  The thing they disliked most, that they found indeed unendurable, was that they should be put on a basis of legal equality with their servants and slaves and with people of colored races.  From 1836 onwards they left the Cape Province in the northward migration known as the Great Trek, and they finally founded the republics of the Transvaal and there was to be "no equality in Church or State".  In order to establish these republics, the Afrikaners had to subdue the black men of the African tribes, and these were shut off in the reserves, which were finally to constitute about thirteen per cent of the land area of South Africa, set aside for seventy per cent of the total population.  Yet they were not shut off completely.  Their labour was needed in the white areas, and so came into being the hated and resented legislation known as the Pass Laws, and the evil practice known as migratory labour, whereby men are separated--by law--from their womenfolk and children.  So also came into being the bitter black resentment against being cut off from the land.

In 1886 the richest gold in the world was discovered in the Transvaal.  This--and other things--led to the Anglo-Boer War of 1899.  In 1902 the Afrikaners capitulated, but no one could foresee that this British victory heralded the end of imperialism and colonialism, or should one say, their end in the blatant forms in which they were then known.  In 1906 the British restored self-government, though not independence, to the Transvaal, in 1907 to the Orange Free State. In 1910 these two new colonies, plus the old colonies of Natal and the Cape of Good Hope came together to form the new self-governing Dominion of the Union of South Africa.  The Cape Colony was allowed to take its non-racial franchise into the Union, with the fatal provision that the black and colored votes could be abolished by a two-thirds majority of the new Union Parliament.  Conciliation was in the air; Briton and Boer were to be reconciled.  I remind you of one thing, that in all these events--those that led to the War, those that followed the War and those that culminated in the setting up of the new Dominion--no one ever consulted the conquered African tribes, nor the Cape colored people, nor the Indian people of Natal.  The constitutional principle of the defeated Transvaal Republic, "no equality in Church or State", was already beginning to dictate the policies of the new Dominion.  You will therefore see that Britain bears a great share of the responsibility for the repressive laws of modern South Africa.

Some of the Afrikaners were for the new policy of conciliation,  but some were bitterly opposed.  What reason had they to be grateful to Great Britain for giving self-government, and finally a place in the new Dominion, to two republics whose independence they had wantonly destroyed?  Why should not Afrikaners rule the new Dominion?  After all, they outnumbered the English-speaking in the ratio of sixty to forty. In 1914 the diehard Afrikaners established the Nationalist Party and after thirty-four years of intense and bitter struggle, the Party achieved a narrow but outright majority in 1948.  I cannot describe to you the tidal wave of rejoicing that swept over Afrikaner South Africa.  God had restored to the Afrikaner his own land.  Reparation had been made for the great wrong of the Anglo-Boer War.  The historic principle of "no equality in Church or State" would now be applied to the whole of South Africa.  The Afrikaners' language, so often ignored and despised, would now be given its rightful place.  But above all, the separation of race from race, in every conceivable department of life--in education, in residential areas, in transport, in hospitals, hotels, cinemas, theatres, in swimming pools and on beaches, on sports fields, in clubs and all gathering places, in all sexual relationships including marriage--was to be legislated on a scale never seen before in the history of the world.  Had God not created separate races?   Would he not therefore wish them to remain separate?   Was it not,  therefore, the duty of a Christian government to legislate for God's will?  So the Nationalist Government embarked on its God-given task to fashion the perfect society, where each race would pursue its own destiny, cherish its own culture, have its own institutions, enjoy its own happiness.  I cannot describe the depth of the fanaticism, and to be just, the depth of the devotion, with which this unrealizable dream was to be pursued.  The great defect of the dream was not only that it was unrealizable.  Many of our dreams for the future society are unrealizable, but it is often the pursuit of the unattainable that enables us to attain anything at all.  The other great defect of the Nationalist dream was its total irrationality.  You cannot make ten separate and independent political societies out of one common economic society.          

This unrealizable dream has now been pursued for twenty-nine years.  A vast and terrifying body of laws was created to make is realizable.  After twenty-nine years, its unrealizability and its irrationality are becoming inescapably revealed.  The trouble is that irrationality cannot recognize rationality when it sees it.  From now on the English-speaking people played a minor role on the stage, but in the wings another actor was waiting.  These were the black people, whose destinies were being decided by a Parliament entirely white, by a Parliament whose respect for their dignity as people was hardly to be discerned.  One of the last acts of this human drama, perhaps the last of all, is now being played, and I shall do my best to tell you how the play may end.

