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What the churchmen recommend It has been claimed for this report that it may become ca classic of

Christian comment on politics,' being 'the most thorough report ever made to the British Council of Churches.'* The question is whether there is not rather more than this that needs to be said. There is certainly no doubt about the importance of the opportunity that the working party were given. At a time when the light of truth was sorely needed on a sub-ject widely misunderstood, what might not such a body of respected persons have done to help the individual churchman to arrive on the problem of South Africa at a sound opinion of his own?

It was also in 1963, at about the same time as this working party was set up, that there had been reported in the press a statement in the House of Lords, on divorce law reform, by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Some-one had asked him, he had said, whether the church's approach to that subject was sociological or whether it was doctrinaire: and His Grace had replied that it was, he would claim, sociological (The Times, June 22

1 1963). Thereafter, there was written, by a South African, a letter to the Sunday Times (October 131963) voicing the hope that a similarly socio-logical, non-doctrinaire, approach might some day be adopted by the churches with respect to South Africa's problems. And the news of the setting up of the working party sounded as though this hope might even then be on the way to coming true.

But what in fact has happened? To the scribbler to the Sunday Times the report has been something of a disappointment. Instead of that open-minded concern to probe to the root of things for which he had hoped, what he has encountered, especially on the questions of separate develop-ment and South West Africa, has been evidence of a powerful anti-South African Government predisposition. No one can claim to believe that the I view of separate development presented in the report comes anywhere near even pretending to be an impartial portrayal. Even the basic assumptions of the separate development programme would seem to have been radically mis~onceived. As a member himself of the Anglican Church, the writer would naturally have liked to be able to tell people, 'If you find it in a report of the British Council of Churches, you may take it to be true.' This is more than he would feel warranted in saying with reference to this report.

There is evidence indeed, in more than one passage, of what can only be described as a disconcerting innocence of intellectual rigour. To illustrate this complaint one may point not only to what is said of the effects of apartheid, based as it is on incorrect assumptions as to the principles of the programme; but to the summary of the history of the South West Africa mandate; to the treatment of the '~omestic juri.,filliction' cl'ause in the United Nations Charter; as well as to the handling of several other legal issues. •~ advertisement in The Times Literary Supplement, March 41965

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THE BRITISH CHURCHES AND SOUTH AFRICA

Perhaps most disturbing of all a . responsibility to the reader . th' s sughgeshve of an apparent lack of

· . , is e none alance · th h' h quest10n is answered of what lt t' h wi w 1c the crucial a erna ive t e So th Af · would have were it to abandon its a . . ncan Government adopts as its own the proposal al p~rtheid p~hcies. The working party United Nations, namely that the g: y made m the Foot Report to the conference of the leaders of all ;ernmett should cal~ a round table figuring in the United . sec ions o. the population (p. 48). As widely recognised for ~:hhoonlsl docdu_mlent t~is s~ggestion will have been

. . ow 1p omahc gimmick th t · t B her~ ~t. is ~e~eated as though there might possibly be a w~sd::· a:~ eas_ibihty, in it: And the manner in which it is so advanced is conclusive

against th~ seriousness with which the working party have faced this part of their problem.

Most curious ~s the apparent indifference to detail with which they s~eak of the proJected round table conference of the leaders of all sec-tions o~ the South African population, a conference to be convened by the white Government of South Africa, for the purpose of arriving at a settlem~nt acceptable to a substantial element in each section of the popula~10n, and not such as will be accepted by any one section simply as a stepping-stone to more latar on.

An unconvincing 'solution' 1 A number of important questions arise from this proposal, questions at

which the working party might not appear to have even looked. Apart 6-~_.W. · rom deciding who it.i~ that is to decide who it is that is to attend such a ~!ZJS conference and what its procedures are to be, there is the question of

o,Y\ _~ '1 what happens in the event of the conference not after all arriving at a -rP ~vJ"~ · universally acceptable settlement. It is not said whether in such circum-

C\,...~af stances anyone will be offering to guarantee the white minority in South ~'1-~ Africa against anything at all. And yet the white minority are expected

to engage themselves in this hazardous adventure apparently on the off-lavS chance that something acceptable both to them and to the Africans

