Why I Stay in S. Africa
Alan'Paton
uncertainty ensued and capital flight Occurred. However, as the state reasserted its apartheid policies, a consortium led by the Chase Manhattan Bank put together an emergency loan to support the...
...I have never met him, but he telephones me when something I have written or said makes him mad...
...Americans have had enough of intervention...
...And the better kind of rat has this twofold hope, that which is based on grounds of hope, and that which is a kind of courage...
...After he had read the headline "Paton thinking of leaving SA" he tele- phoned to say that I was a rat...
...A third--in my case the mo~t powerful--is the knowl- edge that one would be leaving the country of the Mandelas, Buthelezis, Suzmans, Naudes, Meers, and my friends of the outlawed Liberal Party...
...If corporations encounter an intractable state and hostile white unions, then disengagement might be considered as a second step...
...that American corporations already in South Africa, possibly acting in concert, should risk confron- tation with the apartheid system on specific issues...
...The Clark Report for the U.S...
...All of this happened after we had arrived in America and all I wanted to do was to be back at home...
...The visitor to Dachau is asked not to smoke, play instruments, or talk loudly...
...Unfortunately this approach does not challenge the fundamen- tal structure of apartheid--the legal premise that blacks are visitors to "white" South Africa's 87 percent of the country...
...I should like to discuss this proposition...
...This in turn will have a trickle down effect, thus improving living standards for the black majority...
...Their influence on the campuses is strong, and probably on the UN also...
...One thing is clear to me, that America would not intervene in southern Africa even if Cuba, and in the background Russia, were to pose a military threat...
...10 November 1978:715 By 1976 the book value of American corporate investment in South Africa was $1.7 billion, or 37 percent of our invest- ment in Africa...
...On my way home I made a pilgrimage to Dachau just outside the city of Munich, and to the university itself...
...I did not go to the crematorium, whose chimney dominates the fields with their lines of barracks...
...Am I to conclude that most of my friends are rats...
...A very mild version of this approach, in fact a version acceptable to the present apartheid government, has been associated with the Rev...
...But I did not find one American who did 0ot ridicule the notion that Mr...
...I felt I could take no more...
...There are more and more South African exiles in the United States...
...Citibank, Citicorp International Bank, Chase Manhattan and Manufacturers Hanover have been prominent in establishing this trend...
...I did not like the headline very much...
...It makes no demand for black political rights, offers no commit- ment to negotiate with blac k trade unions, and does not call for their recognition by the government...
...Mark's Cathedral in Seattle on Sunday morning, October 30, the packed congre- gation decided unanimously to send messages of encourage- ment and thanks to Beyers Naude, Theo Kotze, Dav?t Russell, Percy Qoboza~ Peter Randall and Donald Woods...
...Leon Sullivan, a black member of the board of General Motors and founder of the Philadelphia-based Opportunities Industrializa- tion Center...
...One is the painful change of life, the leaving of the country where one was born and where one learned the deepest mean- ings of one's life...
...Am I to conclude that Harry on the Bluffis some superior kind of being...
...Chase Manhattan has declared its intention to curtail loans to the state and to ventures in the Bantustans...
...In the thirties Albert Einstein left Germany to find security and freedom in the United States...
...Apartheid, it is argued, can bend on minor issues while white power and economic privilege are resolutely maintained...
...I was asked the question in Washington D.C...
...Today more than three hundred and fifty United States corporations function within the apartheid system, although three-quarters of the total American investment is in the hands of a handfulof corporations: General Motors, Mobil Oil, Exxon, Standard Oil of California, Ford Motor Co., ITT, General Electric, Chrysler, Union Carbide, Firestone, Goodyear, 3-M I Ill I I IIII I I I III Why I stay in South Africa I I I II I I ALAN PATON I HAVE an acquaintance, Harry, who lives on the Bluff...
...But I do not believe in hoping without grounds, and I,do not find the grounds very promising...
...Let me tell Harry that I have a great experience of exiles...
...Profits were enticing--in the vicinity of 19 percent--and, with the exception of other oil ventures, were II III I I I II I| II II .9 II II l more years than are left to me, and have experienced much suffering and desolation...
...they have no wish to have any part in it, and they cannot predict what its outcome would be...
...Yet others leave so that they can join outside forces whose pressure grows ever more inexorable...
...Another is the dread of admitting a kind of I I I ALAS PATON...
...Or is it one's duty to stay, because of those others who .stay, some because they chose and some because they must...
...But I do not deny that I have thought of it...
...In spite of their hostility I was conscious of their intelligence and character...
...This article is reprinted from The Tablet,Lohdon...
...A country where so many believe their children would be able to lead better and happier lives...
...He want off with a grim and unhappy face, but when I returned from America I found he had fought an election, and in a most unlikely seat, and had made a splendid fight of it, although he had lost...
...There are very few of my friends who have not...
...Citibank recently announced that it would no longer make loans to the South African government...
