Herbert W Armstrong

Just as the agitators had hoped, the government of the Republic of South Africa this week was forced to declare a state of emergency to curb the violence that has been churning in widely-scattered black townships across the country for the past year. Thirty-six areas of the country were placed under the emergency rule.

Along with the crackdown have come the usual charges of "oppression" and "police brutality." Foreign reaction was swift, and for the most part, expected. The United States government said the South African government bore a "considerable responsibility" for the violence that has claimed the lives of about 500 people, because of apartheid (South Africa's policy of racial separation). The European Community issued its strongest ever denunciation of Pretoria and called upon it to end the clampdown at once. The Socialist government of France recalled its ambassador to Pretoria and announced a ban on future investments in South Africa by French companies. ("A cheap political move, really," said one Western diplomat in South Africa, noting that French businesses were not planning to expand anyway.) The head of the Commonwealth of Nations, Secretary-General Shridath Ramphal, labeled the South African government a terrorist organization and urged the world to apply sanctions to force an end to apartheid.

Overlooked in the cacophony of worldwide condemnation is what has really been happening in the strife-torn townships. The news media has, as expected, concentrated on rioters killed or injured by police — about half of the victims. The other half represent attacks by blacks on their own civic authorities, plus infighting among members of radical groups fighting for power.

Many of the victims of violence have been black authority figures — anyone said to be "collaborating" with the white government. Black councilmen, policemen, their wives and children have been brutally attacked, their homes burned. Some have been hacked to death, others burned alive.

Recently a TV news clip showed a black woman (a so-called collaborator) who was bound, dowsed with gasoline and set ablaze. While writhing in agony, she was repeatedly kicked by members of the wildly ranting mob. It was precisely because of the attacks upon local law enforcement officials and the general breakdown of order that the government felt compelled to act.

What is really going on in South Africa? Why all the unrest at this time, especially since the government of State President P.W. Botha in the process of instituting an unprecedented series of social changes? To obtain the answers to these and other questions I talked this past week with visiting political and business leaders from South Africa. These individuals, who represent a broad spectrum of interests and opinions, were visiting Los Angeles while on a nationwide tour of key U.S. cities. They were attempting to shed light — instead of heat — on what is happening in their troubled land.

Among the two delegations were eighteen parliamentarians in South Africa's new tri-cameral national legislature. These included representatives of the Indian and Coloured peoples as well as delegates from the Afrikaner and English-speaking communities. They ranged from liberal through moderate to decidedly conservative points of view. The visitors also included four officials (plus one businessman) from two of the black national states (homelands) within South Africa, the states of Lebowa (consisting primarily of the North Sotho people) and Gazankulu (made up largely of Shangans). Three of the officials were parliamentarians, the fourth was the Chief Minister — head of government — of Gazankulu, Professor Hudson Ntsanwisi. All those I talked to — black, white, Indian, Coloured — deplored the violence taking place. At the same time they were firmly opposed to disinvestment — the demand in some quarters of the United States that American businesses pull out of South Africa.

There was no doubt in the minds of those I talked to as to who was largely responsible for the current state of unrest — radical groups inside the townships (the white cities are unaffected to date) who have been inciting school-age and unemployed youths to violence. South Africa's pronounced economic recession has resulted in an increase in unemployment, especially in the Eastern Cape Province around Port Elizabeth. The radicals have thus had the chance to tap more "recruits" to their cause.

Often, the radical groups fight among themselves. Recently, four members of the African National Congress — an organization supported by the Communist Party of South Africa — were slain. It is highly unlikely that the police, as some charged, were responsible for these particular deaths. Officials I spoke to believe that those responsible were very likely members of AZAPO — the Azanian People's Organization, an even more radicalized black-power group that, unlike ANC, does not permit any nonblacks in its organization. The ANC and AZAPO are bitter foes — and neither of them cooperate with yet another group, the United Democratic Front. Each has its own exclusive vision of what a future black-ruled South Africa (or Azania) should be like.

The ANC, which is headquartered in Lusaka, Zambia, has vowed to make the black areas of the country "ungovernable." At its recent conference in Lusaka, the ANC called for a full-scale uprising against white rule. It urged black soldiers and police to "earn your place in the free South Africa that is coming by organizing to turn your guns against your masters." ANC President Oliver Tambo said that an intensified guerrilla war would make it difficult "to distinguish between soft and hard targets." An ANC official elaborated: "In the past we were saying the ANC will not deliberately take innocent life. But now, looking at what is happening in South Africa, it is difficult to say civilians are not going to die."