1Pf_":;;)t,r-ll will emerge. '- 6--~\lqrv e. , ~\. <'.) In the hoped-for event of the round table conference having resulted in

\ ,.,~'ft" o'f a settlement including a bill of rights, it is only a question, according to

1 ,..1 \.>"'\ >< the working party, of generating among the whites sufficient confidence

-~ x ~- in the value of the proposed international guarantee by which the bill of C- l~' rights would then be unde:written. They are astonis~ingly s_anguine on

ef)~, (p the possibility of generatmg such. c~nfidence. Was it not Just such a \

1 guarantee that was offered by Britam and France to Dr Benes after

.., J>J J.-'l) Munich? He, it should be remembered, showed scant interest in any ..,.R~ guarantee by the very countries under whose pressure he had renounced

cP'' ",o --:r so important a part of what with their bles_sing he had ~cquire~ in 1919. , X_ },.,S,,r Only after Britain and the United States will have de~riv?d white So_ut? (:JY' Africa of such security as she enjoys under the Constitut10n of 1909 is 1t

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proposed that these same countries guarantee to her what remains, if anything remains, of that system. Can it really be expected that she could feel much enthusiasm for such a guarantee?

'Under certain conditions,' writes Maciver,* 'the only possible form of government is some kind of oligarchy.' Hence, we may say, the South Africa that we know. And hence, let us admit, any South Africa that is to continue unitary and intact as a going concern. The only surrogate for a perpetuation of the system of white dominance must be either some such programme as South Africa is pursuing-of home rule all round-or else some alternative s stem of domination, other this time than white. In principle you could perhaps make a appy country by merging South Africa's plurality of peoples and cultures and customs and languages all into one-just as in principle you might hope to make a happy family out of Flemings and Walloons. But this kind of attempt was abandoned in the case of the British and the Irish, where surely all that was wanted was,

flkd1Jef \

on one side or the other, or both, a change of heart. It is on the possibility of a change of heart-on the part, of course, of white South Africa, and hers alone-that the working party pin their expectations (p. 23). A change of heart, in a matter which for white South Africa as a European community is a matter of life or death-whereas from neither British Christians with their perfectionist demands nor black Africa with its acquisitive aspirations is there the least thought of asking for anything of the kind. Yet for British Christians and black Africans it is scarcely a question of corporate life or death. The working party hardly seem to appreciate that what they are urging is a reversal, in South Africa's case, of that process of de-colonization which has recently been to Britain so well-advertised a source of official pride. In South Africa there must now, it seems, begin a reverse process-of counter-decolonisation-whereby the independence once conceded by Britain with one hopeful hand must be . re-taken with the other. Whose turn would it be next? India's? Ghana's? \

ti\ ~~o.L

The problem, simply stated, is that of securing the submission of white South Africa to the will of the blacks. It means not just the reversal of Afrikanerdom's gradual reversal of the verdict of the war of 1899-1902. It means even a reversal in the opposite sense of the outcome of that war.

, For it requires that the Boers be brought to surrender now what they 1L never were induced to surrender then, when, instead of being, as now, on top, they were almost at the end of their tether. J1..\! They are to accept this without fear, .for they are assured by the work-ing party that among the Africans there are those who will be happy to

S(.P~ 'k\..il \' co-operate with them in the interests of South Africa as a whole. But }l>:6 ..;!,_ "~ who is to convince the Afrikaner that those, the moderates, are the ones ,/ that an enfranchised black majority would choose to represent them? . -IJ~ I Has it always been only the moderates among them that have been '))\i · · ,' \ I elected by the Boers? t V '\Q)>~,1'\*~h;J'eb of Government, p. 191.

A ~ -P ,w~y~~f" ,f~~T

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~nly those, they justly concede, who will have to live under the alter na 1ve s_ystem after the ending of aparthe}d can really say what that ne; syStem is to be (p. 18). But is this an adequate ground for demanding a round table c~nference and simply leaving it at that?

