Apartheid—a dispassionate view

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33101, 16 December 1972, Page 11

Apartheid—a dispassionate view

(By

G. A. POLLOCK)

Perhaps I should apologise for writing this, for I really know very little about South Africa. My only excuse is that most of my contemporaries either seem to know rather less, or else are so entrenched in their own opinion—whether for or against —that they cannot imagine that any other could be even remotely arguable.

Certainly, race relations there are a mess, but how could they be otherwise, when blacks outnumber whites by four to one? Integration, in such circumstances, is impossible, for even in our far more benign climate integration still walks on halting feet. Nevertheless woollyminded idealists call for immediate majority rule, as if the vast black population had a host of leaders, technicians, scientists and industrialists equipped to take instant control of a highly specialised economy such as South Africa’s' Yet this, make no mistake, is what they would proceed to do, with disastrous consequences to black and white alike: for the aim of the more militant blacks is not equality but domination. After centuries of subservience, perhaps one can hardly blame them. Fate of whites Worse still would follow, for the examples of Biafra and now Uganda clearly show 4'

that with domination would come revenge. Whites, whatever their former status, would become a dispossessed, depressed class, and even if they escaped actual violence (which is by no means certain) they would confront the world, not with 40,000 refugees, but four million. Our kinsfolk (for many of them are) deserve better than this. Africa is their homeland, with which they have been identified far too long to be regarded as mere exploiting colonialists. The first British settlements date from 1800; the Boers came even earlier, and since losing contact with their native Netherlands have ever set roots deeper and deeper in the soil of the veldt they love. Compared with them, some even of the black tribes are relative newcomers.

Admittedly, their treatment of the natives has not always been admirable, but there is some truth in their assertion that, underprivileged though the Bantus are by European comparisons they are in the main better off than many of their brothers in the “liberated” regions of the north; as witness the constant stream of migrants in search of pay packets miserable by our standards, but princely by theirs. A false adage The old American adage that “all men are born equal” has become a popular catchcry; but not only does it receive mere lip-service from Americans themselves — witness the lot of the indigenous Indians even to this day—but, if applied in the widest sense, it is demonstrably false. If true of intellectual potential, it should apply also to physical; but who would claim that in every bassinet rests a future Colin

Meads or Graham Dowling? Even among blacks themselves there are wide variations in capacity, both physical and mental, for it is not generally appreciated that “Bantu” signifies not a race, but a language; the Bantuspeaking Africans comprise many tribes of widely differing culture, ecologies, even origins.

Immediate majority rule would thus bring misery not to whites alone; the struggle for power among the more advanced, aggressive native peoples would bring decades of internecine strife —as has amply been demonstrated elsewhere in Africa. Probably the worst sufferers would be the Coloureds—a million and a half of them, offspring of both races but accepted by neither. Too few to possess any political power, and hated by the blacks for their present comparative prosperity, they would be among the first victims of Uganda-style confiscations and evictions —but with nowhere in the world to go. Fear as motive No wonder, then, that South African whites — particularly the Afrikaans-speak-ing majority—adopt a role that brands them as oppressors. Their dominant motive is less racism than fear; and fear, as any student of animal behaviour knows, is the greatest architect of aggression.

I hold no brief for apartheid, but not for the conventional reasons; in the rather idealised sense of “separate development” it could offer at least a stop-gap solution to an otherwise insoluble problem. That is, of course, were it fair and practicable; but it is neither. The Bantustans or Transkeis set aside

or planned for the blacks are, both in quantity and quality, ludicrously inadequate for their numbers; but a more serious objection to apartheid is its futility. White brains and black brawn have traditionally made the country, and their abrupt separation would be fatal to both; you cannot unscramble an egg. Actually, I do not think the ruling whites seriously intend to try. The black settlements are more likely to be regarded as reservoirs of unskilled labour, to be recruited and kept in compounds as required. The resulting miseries have been rightly arid roundly condemned. Bleak future Not in this century, or possibly even the next, will South Africa have an integrated population, happy as well as prosperous, with equality of opportunity for all. That would require many: decades of patient, sympathetic education of the natives, coupled with a parallel advancement of their living standards. Heaven kndws, it has taken us here long enough, but in Africa, at least in the foreseeable future, it is out of the question; the blacks are even less likely to accept such a solution than the ruling whites are to offer it.

I can see no ray of hope; for either the whites will be driven by world pressures, economic and otherwise, to grant majority rule—with all the dire consequences I have predicted—or sooner or later, be it next year, decade or century, the whole continent will erupt in a cataclysm of destruction and genocide. Yes, South Africa is indeed a mess, and there is not much that we in New Zealand can do about it. Except pray.