I must first tell you of the unbelievable laws that were now passed by the South African Parliament.  These are the laws of Apartheid.  You will have gathered that Apartheid had long been a feature of South African society.  It was not created by the Nationalist Government.  It is not my intention to show you how well the English-speaking people have behaved.  They have not.  They are as deeply corrupted as the Afrikaner by life in a race- caste society, but it was the Nationalist Government which now began to compel the observance of Apartheid in every possible department of life, to give it everywhere the force of law, and to inflict heavy penalties on all those who dared to oppose it. 

Many of these laws can be described by one word only, and that word is "cruel".   As you all know, there is no cruelty more cruel than that which has the sanction of religion, and there is no religion more feared than that which believes that great and noble ends can sanctify cruel means.

I am often asked whether South Africa will blow up in violence and revolution?  I shall conclude with an attempt to answer.

On April 20, 1974, there happened in a far-away country, of no great importance in the world, an event which changed things for ever.  President Caetano fell from power in Portugal.  Portugal withdrew from both Angola and Mozambique.  White Rhodesia's long eastern flank was exposed, and in 1976 Dr. Kissinger persuaded Mr. Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia to agree to majority rule.  In South West Africa--Namibia--a conference was called of all the racial groups of the country, the conference called the reasons:  it excludes the liberation force known as SWAPO, and it has an ethnic basis.  It has been declared unacceptable by the leading Western nations.  I cannot predict what the final outcome may be, but in any event South Africa's north-western flank will be exposed also.

On June 16, 1976, there occurred an event in our own country which also changed things for ever.  Rioting began in the black African city of Soweto, a satellite of Johannesburg, a town of a million people.  It spread to other towns including Pretoria.  White South Africa was shocked yet more when the rioting spread to Cape Town, and involved the Cape colored people, who had been living in external amity with the Cape white people for three centuries.  A feature of the rioting was that main roles were played by children and students.  Schools, churches, clinics, beerhalls were destroyed by fire.  They were symbols of authority.  The rioting was ostensibly a protest against the ruling that certain school subjects had to be taught through the medium of Afrikaans, but the deep causes were the discriminatory laws.  It was a protest against the inferior and voteless status of the African people, and a protest against their powerlessness.

So what is the future?  What is to be the last act of this long drama of black and white?

The black actor is no longer satisfied with his part in the drama.  He is demanding new lines.  He has suddenly become a giant, paradoxically through the action of his children.  For the first time White South Africa is painfully aware of the great need for social change.  You can hardly open a paper without reading of the need for change. The big question is, can the Afrikaner Nationalist make social, political, and economic changes of a kind that will satisfy black aspirations?

An Afrikaner writer of repute, Mr. W. A. de Klerk, wrote a book called The Puritans in Africa.  In this book he likened Separate Development to a great edifice arising from the earth.  Much scaffolding would be used, and this would hide the beauty of the edifice, and would in fact make it ugly, but one could always look forward to the day when the scaffolding would be removed, and the beauty of the edifice could be seen, just as in the Communist society one can look forward to the day when the State will wither away and all will be free.

The edifice is vast, and it is so complex that once the plans are made they cannot be changed.  In fact, it is a tower reaching unto heaven.  The architects and builders are devoted, but they take the best parts of the edifice for themselves.  Their task is so enormous that they require a proliferation of functionaries. but that does not matter because the edifice is in fact "intended as an end to history".

 Alas, the scaffolding does not come down.  It cannot come down, for it has grown into the edifice itself.  To remove it now would be to endanger the grand conception.  The edifice has become a fort, a "laager of the spirit".  Man is becoming "inordinate man".

The scaffolding grew into the edifice.  Have these draconian laws grown into the very being of the Afrikaner, so that now he cannot conceive of an existence apart from them?  In these times of increasing world hostility, the Afrikaner Nationalist speaks continuously of his determination to die for the right to exist.  What does he mean?  Does he mean that he will die for these laws?  He made these laws to ensure his own survival.  How can he now do away with them, or make such changes in them as will satisfy black aspirations, and the demands of the outside world?  I have a fear, and I have a hope.  My fear is that the Afrikaner Nationalist has become psychologically impotent to make any meaningful change.  I shall tell you about the hope later.