And there 1s yet an~t~er caus~ for scepticism. Even if topics for the

? agenda ~ould be P_rov1s10nally identified, to whom would the verbal formulati1:1g of the issues be entrusted? Must the wages question be re-J oa---- ferred to 11:1 terms of 'exploitation'? Must the Afrikaner's concern for

:1 ") group-survival be seen as an expression of 'race prejudice'? Must the ,y.,.~- · · · defence of law and order be stigmatised as 'violence'? '.) The ~rika~er natio~al spirit, the will to corporate self-perpetuation \bo2

and survival: 1t was this that won for the Boers the admiration and sym-pathy of many-especially many liberals-in Britain at the time. A little 'i)'c.,,: pe?ple fighting for its freedom! Now however that the whites-which for ) v ff this purpose means the Boers-are merely struggling fo retain the .tUJ) freedom they eventually won, their very smallness as a nation has· be-come an occasion less for sympathy than for disdain.

\r Had the English been black, some people would surely have assumed ~Y that i1: t~e Iris~ wante~ their self-determination this was only because

\... 6:! · ,t'). they disliked being subJected to a black majority-simply because it was ..,_,- '9\/)--o black. That the Afrikaners object to being subjected to what, as it hap-? pens, would indeed be a black majority, is accounted for in just that way. rt. 'Oi

Were the Africans white, but still non-European and still non-enfran- l l'\ 0

chised, let no one imagine that they would eagerly be invited to share o.. < the vote. . c,J

The Britain at whose hands South Africa received the 'system' under which her many peoples have for more than half a century co-existed in comparative peace-it is this same Britain-unless indeed she be no

Ager the same-that is now to join in bulldozing that system away; and \ s with no sort of assurance that an alternative 'system' of any kind

oz..,1 1 emerge to fill its place. No assurance whatever: for the prospect ":f)fll" .1.~ c held out by the working party to allure citizens of goodwill is, politically

OJ"~~ '1) speaking, about as sociologically improbable as the vision of Isaiah. If the unreality of their concept fails to impress itse~ on even the m~st

y:-- Y }. casual reader, this can only be be7aus_e they have omitted to sp~ll o~t its ..,. _¢4 details. In place of an investigat10n mto what sort of a const1tut10nal

(',J 'settlement' (it is their word) could conceivably in practice result ~om their proposed round table conference, they content themselves with a banal reminder that, in theory, it might be unitary, or federal or con-federal (p. 48) (partition being ruled out as unacceptable to 'articulate'

~i~~Africans). But before anyone having the future o_f South Africa's pe~ples -,t,l) at heart could think of endorsing the round ta~le idea, he--:-unless soc19:11y

rt\ ~~V..., quite irresponsible-would need to address ?imself to t~s unrewarding \'' enquiry. The 'settlement' in exchange for which th~ wo~kmg P~Y wou~d '",,)~1/,Y wish white South Africa to surrender the keys to its citadel, 1s a utopia f~ 18

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in which, according even to the working party, only the man of powerful faith can be invited .to believe. They would no doubt have required con-siderable courage-both moral and intellectual-to conclude with an admission of defeat: a recognition that the solution of South Africa's problem-otherwise than by way of separate development-had eluded them. So instead they conclude with a recommendation that Britain and the United States undertake as if permanently to police a settlement which would deny to the blacks of South Africa the powers normally those of the majority in a sovereign state. Not a word here about the experiences and forebodings of the Turkish element in Cyprus. Nothing about the dispiriting lessons of 'minorities protection' in Europe between the wars. The only business, it would seem, that amounts for them to a problem is that of convincing the whites in South Africa that, given the proposed guarantee, they need have nothing to fear. But even supposing the whites could expect to feel confidence in such a guarantee, once they had it, what assurance.are they to have that the 'settlement' so proposed to be underwritten would materialise at all?

