The Africans (60 page)

The Boer wars helped fashion a new sense of Afrikaner nationalism. His language, his culture, his claim to the African land made him unique, and everyone, white or black, was seen as a potential
enemy. In defeat he had become a second-class citizen in what he considered his own country. New Dutch immigrants had long since stopped coming to South Africa and, isolated and alone, he knew that Afrikanerdom could survive only as a unified entity if it were uncorrupted by outside influence. He took a refuge in his church and his secret societies such as the Broederbond (literally, association of brothers), and he waited for the political power which would enable him to build a nation, where everyone was of the same mind, the same color, the same faith.

That opportunity came in 1948 when the Afrikaner-led National Party upset Jan Smut’s United Party and began the longest uninterrupted reign of any political party still in power in the Western world. Believing that integration would lead to the ultimate destruction of the whites, the Afrikaner government moved quickly to enact a web of racial laws and to strengthen its system of self-preservation known as apartheid. It is worth noting here that apartheid did not create racial discrimination; it only institutionalized it. Back in 1909, for instance, the British withdrew the rights of nonwhites to sit in the South African parliament. The next year coloreds staged a nonviolent protest demonstration in Cape Town led by Mohandas Gandhi.

In Afrikaans,
apartheid
means “apartness” or “separateness,” although the word has become so stigmatized internationally that South Africans no longer use it officially, preferring instead euphemisms such as “plural democracy” or “separate development.” According to the doctrine, every race has a unique destiny and a unique cultural contribution to make; therefore the races must be kept separate to develop along their own lines. But however one rationalizes it, the real intent of the system is the retention of
baaskap
(white supremacy). Apartheid still means racial purity, the subjugation of the nonwhite majority for the benefit of the all-white minority. It is the instrument that officially transformed the oppressed into the oppressor.

Although there are some black lawyers and doctors and millionaire businessmen in South Africa (and, unlike anywhere else in Africa, even a few poor whites), it goes without saying that the whiter a person’s skin, the better his fortunes. The government spends $677 a year to educate each white child, $277 for a colored, and $66 for a black. White miners earn $16,630 a year and get a house virtually rent-free; black miners average $2,546 and sleep in crowded dormitories. In the construction industry, a white makes
twice the salary of an Asian, three times that of a colored, and five times that of a black. Ignoring the almost insurmountable barriers that these educational and monetary inequities create, the Afrikaner then dismisses the black as being incompetent, unmotivated and inarticulate. “It’s the K factor,” he will say with a shrug, meaning that blacks are inherently inferior. The
K
stands for “kaffir” (the Kaffirs being one of the South African aboriginals), a pejorative whose meaning and use is similar to the word “nigger.”

The centerpiece of apartheid is the Land Resettlement Act of 1936, which, paradoxically, was the result of international pressure on South Africa, exerted by the League of Nations in an attempt to improve the blacks’ lot. The plan called for resettling of the blacks, who comprise 67 percent of the population, into ten separate
Bantustarts
, or “homelands,” that represent 13.7 percent of the country’s total area—and hold almost none of its natural wealth. Only four of the homelands are composed of a single piece of land—the others are broken into two or more parts surrounded by South Africa—and most are not even identified by any sign at their borders to inform a traveler that he is leaving South Africa and allegedly entering a new country. By 1982 four homelands, each representing a particular tribe, had been declared independent states by Pretoria.
^*
Each has a president, a parliament and some political autonomy. But their “independence” is only a sham, an event staged by Pretoria, and no government in the world other than South Africa’s extends them diplomatic recognition.

South Africa claims that the Bantustans are designed to give all peoples equal opportunities, but the obvious purpose is simply to segregate the four main racial groups—white, colored, Asian and Bantu—into separate national communities, thus maintaining the whiteness of the Afrikaners without disturbing their access to cheap labor. The scheme is like a giant United States’ school busing project in reverse. (No rural land is set aside for the coloreds and Asians; instead they are allocated residential areas in the urban centers.) The only ones who benefit are the whites.
^†

What apartheid does, then, is to sever the links of contact and communication that people have in a normal society. The whites meet only black garbage collectors and janitors, not their counterparts who are teachers, doctors and social workers. The blacks deal mostly with white Afrikaans-speaking policemen and civil servants. By day the black works in the shadow of the white preserve, in the clean, sparkling cities and the expansive suburbs. By night he returns to his smoky slum where, by law, he must remain until dawn. The discontent builds, and the envy and resentment take firm hold.