...I believe his hope to be based on the totally irrational grounds that the present National Party has the key to a secure future, that the Afrikaner can maintain an identity over which no other person or group can have any say whatever, and that ten different nations can realize ten separate destinies in one phys- ical country with one indivisible economy...
...On the other hand, an American Chamber of Commerce has formed in South Africa to encourage further investment and trade...
...In other words, Western corporations provided a conduit for modern technology and invested directly in mining, manufacturing and oil facilities...
...That is what I mean by the sort of hope that is a kind of courage...
...The question of going into exile is highly complicated...
...It is because of the total irrationality of this hope that I sometimes feel there will be no reasonable future at all, not until people have lived many Commonweal: 714 (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing), IBM and Caterpillar...
...Some live on the memories of the old...
...A THIRD VIEW holds that western investment has helped to entrench white power by providing additional technical expertise and capital...
...It is the fear that he is not that kills hope in us, But there is another sort of hope, which is in a way a kind of courage...
...Have I a right to choose not to end my life in desolation...
...I think this is far too simple a judgment...
...It is also argued that increased prosperity will make whites more amenable to change, and that foreign firms can take the lead in dismantling the most arbitrary forms of racial discrimination...
...Foreign capital averaged 8 percent of South Africa's gross domestic investment for the decade 1964 to 1974...
...The other would imply a continuing selfexamination, which I am certainly not conducting...
...As the primary borrowers have been the South African government and its state corporations, this capital movement has been a yet more blatant form of support for apartheid structures...
...I could not speak for it elsewhere...
...Black labor remains politically repres- sed and subject to the threat of increasing unemployment as the economic surplus is used for capital intensive growth, white educational advantage, white military and police power...
...Those in favor of investing further in the apartheid system argue that the associated eco- nomic growth will require an increased number of skilled black laborers...
...They were caught and all were executed...
...corporations paying t/~xes to South Africa when these corporations act inconsistently with United States foreign pol- icy...
...There are also powerful reasons for not going into exile...
...Others leave because they foresee a future of war and desolation which might or might not last for many years...
...Dietrich Bonhoeffer left the security of the United States to return to Germany, Hitler and more or less certain death...
...Some modest results have been achieved as Southern Africa moves into flux...
...Senate takes a comparable but firmer approach, recommending the denial of tax credits to U.S...
...But their hope is very different from that of Harry...
...Many of these believe Afrikanerdom will have to be destroyed...
...It is often called hope against hope...
...In other cases Polaroid Corporation has with- drawn from South Africa and the Ford Motor Company has chosen to remain...
...Christoph Probst wrote to his sister: "I never knew dying is so easy...
...A more correct headline would have read "Paton has thought of leav- ing South Africa...
...The attitude of the ordinary American towards white South Africans has hardened a great deal since our visit in May, June 1977...
...I do not think the Prime Minister and his Minister of Justice have any understanding of the depth and strength of the Western revulsion against the detention laws themselves, which because they deny access, encourage the use of brutal- ity...
...The questions are far too complicated to permit of simplistic judgments...
...More than 30,000 people died in Dachau, most of them Jews, most of them in the crematorium...
...Simultaneously our corpora- tions were drawn into close cooperation with the powerful public sector of the apartheid economy, into the state trans- port, power, steel and chemicals complexes...
...My reason tells me that I have...
...One would imply a firm intention, which I do not have...
...Is it going to cost the same to cure our own...
...I probably know more South African exiles than most people...
...we are only second to Britain as South Africa's largest foreign investor...
...And there are some--whites, Indians, and colored people too (though fewer of these than before)--who fear black government and black revenge...
...At St...
...It is this conflict that is so painful...
...and I answered that the first time I had ever thought of it in my whole life was when the unrest began in Soweto on 16 June 1976, and the small boy Hector Peter~on was killed...
...Over one hundred and fifty Roman Catholic religious orders, nineteen Protestant denominations and a growing number of colleges and universities are now active in seeking either a moratorium on further investments plus corporate initiatives against racism, or corporate with- drawal from the apartheid system...
...Is the Prime Minister outraged or is he not...
...To cure the racial heresy of Nazism cost years of war and destruction...
...So one sees, in the same city and on the same day the record of the most terrible event in human history and the record of one of the noblest...
...Pressures, it is argued, should be mounted in favor of married housing for African laborers, Black trade unions struggle to exist and are not recognized by South African labor law, yet corporations could choose to negotiate with them...
...However, as the state reasserted its apartheid policies, a consortium led by the Chase Manhattan Bank put together an emergency loan to support the South African government in its moment of trial...
...Both of their names are held in the greatest honor today...
...I am called a Jeremiah...
...That afternoon I made the second part of the pilgrimage, to the memorial sculpture at the university of Munich where in 1943 five young students, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Hans and Sophie Scholl and Wilhelm Graf, guided by Professor Kurt Huber, published the Pamphlets of the White Rose calling on the German people to throw off the yoke of Hitler...