We must remember that it has got to be such a settlement as the Christian conscience can approve. 'No more grievous disservice' could be done, we read, than to allow any doubt about that (p. 67). And so the hiatus remains-the gulf in the working party's thinking: not a thought is spared for the all too possible contingency of the round table confer-ence, even were it somehow to be got together, resulting in no settlement of the desiderated kind. Contingency 'A': Success-and how nice for everybody. Contingency 'B': Non-success-and how very nice for peace-loving South Africans, white and non-white alike. All the king's horses would not be able to re-establish the prestige and authority of the 'system' of 1909-10. Henceforth the whites would rank as just one among the number of minorities as between which the grim battle for final ascendancy would have presently to be fought. Or would the working party then propose that the Anglo-American forces stay on as adminis-trators instead of merely as guarantors? Not indeed for ever, but for so much time as it might take to transport an unpredictable proportion of the whites to, say, Australia? (p. 76n.). The 'compassion' keeps breaking through! But it is not a very catholic compassion: for nothing is said of an eventual place of refuge for an equally unpredictable proportion of those two millions who are neither white nor black, and whose prefer-ence, as between black domination and white, there will seemingly have been no attempt to ascertain.

All this of course is mere speculation. But so also is the contingency-a round table conference-to which it relates. It is difficult and uncon-genial speculation, and it is wholly understandable that the working party should apparently not have found it to their taste. At any rate they seem to have eschewed it by common consent, leaving it to providence to supply a happy ending to a plot that just would not work out. Yet, while

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for Britain to renounce, say, her H-bomb might at worst be to accept a calculated risk, for Nationalist South Africa to forgo what is h~re ref err~d

'f'- to as 'white supremacy' would be to accept a calculated certamty. While citing Mr Strijdom substantially to this effect, the working party make no attempt to confute him (p. 45).

The working party describe themselves as offering 'a contribution to the study of a complex and intractable problem, the solution of which will directly affect future peace in Southern Africa and the future of the church throughout the continent' (p. 8). To just what problem are they here referring? Not certainly, as we saw, the problem of the South African Government. Is it then the problem of the ending of apartheid-that 'network (p. 42) of legal provisions .. .'? Yes, but only in the sense that a headache may be got rid of by the removal of the head. In their very opening paragraphs the working party declare that African dis-abilities call for redress (p.10). But what redress? Not it seems redress in the form of a mere cancellation of certain measures.

They do not tell us how the African powers are to be prevailed upon to content themselves with less than the replacement of absolute white domination with a black domination equally absolute; and to accept the inclusion in South Africa's new constitution of the proposed inter-nationally underwritten bill of rights. Nor what the bill of rights-so sufficient for the white man's protection-will include. Could it prevent

./l · the nationalisation of the goldmines? Or the Africanisation of the older .... universities? Why should not a black majority in South Africa be as free

· v to rule according to its tastes as a majority in Zambia or Kenya? When ,qp er>'_ has a bill of rights protected effectively the rights of a minority? What

_,.,., .. rP ,...."ift". bill of rights was ever expressly designed so to do? Is it not in the very '(A rt.£.9..1 nature of a bill of rights that it protects the right of all, so that all have ,; -U ~~11: , an equal interest in its enforcement for the protection of each?

~ /' Some matters for dissent f,~ It is not difficult further to illustrate what one can only describe as a

I, Jt tendentious handling of South African topics. The working party are ~ iJ unashamedly concerned about what might happen if a race war, com-

mencing in Africa, were to spread. 'This bell,' they say, 'could toll for us all' (p. 14). Their anxiety is natural enough. Is it not after all of the essence of statesmanship to foresee and to guard against contingent evils before they come to pass? Yet in the case of South Africa, when her statesmen are seen to seek means of averting that ~ontingent evil, the

o-~ su~mer e~ce of Afrikaner_ nationhood in an Africanist political order, his exercise of foresight 1s here referred to not as a man· estation o

:\~ wisdom but, pejoratively, as a 'defence mechanism (p. 12). It is almost as r9j South ~ca~s, were they rational beings, might be expected to react

m some qmte different way. The most that is here conceded is that other groups, similarly situated, would probably show a similar reaction.

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The working party refer without overt dissent to the disposition of ) African states to see in South Africa the symbol of all that blacks have suffered at the hands of whites in the past (p. 57). This must surely have included the traffic in slaves. Is it not perhaps just a shade parsimonious of the working party not to have commented that, whatever may have been true of certain other countries, South Africa at least had never any hand in that?