The ANC, in one respect, is fighting for its own life, in competition with AZAPO and the UDF. After South Africa announced peace accords with Mozambique and Lesotho last year, the ANC lost its main close-in sanctuaries. And the very reform policies of the government threaten the power base of the ANC.

Whether it's a result of the ANC or AZAPO, Marxist-style revolutionary views are taking hold. At a recent funeral-turned-political-procession, a speaker called for the establishment of a "Communist-socialist state" in South Africa and said that only an "armed struggle" could bring it about. Whites are associated with capitalistic "exploitation. "The hotheads grab the headlines but by no means do all blacks, not even the majority of them, feel this way. As the June 26 INTELLIGENCE DIGEST of Britain reported:

"In reality not only the responsible black leaders but the overwhelming black majorities are saddened and shocked by the behavior of their youngsters, stirred up to a frenzy by professional rabble-rousers hired by one revolutionary organization or another."

But, once again, why the revolutionary mentality now? The clearest answer came from a man whom I felt was the most eloquent of the parliamentarians I talked to: Salam Abram, a member of the new Indian chamber, the House of Delegates.

"There are," Mr. Abram said, "elements within our borders who do not want to see reform succeed." In other words, the pressure on South Africa, both from within and without, has come from the forces who fear that the country's new governmental structures (gradually admitting Indians, Coloureds and eventually at least urban blacks into the process) could, as Mr. Abram said, have "an even chance of success." Success would keep a market­ oriented prosperous society in the Western camp. The Marxists therefore feel they must turn those not quite in the system against the system before it's too late. (Foreign Minister Roelof F. Botha said virtually the same thing on July 24: "The elements that stand for a Marxist dictatorship have intervened," he said, in order to "stop the process of change. There is too much at stake for all South Africans to allow our future to be determined by perpetrators of violence who burn people alive.")

Never forget, added Mr. Abram, that the fall of the Western-style free enterprise system in South Africa is a major Soviet objective. To facilitate this aim, he said, the Communists turned the revolutions in two former Portuguese colonies flanking South Africa — Angola and Mozambique — to their side. Mr. Abram charged that Communists have made sizeable inroads into the liberal churches in South Africa. And why is Moscow so interested? The defense of the United States and much of the rest of the Western world hinges upon access to South Africa's storehouse of vital minerals such as chromium, manganese and platinum. The U.S. has no chromium reserves and limited resources. Yet this mineral is so critical that without it missiles, ships, submarines, aircraft and weapons support systems could not be built. With no domestic resources and no known substitute for chrome, a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Mines says, rather matter-of-factly: "The problem for the United States is one of national security."

I asked Mr. Abram whether he, like I, suspected the motives of at least some in the West who call for disinvestment of stocks in companies doing business in South Africa (in order to force them to leave South Africa). Of course, he replied. The most troubled townships have been those with the highest unemployment. If those calling for disinvestment of U.S., British, Canadian and other Western industries succeed, then additional millions of blacks could be thrown out of work — able then to be marshalled into the forces of revolution!

Adding to the suspicion of the motives of some of those who call for disinvestment is the experience that these South African officials had while in Los Angeles. While here they had the opportunity to speak with some area businessmen. However, most elected officials, especially in the city of Los Angeles, refused to see them. (The city government is pushing for disinvestment of its pension funds.) This is especially poignant in the case of the four black officials from Lebowa and Gazankulu. They were shut out, too. These two homelands have refused to negotiate independence from South Africa, a formula that the Transkei and three other areas have chosen. Their officials reject separate development and hope for a different formula of power sharing in the future. But they don't want one-man one-vote, either. As Mr. Serobi-Maja, the Chief Protocol Officer of Lebowa told me, nowhere in Africa has a unitary democratic state worked. Such attempts, he said, have all ended up as "one man, one vote, one dictatorship." This, again, was a black man speaking. The history of Africa, he said, is one of repeated domination, often brutal, of one generally larger group over others. Don't think that the 3 million North Sothos wouldn't be fearful of their future in a South Africa perhaps dominated by 6 million Zulus.