...In addition, the slack in direct investment has been taken up by interna- tional loans with United States institutions providing a sharply increasing share...
...T HIS CONTINUING support for the apartheid system has given rise to further protests from Americans, including the voting of corporate stock by anti-apartheid groups led by the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility of the National Council of Churches...
...In an important conclusion the Clark Report goes on to recognize that stronger measures may well be necessary in the future if the South African government proves intractable in its com- mitment to the fundamentals of apartheid...
...One goes through the museum in a kind of trance...
...these young students did much to restore it...
...The Department of State regards with apprehension the possibility of war in southern Africa...
...I left Washington convinced that America has not become hostile to white South Africa...
...I II of ordinary Americans toward President Carter had also altered in these few months...
...But I do not see how to do that at this moment...
...They had no doubt of his integrity but were more inclined to question his competence...
...The euphoria was over...
...But some--black--are deter- mined men and women, who have one overriding passion, and that is to liberate Azania from white rule...
...And this to Harry is being a rat...
...Vorster could appeal directly for support to white Americans over the head of their President...
...West European, Japanese and American corporaA PATRIOT'S DILEMMA tions increased their capital and trading commitments...
...Loans or investments to the South African government, its agencies or for the implementation of separate development would fall under this censure...
...Recent political unrest and an ailing South African economy in which black unemployment hovers around 20 percent, have chilled the ardor for such direct ownership of the South African economy...
...The attitude well above the 10 percent average American returns from domestic or foreign investment...
...The headline "Paton thinking of leaving SA" can have two interpretations...
...Several major corporations including Ford, Gen- eral Motors, 3-M and Mobil Oil have agreed to follow the Sullivan principles which are as follows: 1. Non-segregation of the races in eating, toilet and work facilities 2. Equal employment practices for all employees 3. Equal pay for equal work 4. Initiation of training programs to prepare blacks for supervisory, administrative, clerical and technical jobs 5. Increasing blacks in management and supervisory posi- tions 6. Improving housing, transportation, schooling, recre-ation and health facilities...
...Yet at the moment it sees no sign that our government understands how to avoid it...
...A film is shown in total silence, except for the sound of weeping...
...Indeed these loans were taking place as the South African defense budget was doubling so that with 0il imports it required a foreign exchange component of approxi- mately $2 billion--an amount comparable to that provided by American bank loans...
...Some months ago P. told me in despair that he could no longer hope at all, .and I told him--with a probably unjus- tified assumption of authority, based on age, I presume--that so long as he was a member of the PFP he just had to hope...
...One has no temptation to do any of these things...
...Others leave because they can no longer endure the status of privilege which history has created for them...
...A second view holds that there should ~oe a moratorium on further investrhents...
...And some of them regard me as a rat for staying, living the fat, easy, corrupted life...
...One said to me: "It's time for you to die, so that we can get on with the fighting...
...A country where detention without access is unconstitutional, where political detainees are not treated with inhumanity...
...Has one a personal right to choose to go to a country where one can live under the rule of law...
...Some leave the country because their sons are about to come of military age...
...Hans and Sophie Scholl dropped their pamphlets from the gallery into the main lobby of the university...
...the author of Cry the Beloved Country and other well-known books, was national president of the South African Liberal Party until it was declared illegal in 1968...
...The reasons are the new wave of bannings and deten- tions, the terrible evidence at the Biko inquest and the apparent indifference of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice...
...From 1974 to 1976 the volume of United States bank lending to South Africa tripled to $2.2 billion of South Africa's total overseas bank debt of $7.6 billion...
...Some want to find a new life...
...But the heart has reasons also...
...It is Commonweal: 716...
...To Harry of the Bluff, P. would no doubt be the better kind of rat...
...The color-bar could be dismantled on corporate premises and high quality in-service training offered to all employees...
...Today the United States, its corporations aided by the Export-Import Bank, is South Africa's major trading partner...
...Elsewhere, particularly in Western Europe and North America, the issues are likely to be hotly debated in the next few years...
...I have often said that I would not leave South' Africa u~til I was convinced that change would come only by war, a war that in my view would mean the death of Afrikanerdom, the de- struction of the economy and years of desolatibn...
...That is the question which one wishes one could answer confi- dently, "No...
...I die without any feeling of hatred . . . never forget that life is nothing but a growing in love and a preparation for eternity...
...Hitler did much to destroy Western man's faith in himself...
...Implementation of such tax pressure would require the U. S. government to develop a set of investment guidelines and fair employment principles...
...These were hostile to me, because I was one of those liberals who only get under the feet of the opposing giants, who blur the real issues, who talk about justice and do nothing...
...Repression was further increased and the rule of law de- stroyed by a series of draconian statutes, but for the remainder of the sixties the apartheid system appeared to be a safe investment...
...Ill I Illlllllll failure...
...The debate on the pros and cons of economic disengagement is severely attenuated within South Africa where it has become a treasonable offense (economic sabotage) to argue against foreign investment...
Vol. 105 • November 1978 • No. 22