And, when it comes to separate development, the trouble is not simply that they disapprove of it. They seem content, almost as if wilfully to misconceive it. They see for instance no relation between the upbuilding of the reserves and the raising of the status of the urban Bantu, who, when he finds himself the citizen of a respected friendly neighbour coun-try, will have the means of having his grievances represented in Pretoria. From the way the working party speak of 'the economic non-sense' of splitting the factors of production, it would seem that they have omitted to ask what separate development is all about. Can they not have heard of Dr Verwoerd's proposed common market for Southern Africa? Might they not have enquired into the theory of the border industries, before pronouncing them inconsistent with the purpose of the Bantustans?

Their assumption that there is no question of genuine self-government for the homelands is basic to their case against separate developme nt. One might have supposed that they must all have beenfee!ing a special interest in this problem at least during the period of their co-operation as a working party. Yet it was in the very midst of this period, on June 5 1964, that at the head of the centre page of The Times there was placed a letter from Sir Hugh Foot (as he then was), acknowledging his error in having in his United Nations Report misdated by ten years that quotation from Dr Verwoerd on which he had there based his calling in question of the seriousness of the current offer of independence to the Bantustans. It is strange indeed that no member of the working party would appear to have noticed that letter. Nor, though they refer their readers to the recent book of Colin and Margaret Legum,* do they seem to have noticed the erratum slip with which, in that book, that same unfortunate mis-statement was withdrawn.

As attesting the opposition of Christian churchmen to separate de-velopment, they point to their participation in protest meetings against the 90-day clause (p. 24): this without the slightest attempt to establish any relation between the two independent issues. It is as if they had not comprehended what was the declared purpose of the clause, namely, to obtain the evidence on which to proceed against the saboteurs, for activities such as would be liable to repression even in countries where separate development never was tried.

Nor, when stamping as 'unjust' the 'price' paid for African labour (p. 42), and pointing to the high dividends that some South African ind us-* South Africa: Crisis for the West

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tries have at some stages been able to pay, do they consider whether things would be better for the Bantu if less flourishing concerns had to choose between employing many thousands of blacks at white men's rates, and simply closing down. The wage-rates issue they make to appear as if a question of morals rather than of economics (p. 45). And they see the selfishness of the white trade unions as almost equally accountable with the nationalism of the Afrikaner for the country's perseverance with its policy of apartheid. They are not necessarily quite wrong in this, but they assume perhaps rather too readily that they are quite right.

It is purportedly on the authority of the Roman Catholic bishops in South Africa that the working party describe apartheid as a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (pp. 88, 92). But, when the passage to which they point in the manifesto of those bishops is carefully read, what appears is somewhat different. What is there impugned as blasphemous is not apartheid, as such, but the pretension that apartheid is a fulfilling of God's will. There is a difference between my describing your opinion of the Albert Memorial as preposterous, and my so describing the memorial

,J\ itself, though that also I might do. The bishops may indeed have con-d>-~. 1 demned apartheid, but they did not in point of fact d~scribe it as a blas-

f'J ~- phemy. Odd that they should somehow be considered so to have done. •v,o) \ The working party refer to Bantu education as 'totally inadequate,' dwelling more on the difficulties of it than on the steps that are being taken to surmount them. While allowing that at the new university

0-~ colleges the buildings and equipment are good and the staffs keen, they ~Arl)\\! ~/,.. discount the possible benefits of a university life in the absence of an

.. integrated student body (p. 111). It is all made to seem as if, in the con-..Jl, o-~ ext of apartheid, there was no single governmental arrangement, how-

. .§', ,A{! ever well-intentioned, that could conceivably do the Bantu any good, '\ ¥f!) r *' no, not one!

(;!"7 d'JJ-, \ Why, one asks oneself, was it judged necessary to include these oddly unreliable sections on separate development? Would it not have sufficed simply to note that Her Majesty's Government was officially committed to an anti-apartheid stance, so that the problem of pressures for the end-ing of apartheid was no longer a question of whether, but simply of when, and how? Had it been the ambition of the working party to do 'true justice' to South Africa, or indeed to enable British Christians 'to enter into the real dimensions of the situation' (p. 31), they would surely have put more trouble into discovering what separate development was, and

, was not, designed to achieve. Given however that the working party JI#. -~ ))~ ppear to believe that it is the purpose of separate development to hold

_;d the Bantu down, and that the whole programme is economically non-, 11) -~JX'". sensical, and that there is no question of genuine self-government for the

(V- homelands, it is really quite impossible to know what their opinion of the i:,-'\ programme, had they better understood it, would have been.

