Africa the homeland is in a state of racial and tribal turmoil, far worse off than it was a century ago, as a result of the attainment of black autonomy. The dark ages have truly returned to almost all of Africa except South Africa. And yet it is the white government of South Africa that has been under attack from the rest of the world. Far worse outrages go unremarked elsewhere: The Sharpebille six, Steve Biko and Nelson Mandela are remembered, while massacres throughout Africa are forgotten. 

A great error is in the process of being perpetrated in South Africa, with much humbug and hysteria besides. The World Service of the BBC panders to black opinion, as do Congressmen in Washington who seek black votes. Much of the momentum of the anti-apartheid movement derives from well-meaning people who have a need to express their sense of compassion and to expiate their consciences in an easy way. Let us examine more closely some of the issues and misconceptions. 

South Africa belongs to the blacks. 

This probably implies that the blacks were there first, and in a sense that is true. But they were not the same blacks as are there now, many of whom came later from the north, to find work that had been created by the efforts of the white man. The original inhabitants were removed by other blacks, not by the white man. If the case were being made on behalf of Bushmen and Hottentos it would be a stronger one. 

The first whites went to South Africa from Holland in 1652. Later, German and Huguenot settlers arrived and merged with the Dutch to form the Afrikaners. They were a fiercely independent Calvinist people; hard-working and proud. They migrated or were driven into the heartlands of the Transvaal and Orange Free State following the arrival of the British in 1814. There they continued to farm and worship in the tradition of their forefathers. They developed a laager mentality of self-sufficiency and a determination to preserve their way of life at all odds. The disbandment of the Empire after World War II led inevitably to independence. In 1961 South Africa left a Commonwealth increasingly dominated by tradition-less and unfriendly black countries, some of whom were already practising forms of government, which were by any civilised standards deplorable. For those white people South Africa is home and the only home. They have created its organization and its infrastructure and they are defending it with all their strength. They have a perfect right to do this, as has anyone who defends his home against those who seek to destroy it. 

South Africa is not democratic. 

This is true, in the sense that the black does not have the vote. The fact that this is also effectively the case everywhere else in Africa, and in much of the rest of the world, is conveniently ignored. The position of someone like the leader of the Labour Party in England is typical. After he had been sounding off about sanctions and one-man one-vote he was asked specifically if this was really what he wanted for South Africa. One of his staff replied and confirmed that it was. He has not been heard to express similar views in respect of Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe or Zaire. It seems that black-on-black injustice is acceptable in liberal thought, while white-on-black is not. 

Since blacks dominate numerically in South Africa, one-man one-vote inevitably means black government and as one of the vocal black clerics said the other day, "when we get power we will just substitute the word black for the word white". It needs little imagination given the history of Africa since World War II, to know what this means. The whites, their families, and their property would all be at risk of being engulfed in a rampage of revenge for perceived past injustices. The black factions would struggle for power is also inevitable and the blood-letting would certainly be on the scale of that which occurred after the partition of India in 1947. Somewhere between a quarter and half a million people have been killed in Uganda. There has been wholesale slaughter in Burundi: a hundred thousand are estimated to have been killed there in the last few years. Corruption is everywhere, the press is silenced, human rights are violated, and political freedoms abolished. Where is the outcry from those who rail at the smallest indignity to blacks in South Africa?

Give one-man one-vote, in five years this beautiful and prosperous country of South Africa would be reduced to the dreadful conditions in which Mozambique and Angola find themselves now. This must have occurred to Mr. Kinnock, and his blindness is an example of the ruthlessness of the liberal conscience. 

Apartheid is evil. 

This sentiment is commonly expressed, even by people who appear to think clearly about these issues. I have no reason to question whether or not they mean it, but it would be indiscreet for a politician of any ilk to say otherwise at this time. Mr. Kaufman proclaims loudly and ridiculously, that the government of South Africa is much viler than that of Colonel Gaddafi. 

It is not clear to many that it is the sort of evil which it is held up to be, and the case in favour of apartheid is rarely heard, such is the taboo. In the media, those great formulators of opinion that are riddled with liberal ideologues, every opportunity is taken to stir up anti-apartheid feeling. 

