PRESS: South African Reality

...Well, there may be war all right...

...The South African economy is built on cheap black labor...

...If the oil is cut off, and if the 18 million South African blacks should cease to work, and if a black-ruled Angola, Mozambique, Namibia (Southwest Africa) and Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) should support black guerrilla movements in South Africa, how long could the 4.8 million South Africans hold out...

...Change, or else . . . the deluge...

...No contiguous black states, nor even all of them together with a leavening of Cubans thrown in, could conceivably match them in the field, and the only other states with the capacity to invade— the United States, and perhaps the Soviet Union—for obvious reasons either could or would not...

...Thus it seems to me that reporting about South Africa is, in its small way, contributing to a melodramatic distortion—change, or else—whereas the true situation calls for something quite different: an understanding that the only hope for an end to black oppression lies through a protracted political struggle...

...the international situation too hostile to outside military intervention...

...the injustice of apartheid is transparent...

...There is not much question this is the way it ought to work out...

...The Vorster government would crack under the combined pressure of internal rebellion, insurgents from the outside and world hostility backed up by economic sanctions...

...They don't say this explicitly, since the white South Africans they talk to seem about as immune to criticism and self-doubt as it is possible for a people to be...

...The bleak reality is that South Africa is too strong to be moved by force...

...But the passbook and tribal homeland systems effectively isolate the blacks, the South African security services are tough and ruthless, and there is small chance that guerrilla activity could ever do more than terrorize white farmers in the countryside, and deprive the white middle class in the cities of their black servants...

...That certainly put him out of action—forced to live in virtual isolation, prohibited from writing or even talking to more than one person at a time—but that might be interpreted as an act of desperation, one more futile attempt to hold back the black tide as it inexorably rolls in...

...Other writers go a step further and suggest that a combination of internal revolt and external sanctions will do the job...

...i voertrekkers the last ceninto a laager e and Zulus...

...But what I find myself wondering is, who is going to destroy it...

...In the December issue of the journalism review, More, devoted to reporting from South Africa, Daniel Shecter convincingly argues that apartheid is primarily a system of economic oppression, not just a particularly egregious system of racial discrimination...

...They are referring to the grimly stubborn voertrekkers who went north to escape the English in the last century, and circled their ox-drawn wagons into a laager when they ran into the warlike Matabele and Zulus...

...A liberal white newspaper editor in South Africa, Donald Woods of the Daily Dispatch, recently gave the whites a bit longer...

...White South Africans are rich because the blacks are poor, it isn't fair, and the system ought to be destroyed...

...In South Africa the white (mostly English-speaking) liberals, the black leaders, the increasing numbers of journalists trooping through the country, and even a few worried Afrikaners speak of the "laager mentality...

...The logic is not one of numbers, but of strength and it is the blacks, not the whites, who are most likely to discover there is no way out...

...But I find myself very much doubting that South Africa will lose the war...

...In a year, or two at most, the white South Africans would cave in...

...Reporters, and the public which reads their stories, both appear to be under the illusion that the logic of the situation means change, or else...

...The numbers were against them then, too, and now the Afrikaners, committed to white rule, are circling the rures seem to lillion whites, low long can illion blacks...

...He told Seymour Topping of the New York Times (November 13, 1977) that the black majority would be in control within four years...

...The power is a fact of long standing, while the resistance is something new, or at least has entered upon a Commonweal: IS new phase...

...Under pressure the white South Africans might elect to ease the oppression of blacks, but they cannot be forced to do so...

...When things get so bad it is hard to conceive of their getting worse—as they did during the siege of Leningrad, for example, in World War II—people look about them, discover they are still alive and go on with what they have because they must...

...White intransigence and black desperation do not leave much room for anything else...

...A well-organized underground movement among South Africa's 18 million blacks would necessarily put tremendous strains on South African society...

...As in any struggle, force of various kinds—external sanctions, internal protest—will play its inevitable role...

...The South Africans have a modern air force, an army of 250,000 men, the industrial capacity to arm themselves, and the makings of atomic weapons, if not yet the weapons themselves...

...Not only are the Afrikaners denying blacks the liberty and equality which is theirs as a human birthright, but they are actively exploiting the black majority in a manner so cynical, cruel and oppressive that the blacks are little better than slaves...

...If the Afrikaners fail to read the warnings all about them, the result will be war between 18 million blacks with justice on their side, and a minority of whites who will discover that technology cannot save them any more than it saved the Americans in Vietnam...