As if in anxiety to play down the recent introduction of a first instal-

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- ;'( .r' ment of self-government in the Transkei, the working party refer to the ' legislature there as made up partly of Government-appointed chiefs.

~/ Then in a footnote they add, 'This is not to suggest the political situ~~ion in the Transkei is settled. Several chiefs have supported the Opposition'

-..: (p. 37n.). What is the point of this comment? Is it that in general the chiefs are Government stooges? Is it that a normally functioning parlia-ment, with a fully active opposition, would be a sign of instability? The remark is unexplained. Interesting, however, is their use of the euphem-ism 'several,' as if they were reporting an 'incident' in an air-raid. Actually one in every five of the sixty-four chiefs is in opposition. Here is instability indeed!

Who, from merely reading this report would have gathered that, if South Africa did indeed seize South West Africa from the Germans, it was at the instance of the British that this was done (p. 151); or, that by its very nature as a 'C' class mandate and not an 'A' or a 'B,' South Africa's mandate for South West Africa was never worded as being in principle merely temporary; or that, having been conferred upon a state itself based upon differentiation-with specific authority 'to administer the territory under its own laws'-the mandate will from the very outset have so to say concurred in respect of the practice of discrimination in the territory; or, that the Permanent Mandates Commission, the body whose function it was to exercise a scrutiny in the matter, must have been well aware of this? Nor, from this report, would the reader be likely to infer that in South Africa, if the blacks, through direct taxation, do indeed contribute to the costs of their children's education, they so con-tribute to the public cost of little if anything else-the roads, railways, posts, telegraphs, and other such facilities being nevertheless there for them to use (p. 108); or that, although on the goldmines the Bantu may indeed be housed in barracks, these premises are in no sense the 'police compounds' to which we find them likened here (p. 43). (If it is to the hostels on the Kimberley diamond mines that the working party are in particular alluding, they certainly must be ignorant of the sort of places they are.) Nor would it be inferred that, over and above their remunera-tion in cash, the African mineworkers, besides their abundant good free food, have free accommodation, free clothing, free medical attention and medical supplies, free hospitalisation, and free entertainment. To in-clude all these last mentioned items under 'rations,' as seems here to be done, is surely unconventional (p. 43). Nor; when 'a proportion' of white South Africa is said to be 'desert' (p. 35), would it necessarily be appreci-ated that the proportion was considerable and that much of the rest was like enough to desert to be cultivable only by the sophisticated methods of the whites.

Where, too, the figure of '200+' is given for African infant mortality ) (p. 43), not every reader will appreciate that, since the Africans are more given to registering deaths than births, the infant mortality rate per

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thousand births is strictly unascertainable. 'A mortality rate of more than 1,000 per 1,000 would,' it has been seriously said, by Professor Hobart Houghton in an address to the South Africa Society, be possible on the basis of figures so obtained.

, ., Much is made of the 90-day clause, but, since the Pan African Congress is nowhere so much as mentioned in the report, the account given of the

·~ r? cl~use is inevitably incomplete. That the purpose of it was to elicit ,~ 1 evidence, as distinct from imprisoning persons inconvenient to the CJ" Government, or without trial, is not stressed. And where importance is

J ff< _.,. a!tached to ':hat .'a police officer said unde_r oath' ~n a cert_ain. case, !he o>~-J · -".§ highly material circumstance, that the policeman m quest10n was him-"' .;-, self the accused person in the case, is omitted (one prefers not to say

suppressed) (p. 121). Nor, of course, is it mentioned that this officer, duly convicted of having tortured an African, got a gaol sentence of nine years and some strokes with the cane. All that the reader learns is that the officer said in evidence that torture was employed in police stations

\ throughout the country. That was a statement for which the Government have since declared that they have been unable to find any confirmation.