About a year ago, on the BBC World Service, the presenter made a spontaneous anti-apartheid outburst, obviously expressing his personal views. The appropriateness of such comment in that context was questioned, and when later he presented a programme on South Africa--during the Lambeth Conference--he seemed much more circumspect and neutral. On this occasion the guests were the anti-apartheid campaigner the Right Reverend Trevor Huddleston, the Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban (who has refused to condemn necklacing), and the admirably impartial Graham Leach, the BBC correspondent in South Africa. The technique of using surrogates to express producers' opinions is usual. If, for instance, they want a pro-sanctions statement from the U.S.A., they call on Congressman Solarz, a New York Democrat, who is articulate and persuasive and it sounds as though this is representative of American opinion. 

Apartheid means separateness, in this case essentially of blacks and whites. Whether or not all men are equal in the eyes of God is not the issue. What is the issue is that there are forces which operate against the free mixing of races, and which explain the fact that the races do not coalesce and become one homogeneous whole. An American friend said with confidence in 1957 that in a generation of two that would happen. Thirty and more years later, despite all sorts of pressures towards true integration, the black and whites in the U.S.A. are further apart than they were then. They live in separate areas, they do not intermarry in significant numbers, and their social lives are essentially separate. That they can lie together and breed is clear. But in general they choose not to, and the choice is mutual. Separateness between sub-species is the natural order. Homo sapiens, has not, we can be sure, evolved to the point where his instinct have been bred out of him. 

There is an innocent and natural basis for the separateness of races, and the biological underpinnings of apartheid exist and cannot be denied. This is not a moral or an ethical issue, though it can certainly be argued that an attempt should be made to make such considerations prevail. But that is another argument, and has to be pursued in its own right and in full knowledge of what the price might be. Separateness of whites and blacks is, in any event, far from having its roots in white racism. Steve Biko broke away purposely from the white liberal students' movement NUSAS to form SASO and promote black consciousness. His lieutenant Barney Pityana said that the future was not "through a directionless multiracialism but through a positive unilateral approach. Black man, you are on your own."

The situations in the U.S.A. and in South Africa are very different, though there seems to be scant understanding of this in the U.S.A., where issues concerning South Africa tend to be considered in terms of civil rights in the style of Alabama, or of colonial emancipation. Neither of these applies. In the U.S.A. the blacks constitute 12% of the population, and the whites can afford to be generous, for they are hardly threatened. In South Africa, the blacks make up over 70%, and South Africa is not a colony. 

If the rights of the white South Africans not to be subjugated and thrown out of their homes are morally defensible, and separateness is a natural order, the perspectives become different. As human beings, the charge is firmly placed on us to mitigate in whatever way we can any hardships which might follow from these principles. But we must realise that that is the charge, not the abolition of apartheid. The road to hell here is certainly paved with good intentions, and the passage along it is hastened by the sirens who call from the sidewalks and encourage us to quicken our pace. Among these are the Churchmen who have chosen to devote their energies to social and political issue while the spiritual ones are left to take care of themselves; the African National Congress, the liberal conscience-hawkers; the communists, anarchists, anti-imperialists, Marxist/Leninists; the professional protestors; and those who make an industry and a living out of race relations, who trust upon us ad nauseam the rights of blacks without any suggestion about their duties. 

The blacks in South Africa are well-paid in relation to blacks elsewhere. They have trade unions, and are entering the ranks of the skilled and semi-skilled in appreciable numbers. They can own property, though only in designated areas. In South Africa, this segregation is de jure, in the U.S.A. de facto. There are other things, such as pass laws, identity cards, closed beaches et, but in the U.S.A. it is also difficult for Jews and blacks to get into social organisations such as country clubs except in modest numbers so as to avert criticism, and in South Africa there is a gradual but real erosion of these points of contention. There is no vote, the amour propre is hurt, and it were better that it were not so. But the ultimate concern is one of survival and power, and certain things remain incompatible, goodwill notwithstanding.