To be sure, there are some moderates in the white community who see what the inevitable result of apartheid has to be. But they can be found mainly among the people of English stock, who make up 40 percent of the white population. The Afrikaner remains intransigent. Contrary to what he believes, though, his intransigence is endangering the whites’ long-range interests in South Africa. It will create the very conditions that the Soviet Union can best exploit—racial unrest and political instability. It will make Communism a far more real threat to South Africa than it is to the rest of the continent. For no matter how alien the tenets of Communism may be to Africa, there comes a point, when the unhappiness of the general population runs deep enough, that the propaganda of the left sounds like a hopeful panacea.

President Jimmy Carter recognized this and put some distance between his Administration and the Pretoria government. Not so with President Ronald Reagan. He moved quickly to repair the damaged relationship, asking: “Can we abandon this country that has stood by us in every war we’ve ever fought?” It is true that South Africa did fight with the Allies in the two world wars, took part in the Berlin Airlift, participated in the postwar United Nations’ force in Korea and maintains a foreign policy that is staunchly anti-Communist. But Reagan’s statement seriously distorted the historical record.

The South Africans who twice stood by the Allies at the start of global hostilities were largely the English-speaking white minority. The Afrikaners argued against declaring war on Germany in 1914. They held demonstrations throughout South Africa to protest the
United Party’s decision to enter the war, and in 1939 the Nationalist leader, J. B. M. Hertzog, defended Hitler in the South African parliament and contended that Germany had annexed Czechoslovakia in self-defense. South Africa joined the Allies only after a close parliamentary vote, 80–67.

The end of World War II saw the political emergence of the Afrikaner and the introduction of apartheid. The international community gradually cut South Africa adrift. In 1974 the United Nations revoked its General Assembly seat. In 1977 an embargo on the shipment of weapons to South Africa, which the UN had made “voluntary” fourteen years earlier, became mandatory. South African sports teams were barred from the Olympics and most international competition. South African airplanes were banned from landing at almost every airport in Africa, and South African resident diplomats were welcome nowhere on the continent except in Malawi. Telephone operators in most black-run countries won’t even connect a caller to a South African number. By 1982 South Africa had only one unquestioning friend left, Israel, another outcast of the world community. There are 120,000 Jews in South Africa, but the relationship seemed to be based more than anything on the premise that my enemy’s enemy must be my friend.

South Africa has not only survived in the face of global condemnation, it has prospered. A century ago it exported little more than some wine from Cape province. Today it mines nearly three quarters of the West’s gold, manufactures everything from refrigerators to automobiles, exports vast quantities of food, textiles and machinery, and is the tenth largest weapons producer in the world. Some of those armaments are both indigenous and innovative, notably the Ratel, a high-speed armored personnel carrier that has a range of 900 miles and is built for rugged conditions. The weapons and munitions are assembled by black laborers and are a major factor in the continuation of white rule.

Two aspects of South Africa seem abundantly clear: the country must make a dramatic change to transform itself into an integrated multiracial society; and if that change is initiated by violence, perhaps in the form of Africa’s first race war, the effects on the continent and the world would be cataclysmic. What can the United States do to effect a peaceful change? One popular line of reasoning says that the 350 U.S. companies in South Africa should close down and the United States should divest itself of all investments there
and should terminate its trade with the Pretoria government, which runs in excess of $5 billion a year.