The working party do not question the Government's right to deal with .Ji: saboteurs: but 'a government,' they comment, 'which imposes inequality

':t?~ 1 uch as exists in South Africa and then denies so many of its citizens any "(" \ ~ onstitutional method of protest or redress is itself responsible for

J...o-_,"(;y c;reating forces of disruption' (p. 27). It might almost be supposed that the / ~ ,j.eD . , -y inequality complained of was something lately introduced, instead of , . \ ,'\141) '!' ... being a feature of the system with which South Africa was endowed in .L:~ c

4 . of' 1909-10. " S ~ -.,> They make much of a remark imputed to an unidentified Nationalist -i° ' "'J)vl

cabinet minister, to the effect that South Africa's policies are made the ~ \ ' more readily practicable by the attitude to South Africa of banks abroad (p. 78). The inference they seemingly permit themselves to draw is that were it not for such 'encouragement' those policies might not be pursued. So too both the main British parties are described as guilty of facilitating those policies. However it is specifically not for coercive measures that the working party ask. The mere dissociation of Her Majesty's Govern-ment from South Africa, reflected in what the Sunday Telegraph was to deride as 'holy pinpricks' (February 14, 1965), might suffice to detach from their support for the present Government the business interests whose friendship for present policies is of the fair-weather kind. And if the business world is not to furnish the Achilles heel, there are the churches, to whom, in a dialogue suitably staged, the sinfulness of apartheid might at last be brought home. Supposing all the Christians, or supposing a majority of the electorate, were to turn against the Government, might that not make a difference? (pp. 62, 96). Yes, indeed! But what a big 'supposing'! It is the merit of these conjectures that they do at least put the spotlight on to the obstacle so commonly overlooked by those who

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think, simply by scolding Dr Verwoe:rd, to bring him to a realisation of !h~ er~o_r of his ':ays. As in Britain, so in South Africa, a prime minister is inhibited by his dependence on an electorate to whose convictions he must ever have regard. And it is accordingly to the outlook of the voting publ~c, rather than of those whom presently they follow, that the moral suasion must be applied if in so fundamental a matter as the very struc• ture of South African life a change is to be engineered from without. The working party come commendably near to seeing, if not to saying, what the Legums do in fact so plainly say (ibid, p. 17): namely, that Dr Verwoerd knows that he could be displaced overnight ifhe forfeited the approval of 'certain groups.'

It thus is logical that the working party, impressed with the refusal of the South African Government to be deflected from its chosen course, should lay stress on the need, and by implication on the possibility, of a change of heart o~ the part of white South 'Africa. What however they at no point entertain is the idea of a possible change of heart in relation to South Africa whether among Christians abroad or among African governments to the north. And yet for South Africa the change envisaged l is in respect of what for her is a matter virtually of life and death, where-as for the African states it is merely a question of power and prestige.

They note that the Government seems unlikely to be soon displaced-but what they do not sufficiently stress is that it is to external pressures that, in the opinion of the perceptive, much of its lately improved local backing has been due.

When discussing the significance of popular pro-apartheid sentiment, the working party affect to see in the story of Algeria a pointer for South Africa to what the future has in store-heedless apparently of the dis-tinguishing circumstances (a) that the decisions for Algeria were made not in a local 'Pretoria,' but in Paris; and (b) that the colons of Algeria had not for their dynamic nucleus a people whose fathers had fought a war for that very self-determination which today they are being coun-selled to forgo (p. 68).

Important to their thesis is the assumption that separate development is unacceptable to the Bantu. In Britain, if Government planning causes ructions, the question wise men ask is not simply whether everybody is happy about what is being done. Rather they ask, were these develop-ments, with their harsh effects, really so very necessary? But where South Africa's policies are concerned, what is more commonly asked is not, 'Why were these things done?' But only, 'Have the Africans any objections?' And this is taken as meaning, 'Have none of the Africans any objections?' For if any of the Africans can be understood as objecting, all are. In one instance only do the working party recognise by implication that the voice of some Africans is not necessarily reflective of the feeling of all. 'Ar ticulate' Africans, they note, are opposed to partition (p. 50). But, if it is asked how many of the Africans in South \Vest Africa are

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