South Africa
Muste, A. J.
South Africa Racial Separation in South Africa, by Eugene P. Dvorin. University of Chicago Press. 256 pp. $4.50. The Choice Before South Africa, by E. S. Sachs. Philosophical Library. 220 pp. ...
...The colored number a million, mostly in the Cape provinces...
...His criticism of the opposition, United, party is drastic and seemingly warranted...
...and that of the Indians...
...Though the Minister of Labor refused to appoint him, Sachs went to Geneva to argue his case...
...It represents those who have carried out paternalistic measures toward non-Europeans, and it does not want to tighten and intensify segregation as Malan and the Afrikaners generally do...
...Fortunately, both are readable as well as significant for content...
...Dvorin's interest in South African problems began during the war when he was there as an officer in the U. S. Marine Intelligence Service, and this led to intensive research in 1948 after the victory of South Africa's Nationalist Party headed by D. F. Malan...
...He then turns to a fairly detailed description of the condition of the colored (mixed) population under Apartheid...
...Beginning with a survey of Pre-Apartheid (segregation) racial policy, Dvorin proceeds to review the economic, political, cultural, and religious forces shaping present racial policy...
...The other especially interesting sections of this book to which I allude are those relating to the cleavage between the Dutch Reformed (Calvinist) churches which, save for the exception of a few individual theologians, support apartheid, and the other churches, with constituencies of British descent, and the missionaries who in the main oppose segregation and inequality theories and practices...
...He believes "several hundred thousand European workers can be swung into action immediately" behind such a program "if the United Party and the Labor Party, in cooperation with the free trade unions" joined hands...
...Reviewed by A. J. Muste PRACTICALLY every reading list put out by those conversant with the South African situation includes both these books and rightly so...
...The concluding chapters deal with the impact of the Malan policy on Africa south of the equator and with a statement of the issues today...
...Out of many illuminating items in Dvorin's study, I selected two for brief comment...
...Sachs' solution for South Africa is what we in this country would call a New Deal program...
...It should be said parenthetically that, although writing in a carefully modulated tone, Dvorin does not fail to make it clear that the Malan policy is profoundly reactionary...
...This, he believes, would break the hold of the Nationalist Party in urban areas and~lead to its ousting from office in the union...
...5.75...
...II E. S. (Solly) Sachs is the most prominent South African labor leader, head of the South African Garment Workers Union...
...In 1951 he was chosen, by ballot, to represent the South African Trades and Labor Council at the International Labor Conference at Geneva...
...The Nationalist success at the polls in 1948 is thus largely due to the fact that Europeans, especially those of Dutch descent, saw that "a point would be reached where the uplifting process could not be curbed —at any price...
...There is some very illuminating material on how virtually impossible it will be to carry out the positive aspects such as allocation of sufficient land for native occupation and use and the establishment of native industries, which are theoretically part of the apartheid program of fullest opportunity for native development, within the pattern of "complete separation" of races and "complete inequality between whites and blacks in both church and state...
...Out of the total population in the Union of South Africa, less than two million are European in origin, of whom 60 per cent comprise the Dutch or Afrikaner element, and 40 per cent the British South Africans...
...Sachs' book, The Choice Before South Africa, supplements Dvorin's and provides information not elsewhere available on labor conditions, the history of trade unionism in South Africa, and the history and role of the South African Labor Party, a minority group...
...The party believes in segregation and accepts the basic assumption of inequality of races, though not so bluntly and in quite so extreme a form as the Nationalist Party...
...This reviewer regards them as "must" items...
...But, Dvorin points out, "it is the United Party's paternalism and not Nationalist Apartheid which is illogical on the basic assumption of the inequality of races and the final goal of permanent white domination...
...that of the natives, rural and urban...
...Sachs is thus more optimistic about the United Party than Dvorin, who seems to me more realistic about the outlook for a country which has "two official languages, two capitals, two flags, and two semi-national anthems—and two Christian councils, each representing to the bewildered native widely variant interpretations of the Christian message" and where, to quote Dvorin further, "the course upon which the Nationalist government has embarked leaves no room for compromise...
...The proverbial fork in the road had been reached...
...the Indians about 300,000, and the natives, mostly Bantu, nine million...
Vol. 17 • April 1953 • No. 4