The ANC and Nelson Mandela should be supported

The most prominent organization representing blacks in their struggle against apartheid is the African National Congress. This is perceived by many as a fundamentally decent and authoritative body, with generally pro-Western sentiments despite some minor contact with the Soviet bloc which are no more sinister than those of the Physicians for Peace. Congressman Solarz, in making his powerful advocacy of sanctions, cited Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo as his authorities, the former being the founder of the ANC's military wing and the latter its president. In England, a whole-age advertisement appeared in the Observer on 6 December 1987, under the banner headline

WILL YOU PUT YOUR NAME TO THE STRUGGLE FOR PEACE, FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH AFRICA?

 In smaller print was: 

We the undersigned send our warmest best wishes to the African National Congress in its 75th Anniversary Year. We wholeheartedly support the ANC's justified struggle for a unitary South Africa with freedom and justice for all. We call on all British people to add their voice to the call for anew South Africa, a South Africa where human dignity and equality will prevail in the life of all its people. 

Beneath that, in heavy type, was the name of the Right Reverend Trevor Huddleston C.R., and then seven prominent people whose names would presumably catch the eyes. There were Diane Abbott M.P. Dame Peggy Ashcroft, David Astor, John Dankworth CBE, Sir Raymond Hoffenburg, Cleo Laine CVE and Stephen Hadley Q.C. Then, in ordinary type, came a list of about 1500 individuals and groups, including the Communist Party of Great Britain, the Chilean Communist Party, Haringey Trade Union Council, the secretary of the London Communist Party, and Socialist Action. Their presence of the President of the Royal College of Physicians came as a bit of a surprise. At the foot of the coupon which invited the Observer's readers to send their money was "This advertisement was been paid for by those listed above and produced by other supporters of the African National Congress". It was left to our imagination as to who these other supporters were. 

The ANC is in fact an organisation which practices and advocates violence, is committed to Marxist-Leninist ideology, and has political intentions which are anti-Western and totalitarian. Let us examine some of the evidence for this to be found in the public statements of its luminaries. I draw also n the article by David Roberts Jr. entitled "The ANC in Its Own Words" which appeared in Commentary, July 1988. 

First, Oliver Tambo. It is clear from Tambo's statements that he views the activities of the ANC as part of a world-wide struggle. At Kabwe, Zambia in June 1985 he spoke about "the liberation of mankind from the forces of imperialism and reaction" and the "the progressive transformation of the world, including our own region of South Africa". He identified the "progressive forces" actively pursuing world transformation as consisting of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries, the progressive governments and liberation movements of the underdeveloped world, and "the democratic movements within the imperialist countries". He linked the victory of progressive forces in Indo-China to the ANC's own forthcoming triumph over imperialism. Francis Mel, the East German-educated editor of the ANC monthly Sechaba, told his comrades in the East German communist party that "when you give solidarity to us, you are not helping some needy, poor blacks in the jungles of Africa, you are promoting your own struggle in your own country...because the liberation of South Africa will mean the weakening of international imperialism". 

For Tambo and Mandela, NATO is an aggressive military block, part of the American conspiracy to turn many countries of Western Europe into vassals of the United States. In 1962 Mandela wrote that applying "the great qualities of revolutionary geniuses like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin" would make of South Africa a land of peace, freedom and plenty: 

Under a Communist party government, South Africa will become a land of milk and honey. Political, economic and social rights will cease to be enjoyed by whites only. They will be shared equally by whites and non-whites. There will be enough land and houses for all. There will be no unemployment, starvation and disease. Workers will earn decent wages; transport will be cheap and education free. There will be no pass laws, no influx control, no police raids for passes and poll tax, and Africans, European, Coloureds and Indians will live in racial peace and perfect harmony. 

For Mandela's wife Winnie, the Soviet Union is "the genuine friend and ally of all oppressed people fighting the dark forces of world reaction" and the country where "genuine power of the people has been transformed from dreams into reality". She endorsed necklacing (burning people by setting rubber tires alight which have been placed around their necks) as an agent of liberation in her Munsieville speech, and the practice has been regularly extolled in Sechaba, over Radio Freedom, and by sundry ANC spokesmen. One of Mrs. Mandela's houses has recently been burned down not by whites but by blacks. She has built a large mansion, and has been engage with her American legal advisers and public relations organisers about the franchise of the family name. 