What will happen if we don't make meaningful change?  It will be the end of Afrikanerdom, and the end of any white tenancy.  In the first place, internal unrest will become uncontrollable.  But the external prospect will be worse.  I have no doubt that the nations of Africa will direct their anger more actively against us.  If they come alone, we might hold them at bay for years, but they won't come alone.  They will be aided by other nations. Cuba will be one of them, and behind them all the Soviet Union, ready to provide the sinews of war.  It is my belief that Afrikanerdom would fight to the death, not just because of its courage and strange but deep patriotism, but because of its psychological impotence to do anything else.  It is my belief that the whole of the country would be desolated, its cities, its industries, its railways, its ports, its medicine, its agriculture.  Afrikanerdom would be dispersed; only its poor would be left.  Would the nations of the West stand aside?  They have told us categorically that they would, and it would be intensely painful for them, for the Soviet Union would be the greatest beneficiary of this chaos.  That is why I believe they are urging us to make social, political, and economic changes that would bring hope to the majority of the people of South Africa.  Many supporters of the Government think that the West wants to destroy us.  The truth is that the West is trying to prevent us from destroying ourselves, and is trying to prevent the advent of chaos in Southern Africa.

This bad scenario holds only if white South Africa does nothing meaningful to meet the just aspirations of black people.   If she does nothing, what else would she deserve?  I shall add that black radicals would not think this a bad scenario.  They have already decided that in order to build the new, the old must be totally destroyed.

Let me say a word about the term "meaningful change".  It means the kind of change that is recognized to be part of a continuing process that will not end until the gross racial disparities, of wealth and possessions and education and opportunity, have been removed.  It does not mean building Rome in a day.  It does mean that the continuing nature of the process must be evident.

What is my hope?  It is that our rulers will embark on a process of meaningful change and that these changes will be decided on in full consultation with all people.  Many people are calling for a national convention, but the government has so far refused to consider such a proposal.  I am not prepared at this moment to accept that the Afrikaner Nationalists, whose story is so dramatic, whose devotion to their country is undoubted, whose intelligence is equal to that of any of us, are going to destroy all that they have achieved.  The trouble is that they are rational beings moving in an irrational context.  They hold the irrational axiom that the Afrikaners can have some kind of separate destiny over which their fellow inhabitants will have no kind of say whatever.  They hold another irrational axiom: that one can have ten separate nations in one piece of land, and that each of these nations can pursue a separate destiny independently of the others.  These are the axioms that they have to yield.  Can they do it?  I don't know, but I have not yet reached the point when I would say that they cannot.  More and more of their thinkers are prepared to yield the axioms, but so far none of the politicians.  There has so far been no real sign of any change in the powerful and monolithic National Party.  The Party holds the belief that social ***** can be controlled or prevented by military and police action.

At one extreme is the National Party with its dream of Separate Development, and therefore of ten politically independent nations.  At the other is the radical demand for a unitary society, a universal suffrage and majority rule.  This is the demand that would drive the Afrikaner Nationalists  back into their edifice, where they would ultimately be destroyed.  I have lived with them for seventy-four years in a love/hate relationship, and I don't want to see them destroyed, partly because I would be destroyed, too.  That wouldn't matter much, but my children and my children's children would also be destroyed.  I don't choose to end my life in desolation.  People could say, you are putting your own survival above the claims of justice.  I would say that not much in my seventy-four years had led me to believe that you get justice out of the barrel of a gun.

Between the demand for Separate Development and ten independent nations, and the demand for a unitary society, there can be no compromise whatever.  It is my belief that the Afrikaner Nationalists, for the sake of their own survival, will have to consider the possibility of a federal or confederal solution of our problems.  Nothing can guarantee their political autonomy, but I believe that a federal solution might reduce those racial fears which have made them so virile to present change and so impotent to make change that is my hope, and you will see for yourselves that its realization depends on a change in Afrikaner psychology.  Does a national psychology change?  Has there been a change in the psychology of the West Germans?  Has there been a change in the psychology of the British, who for so long fought alone for the freedom of the world?  And what about your own psychology, that of this great strange nation that can be lifted from doubt by a smile on the face of a president?  I cannot talk about the future of my country in the tones of cold reason.  I realize that my hope is tenuous.  I cannot even tell you why I have it.  Is it because, as a believer in the Holy Spirit,I cannot  fall into despair?  Francis of Assisi prayed,"Where there is despair, let me bring hope."  Yet he himself once fell into a despair that endured for two years.

Perhaps I should qualify my hope.  I told you I had a fear and a hope, but my hope contains also a fear;.  and that is that when we white people turn to the doing of justice, we shall find that black people don't want any justice from our hands, that they will say to us, “Keep your gifts. What we want we shall take.”

I shall close with a story and a prayer.  A man lives in a house full of possessions.  The poor and the hungry and the dispossessed keep knocking at his door.  Some members of his family urge him to open the door, and others tell him he must never open it.  Then comes the final imperious knock, and he knows that at last he must open,  and when he opens, it is death who is waiting for him.

My prayer is that it may not be so.