...and black chances for sharing equitably in South Africa will come to a permanent end...

...Not long after, Woods was banned by the Vorster government...

...I read it everywhere, and I have never been to South Africa to see for myself, but all the same I find myself wondering if this is really the way things are going to work out...

...South Africa must import all of its oil, and even though the Shah of Iran allegedly feels a residual gratitude toward South Africa for providing his family with a haven when it needed one years ago, why would the Shah defy economic sanctions against South Africa if the rest of the oil-hungry world should choose to impose them...

...the blacks too weak, divided and isolated...

...What are being forgotten here, it strikes me, are the twin facts that South Africa is militarily strong, and that white South Africans—in particular the Afrikaners —have nowhere to go...

...York Times irity would be r government re of internal vorld hostility ; after, Woods Fhat certainly tual isolation, to more than >e interpreted tempt to hold in...

...There is no question that sanction's would hurt...

...cheap black oil, and even residual gratis family with hy would the uth Africa if :hoose to imle 18 million >rk, and if a a (Southwest support black w long could appear to be ist friend in he Afrikaners r two at most, l liberal white Woods of the a bit longer...

...The whites are simply too strong...

...An oil and trade embargo clearly would be damaging, and while the white South Africans might forgo Scotch from Britain and cameras from Japan forever, and while they might depend for a time on accumulated oil reserves, said to be the largest, relatively, in the world (The Wall Street Journal, November 14, 1977), it is pretty clear nevertheless that South Africa would soon cease to be rich...

...They will fight as long as they have to because they must...

...But the exclusive focus of some writers on the injustice of the system implies a kind of conviction that naming it is enough...

...It is characteristic of journalists to slight the question of South African strength, partly because they are unaccustomed to thinking about power in a realistic way, more importantly because the story they have been sent to cover focuses on the resistance to that power...

...70 percent of the world's gold production—and favored by weaker neighbors...

...THOMAS POWERS...

...At the moment war seems practically inevitable...

...It strikes me there is something wrong with this portrait of events...

...It has begun to creak even now, with nothing more to contend with than scattered acts of terrorism, a student strike in Soweto, episodes of street rioting and a growing willingness among blacks simply to protest...

...lish-speaking) ; numbers of and even a er mentality...

...Not long ago a journalist friend in Washington told me the predicament of the Afrikaners certainly seemed bleak to him...

...Israel, for example, has successfully defended itself for 30 years against her richer and more numerous Arab neighbors...

...The hostile logic of the situation would appear to be overwhelming...

...The standard answers in the news stories and magazine articles I've been reading seem notable for their softness and opacity...

...Unlike the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique, the French in Algeria, the Dutch in Indonesia, and the British in India, the Afrikaners have nowhere to go...

...Some writers appear to think white South African society will collapse beneath the weight of accumulated injustice...

...The war might go on a long time, but it is hard to see how it could result in anything but death and suffering, and the extinction of black hopes...

...The only difference is that this time the white liberals, the black leaders, and the journalists all think the logic is too strong, the numbers too uneven, the Afrikaners too isolated for anything except defeat ending in black majority rule...

...if we can only see clearly how intolerable it is, then it will . . . somehow . . . collapse...

...American business has a $1.5 billion investment in the South African economy...

...But there is a gap between poverty and collapse, and I am not sure sanctions would bridge it in the face of determined resistance...

...and now the ¦ circling the wagons again, ready to defy the whole world if necessary...

...No matter how difficult life might become under the pressure of internal revolt and external sanctions, the white South Africans would have no choice except to endure...

...South Africa is both stronger than Israel— nearly twice the population...

...the Americans cannot carry away their factories and mines, but they might abrogate the commercial relationships which give them purpose...

...But once the political struggle degenerates into war the game will be up, the separation of the races will increase, will perhaps even become absolute...

...But the net result of stories about the forces resisting oppression has been a serious underestimate of the power of white South Africans to do pretty much as they like...

...If the black nations on South Africa's northern borders had a military potential equal to that of the white South Africans the situation would be different, but they do not, and it is feckless to imagine they soon might...

...Much the same might be said of the threat posed by internal revolt...

...It's a small state, but the capacity of small states to survive ought not to be underestimated...

...How long can 4.8 million whites hold out against 18 million blacks...

...I do not say that political struggle offers a good chance of amelioration, or even much of a chance—it is hard to know, from so far away—but that it offers the only chance...