Roberts tells us that the ANC draws its inspiration for the future of South Africa

from the most brutal, incompetent, famine-creating and freedom-loathing one-party regimes on the continent. The ANC is on singularly cordial terms with the genocidal Mengistu regime in Ethiopia, which plays host to the ANC's Radio Freedom, and with Julius Nyerere's Tanzania, where the ANC founded its two party colleges, both of which practice Tanzanian-style indoctrination. Both the ANC's political offices and the headquarters of its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, are in Zambia, and it repays this hospitality by dismissing its host country's rapid economic decline under Kenneth Kuanda's increasingly collectivist politics as the consequence of "capitalist exploitation" and "colonialism". But the ANC has chosen to associate itself most intimately of all with the overtly Leninist states of Angola and Mozambique, governments which have given their respective peoples nothing but economic collapse, famine, and a totalitarian regime leavened only by corruption and incompetence. Both Angola's ruling MPLA and Mozambique's Frelimo have reduced the courts, the press, the trade unions, the economy , and, in brief, the whole of civil society to mere adjuncts of themselves. Neither regime tolerates the slightest dissent or even neutrality, and both administer justice through revolutionary tribunals and keep thousands of political prisoners in some of the world's most squalid prisons and "re-education camps". Both nations were agriculturally self-sufficient when they became independent in 1975, and both have since seen their agricultural output diminish by at least half. And both regimes are kept in power by thousands of foreign troops and by vast amounts of Soviet military aid. 

It is with such things that so many seem to want to ally themselves. It is for such causes, that send in direct antithesis to our own culture and our own interests, that the BBC devotes 10 hours of prime television time to celebrate Mandela's birthday and that has the effrontery to repeat the jamboree for five hours on Christmas Day; that Neil Kinnock, who pretends to the qualities of British Prime Minister, unveils a bronze statue of Mandela and travels those countries praising their ways and vilifying those farther south who are the bulwark of our proper interests in the South Atlantic. And it is for such reasons that the cry goes out to undo a country that has the courage to resist the cancerous advance of liberal and racist destructiveness. It is convenient, as the TUC honors Mandela and the good burghers of Newport, Gwent name streets after him, that he has refused to renounce violence. The new South Africa, according to Mandela, was to be created through guerrilla warfare in which nobody was to be killed, yet according to the prosecution at his trial he ordered 210,000 grenades and 48,000 anti-personnel mines for the ANC. 

Meanwhile the Soviet Union processes her diamonds through de Beer's, the U.S.A. is dependent for chromium on the U.S.S.R., South Africa has the atom bomb and has perforce had to become a major manufacturer of arms. Sanctions are proposed and imposed which serve only further to punish the blacks and to delay the amelioration of their lot. 

Oliver Cromwell wrote in 1650 to the Church Assembly of Scotland: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken". So should it be here, for the time has come for a re-orientation of thought. South Africa should be allowed back into the comity of nations, and the automatic obeisance to all things black should now be seen to be, in large part, a sentimental assuaging of misplaced conscience. 

Before he died, T.E. Utley visited South Africa, and wrote two articles in The Times, on April 13th and 14th 1987. He saw clearly that the conclusions of the Eminent Persons Group, to the effect that there would be a steady acceleration of disorder which would end in a bloodbath, were so much nonsense. He saw that the established power of the South African state was such, and its determination so strong, that there was no prospect of change imposed by force. He saw that one-man one-vote would last one minute, "after which there will be a one-party state, probably controlled by Marxist blacks, and therefore both tyrannical and incompetent". He saw, as did Alan Paton towards the end of his life, that sanctions were impeding the orderly progress towards improving the life of the black population, and he concluded by saying "My final message: For God's sake, leave them alone!".

It would be well to hesitate and consider what are the greater evils, for to destroy a country is a form of macro-vandalism, which, if it were to succeed, will go down in history as one of the more disgraceful and purblind actions of a blundering mankind. Those who are of real goodwill, who are prepared to think rather than repeat fashionable slogans, should cease to put their shoulders to this fateful wheel. 

This essay was originally published in the December 1989 issue of The Salisbury Review.