The gesture would, I believe, be futile. First, embargoes and sanctions have never been effective because, whether the culprit is Communist Cuba or capitalistic Rhodesia, someone is always willing to break them. Second, if the South African economy deteriorates and jobs are lost, the first to suffer will be the blacks, not the whites. Third, if Washington ordered U.S. companies to pull their money out of South Africa, the Pretoria government would undoubtedly freeze the funds, and another country such as France or Japan would step in to pick up the United States’ share of the trade market. Fourth, if the United States cut its commercial ties, it loses whatever leverage it has to pressure South Africa to make changes. Fifth, any action taken by the West is meaningless as long as black Africa demands that others do what it is unable or unwilling to do itself.

That leaves Washington with only one sensible policy to follow, other than the use of diplomatic pressure: make sure that American companies in South Africa provide equal pay for equal work to all races, formulate training programs to elevate blacks into positions of authority, end all segregation in their plants. The results will not topple the pillars of Afrikanerdom, but they will make them quiver, for anything that gives the South African black a fair share of wages and increased authority gives the South African white reason to worry that what he has created cannot last forever.

In the end, the apartheid that gave the Afrikaner his strength may be the very system that will destroy him. He has relentlessly denied the blacks opportunity, and now the white population is no longer large enough to supply all the skills and services an industrialized country of 28.5 milion people needs. He has built a powerful military and developed nuclear capabilities to protect this system. But the threat is at home, not abroad, so what are his choices? To rain bombs on his own country in a frenzy of self-destruction? He has enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in the world while holding 85 percent of the people in a form of serfdom. The prison on Robben Island is already full. What does the Afrikaner do with the young, educated, unemployed blacks who surely will not be as tolerant as their parents were?

I can think of no single event that would bring more benefit to all of Africa than the peaceful advent of an integrated multiracial society in South Africa. And indeed, by the spring of 1984, there were
encouraging stirrings underway, with South Africa and Mozambique signing a nonagression pact and South Africa and Angola holding secret negotiations to find a formula for peace. If South Africa could trade freely with the rest of the continent, its political and economic influence would be gigantic. It would dominate Africa as no single country dominates Europe or South America. It could take the leadership role in the Organization of African Unity (of which it is not even a member now). Its technicians and experts could travel without restriction and help other governments develop their countries the way the Afrikaner has developed his own. They could make the ports and railroads and telephones of Africa work again. The resultant economic stimulation to the continent would be nothing short of revolutionary. The Russians would have to pack their bags and go home, for without poverty, instability and discontent they have little hope of gaining the foothold they seek in southern Africa.

And what of the comfortable life style the white man in South Africa cherishes so dearly? It probably would not change much if the transition occurred before, as Alan Paton wrote, the blacks “are turned to hating.” The Afrikaner would still control the commercial and professional world. He would still belong to the same country club (with, to be sure, a few black members). He would still live in a comfortable suburban home and have a domestic staff. He would learn, as others in Kenya and Zimbabwe already have, that there is no reason why blacks and whites cannot work together to build a nation and a continent, especially when both races are African.

On a map, Zimbabwe looks like a big rock balancing on the toe of South Africa. The illusion is a symbolic one, because in 1980 Zimbabwe began an experiment in black-white peacemaking that, in its infancy at least, showed promise of offering the South Africans an enlightened alternative to apartheid.

But comparing South Africa with Zimbabwe—formerly the outlaw state of Rhodesia—has some limitations, for the whites in the two countries are of different character. The Afrikaner tends to be humorless, stern and pious. He would not, I suspect, look mis-dressed in a Nazi storm-trooper uniform. The white Zimbabweans, on the other hand, have the earthy manner and breezy informality of Australians. They have a pioneer spirit and a colonial temperament. Laughter comes easily to them, and they rather enjoy a Saturday night “punch-up” at the local pub. They wear shorts with knee socks in the countryside, and their faces are as lined and browned as the basin of a dry riverbed. Unlike the Afrikaner, they never severed
their sentimental or family ties to Europe. They had a place to go—if they wanted one—when their white homeland collapsed and, slipped across the border to Botswana one night, making his way outnumbered by blacks 28–1, they had the sense to realize that their only hope for survival lay in integration.