I find myself wondering what happens to the minds of white South Africans, how they can build up such powerful blinders. What happened to the white doctor in the Transkei--nominally an independent black state within South Africa--who last month refused to let a black baby into the whites-only hospital? It didn't matter that there were no beds free in the black hospital, he said; the baby could share with another black. Or the white farmer who severely beat his black maid to get her to confess to stealing the madam's purse; it wasn't shocking because he beat her, only because she died of the injuries. It must be some kind of unconscious puberty rite that white South Africans go through: I cannot believe that at six, they could be so inhumane.
Even liberal whites like Helen Suzman, who received an honorary degree from Harvard in 1976, ask only for a limited franchise for blacks, based on criteria like property or education--in a country where blacks cannot own the land their houses stand on, and where the black schools are hardly worth attending. (I wonder whether Harvard would ever grant an honorary degree to Nelson Mandela, the great black South African who spoke out for freedom. It seems unlikely; Mandela could not come to receive the degree in person, anyway, because--like so many South Africans, black and white, who too strongly have denounced apartheid--he has been in prison for 15 years.) Apartheid's supporters are not good at taking criticism; if it seems likely to become serious, the critic is silenced by banning, jailing, exile or death. The ones who remain operative, like Suzman, stay within narrowly-defined limits.
Whites who can't afford to leave are doing their best to get some money out for the time when they might have to go. Those who are staying are buying guns and crossing their fingers.
White South Africans are fond of drawing parallels between their country and the U.S. The Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock only a few years before the first Dutch settlers came to the Cape of Good Hope; the westward movement in the U.S. came at the same time as the Afrikaaners moved north in covered wagons on their Voortrek. Both countries had gold rushes in the nineteenth century; both countries had to fight the British for their independence. The only reason America doesn't have South Africa's problems today, they'll tell you, is that the early Americans were better at killing off the indigenous peoples.
South Africans also look hard for more modern parallels. Stories about racism in the States appear fairly frequently in the newspapers, as if someone is saying to the U.S., "let those without sin cast the first stone." (Stories about disinvestment by institutions like the American Friends Service Committee are buried in the back pages of the white papers, though they are more prominently displayed in black papers like Percy Qoboza's Post.) But the U.S. is clearly some kind of symbol to South Africans, though it is a confused one at best. To blacks, it seems to be a place of freedom, to some extent at least, the place where a black civil rights movement could make headway without fullscale war. To whites, America is an unreliable ally, which must be drawn in on their side in the fight against the liberation movement. More and more, South African government officials describe apartheid-ruled South Africa as Africa's last hold-out against Marxism, in an effort to woo American support for their position. Always they ask, both blacks and whites, what the U.S. will do when it comes down to the wire, whether it will intervene, and on which side. Cyrus Vance is in Pretoria this weekend discussing Namibia, so the question is particularly relevant. Unfortunately, I can't answer; neither could he, probably. If South Africa is liberated, the whole western economic structure is likely to change drastically, and it isn't clear to anyone the U.S. won't end up joining South Africa's whites in the laager.
***
I hadn't realized how much the Afrikaaner Nationalist Party controls white lives in South Africa. The Dutch Reform Church has a firm grip on the Afrikaans populations, at least here in the heart of the Transvaal. And it has no qualms about legislating morality: there seems to be a need to prove that whites are morally superior, to justify their legal and economic control of the country. No drinking or soccer on Sundays; no pornography (though pictures of bikini-clad women are splashed everywhere in this incredibly macho society); and, of course, no interracial sex. Nothing that would let the whites' moral fiber decline--that is, nothing that would prove too conclusively that whites and blacks are equally human. They are, of course, and the result is a kind of perverse delight in breaking the rules, rather like suburban Americans during the '50s.
But if white South Africans complain about the apartheid laws, they can live with them--which is more than the blacks can do. In some areas, black infant mortality reaches 50 per cent.
And, of course, there are the laws that enforce the blindness, that keep whites from realizing how the blacks live. Besides the laws that prevent social interaction, and laws that prevent serious dissent from the government's apartheid policies, there are laws to keep South Africans from thinking. The censor's list is long and strict, and the newspapers have to tread carefully when they cover current events. Often the censors are fairly arbitrary, as in one famous case, when they banned Black Beauty (because of its title). While in Pretoria, I realize I have a banned novel in my suitcase, Alex LaGuma's Fog at the Season's End. For a moment, I feel as if the whole South African security force is about to knock on the door; reassured, I realize I am only liable to a $650 fine, just for reading a novel. It rather makes me long for the First Amendment--and rather makes me wish more white South Africans could read works by the black South Africans who have portrayed so clearly the world in which they live, the world most white South Africans barely see.
***
In Middelburg, a small town outside Pretoria, two small boys run up to wash the windows of the car, hoping to get a few cents for their efforts. They wipe the window furiously with a cloth only slightly more ragged than their clothes; this five cents means a lot to them. Times are bad now for black South Africans. Unemployment has reached an all-time high, though no one has exact figures; and there is no minimum wage for most of the jobs blacks can do. 80 per cent of black South Africans fall below the poverty datum line, the absolute minumum standard of living. A third, smaller boy, his elbows poking through his man's-size shirt, runs up to join the other picanins (as my liberal white friend who is driving calls the boys, to distinguish them from the boys who make up the adult male population, I suppose). The first two fight the new boy off, threatening to hit him with an empty bottle over five cents. I am told not to intervene: they are blacks first, not children fighting, and I am an alien white. When we return to the car, there are only two boys polishing the window, desperately.
All the dust was on the inside, anyway.
***
It isn't easy to deal with South Africa, as an American. The similarities are clear, but so is the oppression. Even in the most racist areas of the States, there are still legal ways to fight discrimination; in South Africa, there are no such means. Apartheid is changing under outside pressure, it is true: the farmer who killed his maid with a sjambok might get a few years in jail now, instead of merely a fine. But it is not changing fast enough, and both blacks and whites are getting ready for the confrontation. As Zimbabwe and Namibia are going, so will South Africa. Those whites who can do so are leaving; doctors and computer programmers, who have easily saleable skills, are said to be leaving in droves, while whites who can't afford to leave yet are doing their best to get some money out (illegally), for the time when they might have to go. Those who are staying are buying guns and crossing their fingers. I am sympathetic: if the Native Americans took over Boston, where would we go?
But my sympathy is limited. For surely, there were points along the road to Grand Apartheid where compromise could have been reached, and confrontation would not have been so inevitable. Now, it seems too late, and the Afrikaaner Nationalists still seem unwilling to give up a single piece of privilege. If they were flexible, they wouldn't have chosen the most hawkish candidate to replace Vorster. Time is running out, and everyone in South Africa knows it; but the Nats seems to have closed ranks and turned right, marching toward full scale war.
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