Seeing Apartheid from the Inside

...Almost daily, in print and on television, Americans are inundated with by now disturbingly familiar images: rioting in the streets of cities and black townships, police and soldiers shooting into public gatherings...

...In many respects, the situation seems to mix the metaphors of recent American experience...

...The choice for blacks between 'moderate' and 'radical,' as it isdefined by whites in Soutli Africa," Lelyveld reminds us, "is a choice between reaching some accommodation with apartheid and insisting on full citizenship...

...Along the same lines, I find a more encouraging character in these pages than any of the "free South Africans...

...We see reflections of our civil rights struggle, as well as of the wars in Vietnam, Iran, Lebanon, and Angola...

...Segments of the black elite are forging a stake in the system...

...Whites, for the most part, still believe there can be no shared political power in a unitary South Africa on a universal franchise basis without irreparable harm being done to their interests...

...A conservative and racist, the man is concerned only with his economic and personal survival...

...The "resettlement camps" are virtually permanent communities...

...We are given a definition of apartheid, too, that relates to the American experience...

...It is therefore easy to get caught up in the theoretical intricacies of apartheid, to be deceived by the smoke screen of a Western white capitalist normalcy and miss the human element...

...He is an Afrikaner farmer, a Boer born and raised in Rhodesia typical of the people we would have expected to draw their wagons into the lager and fight on to protect their privileges when the transition to Zimbabwe was already inevitable...

...Indeed, I agree with Lelyveld that he may have gotten to know South Africa better than many of its embattled residents, particularly the whites...

...State Department consultant South Africa has been receiving more attention in the past year or two than ever before...

...The black homelands, recognized or not by the world as "national states," are undeniable entities...

...This belief is supported by descriptions sprinkled throughout the book of those he calls "free South Africans"—individuals who have "positive moral energies that invigorate and partially redeem the present...

...In the process, he dispels the myths and irrelevant analogies whites use to defend their actions...

...Reviewed by Steven F. McDonald Former executive director, U.S.-South African Leader Exchange Program...

...It is, Lelyveld says, "not simply...

...If whites took the long view, they would be in a panic...

...atrocities being perpetrated against innocents...

...Reform, in other words, means stricter controls for most blacks...

...One nation's lunatic fringe is another nation's security police...

...He similarly demonstrates his awareness of the controversial Communist role in the African National Congress...

...That, after all, seems to me the best common ground we can hope for...

...Nevertheless, he has accommodated himself to the new order...

...the sum of various kinds of segregation, or the disenfranchisement of the majority, but a comprehensive system of racial dominance...

...Much of our confusion concerning South Africa stems from the fact that we are seldom in a position to evaluate what is happening there in any sort of meaningful context...

...Other illuminating insights bounce up at you from practically every page: "If you go around showing what you're feeling inside you'll be out of a job...

...And he registers his lack of admiration for the flaws in the political make-up of several recently independent nations...

...He also makes a number of observations that take the reader back again and again to the root of South Africa's problem: "Legal equality for blacks would lead swiftly and inevitably to the loss of white power...

...The outsider, he accurately points out, maintains "access of a kind on all sides of [the] various racial and political divides —as few South Africans can—experiencing the huge evasions of the whites and the helpless knowledge of the blacks, the willful denial of reality as well as its crushing weight...

...All they care about is their condition as they define it...

...In the early 1980s, returning for a full three-year stint, he was thus in a unique position to assess the results of the elaborate scheme...

...Instead, he leaves us with a statement of faith in South Africa's evolution: He believes the human animal has a will to survive...

...The functional difference between being disenfranchised and having an equal vote in a one-party state," he wryly comments, "gets to be a little subtle...

...We perceive a basic human rights confrontation in which the sides are clear, yet we are left dangling in uncertainty as Pretoria government officials and our own President explain the conflict in terms of East-West opposition and global priorities...

...Lest he be accused of pie-in-the-sky liberalism, the author takes care to express a healthy skepticism for the potentialities of the exiled liberation movements, citing their internal divisions and competing loyalties...

...His purpose was to put before the reader a set of impressions and to make urgent what is all too often treated as an academic matter...

...Lelyveld does not indulge in the growth industry of predicting future scenarios for South Africa, nor does he spell out specific policy recommendations on such questions as divestment or constructive engagement...

...Whites who talk about "reform' and 'change' are [not] talking about an end to white dominance...

...His best had been racial dominance, but he was learning he could settle for less as long as he could retain his personal independence and his farm...

...It was not the author's intention, however, to write a history...

...He has been, as his dominie preached one Sunday, "blessed with peace...

...In these circumstances, the black position is hardly surprising...

...white officials pleading for support against the"Communist onslaught...

...He shares with his southern relatives skepticism about black government...

...it is becoming more deeply entrenched...

...The central theme of Move Your Shadow emerges clearly: Contrary to what we may be told by President Reagan or Prime Minister P.W...

...they] are really searching for ways to make it more tolerable so it can endure...

...He even pities his South African counterparts for the struggle they continue to wage...

...Although a great deal has been written about South Africa, little focuses as sharply on the people, on their humanity and the truth of their daily existence...

...That objective has been admirably achieved...

...He has learned to accept the party representative and to deal successfully with the workers' committee on his farm...

...Whether or not you agree, you will be touched—and troubled—by Move Your Shadow...

...South Africa sates you with paradox...

...Lelyveld brings the whole country to life...

...In the mid-1960s, he was on the scenc lor 11 months reporting the major social and security legislation that was being put into place to structure the present-day apartheid, and then was expelled by the regime...

...A South African white friend of mine is incensed that an outsider would presume to write with such intimacy about a country that is not his own...

...Precedents of one-party states and sponsors with suspect motives are of scant interest to black South Africans...

...Moreover, since I lived in the country for three years mysel f, and continue to visit frequently, I can testify that Lelyveld conveys the immense frustration you feel in the course of a slay very well...

...Botha, apartheid is not going away...

...Joseph Lelyveld'sMove Your Shadow enables us to look behind the headlines, to discover the reasons for the contradictions, and to understand the puzzle of South Africa...

...But it is precisely the personal character of the narrative, the contact with the apartheid world Lelyveld affords us, that is the real strength of Move Your Shadow...

...Bleak as that picture is, Move Your Shadowsnds on a provocatively optimistic note...

...The last intends no cynicism...

...Joseph Lelyveld is a talented, insightful writer, and his journal is marked by a rare sensitivity to the suffering in South Africa...

...heroic church and community leaders challenging repressive authorities...

...Less apparent, prospective readers should perhaps be cautioned, are a few of the book's geographical leaps and historical references...

...The author served as the New York Times correspondent in the former British Commonwealth nation during two important periods of its modern history...

...Bits and pieces of background are scattered throughout, but they are incomplete and the uninitiated could occasionally find themselves overwhelmed...

...Ultimately, though, Lelyveld gives relatively short shrift to these issues— which are often invoked by Pretoria's ministers to divert discussion of the core problem—and I think rightly so...

...He certainly isn't full of sympathy for President Robert Mugabe, yet he realizes that "the best is the enemy of the good...