These four black officials (one of whom has read many of Mr. Armstrong's booklets) are all against disinvestment. And for good reason: Thousands of their own people have jobs in South Africa's mines and industries. These jobs and the economic well-being of their people are at stake. But Los Angeles city council members refused to listen to these black leaders. A black executive from Los Angeles who had tried to arrange such a meeting told me how furious he was at this rejection.

But more than the homelands are affected by possible disinvestment. Mr. Abram also stressed the importance of South African employment to the various small politically independent — but economically very dependent — states in southern Africa. In the mountainous highlands of Lesotho, for example, live less than a million people. There are no resources in Lesotho to speak of. Over 70% of adult males work in South Africa, mostly in mining, generating over 60% of Lesotho's gross national product. As Mr. Casper Uys, a Conservative Party member from southeastern Transvaal, told me: "Lesotho is a mining state — with no mines! " Swaziland, Botswana and Mozambique are also critically dependent on South Africa for labor markets.

Perhaps now you can see the impact of a U.S. ban on the importation of gold Krugerrand coins, a policy the U.S. Congress is considering. One of the leading U.S. congressmen pushing for such a ban claims that by no longer importing the coins, the U.S. will not be supporting "slave labor" in the South African gold fields. No statement could be more erroneous. Mine work might be hard, but the workers get fine wages by African standards, in addition to housing, transportation, health care and recreation facilities. At any given time, admits THE NEW YORK TIMES, there is a pool of at least 300,000 men waiting for the chance to work in the mines. By South African law, nearly all (97%) of the workers must come from the homelands and other independent black states.

The workers are by no stretch of the imagination "slaves." Their earnings support large families back home. Guess, by the way, which country does generate some of its gold output by slave labor? It is commonly understood in intelligence circles that political dissidents (as well as "volunteers" from former South Vietnam) work or have worked in the gold mines of the Soviet Union.

It's not popular these days to admit certain facts, but they cannot be avoided. One fact of life is that certain population groups or ethnic communities have taken advantage of the opportunities afforded them while others have not. For those who have not, for whatever reason (entrenched traditions, religious superstitions, tribalism) it is a temptation to put the blame on others, especially those who have accomplished much by comparison.

Assemblyman Uys, referred to earlier, comes from an area near the Swaziland and Mozambique borders. He shook his head at the utter shambles Mozambique is in today. Independence and continual warfare have brought nothing but economic deprivation. South Africa has to run Mozambique's railroads and harbor — in its own interest, of course. But even before independence, Mozambique was nothing to write home about. The Portuguese had run the country for about 400 years, with relatively little development. Yet, said Mr. Uys, forelornly, "Mozambique has tremendous potential, " especially in agriculture. Swaziland, too.

In contrast, look at South Africa's Indian community, centered primarily in the state of Natal. Mr. Derrick Watterson, New Republic Party assemblyman from Durban-Umbilo, recounted the early trials — and current successes — of the Indians. Their forebears were brought to Natal to work the sugar plantations that the British had established. (The local people, the Zulus, refused to work the fields. A proud warrior race, the Zulus considered such work demeaning.)

Eventually the Indians' womenfolk were brought over and a community was begun. But it was not until 1961 — only 24 years ago — that the Indians were officially recognized as being South African citizens. And only this past year did they get their own representation at the national level (they had run their own local affairs long before).

But all along, the Indians had worked hard. So much so, said Mr. Watterson, that there are probably now more Indian millionaires in Natal than white millionaires. Hard work — rather than depending upon the government to redistribute someone else's wealth to you — is also producing millionaires among Asian immigrants in the United States. Already, the average family income of Asian-Americans exceeds that of white Americans by a considerable margin.

In South Africa, even with past restrictions, the Indians have fared well. They and their possessions have been protected by the state — in contrast to periodic sufferings elsewhere in Africa where Indian tradesmen had settled. How soon people forget that Uganda's Idi Amin abruptly ordered all Indians out of his country in 1972. Uganda's economy has never recovered from this brutal expulsion.

I was also introduced to another very fine Indian delegate, Mr. J.N. Reddy, formerly the president of a bank in the Durban area. Mr. Reddy stressed the importance of the new parliamentary set-up and the tremendous opportunity it gave additional numbers of South Africans to solve their problems together. Assemblyman L. Wessels, an Afrikaner from Krugersdorp, added that, for the first time, whites, Coloureds and Indians were working more or less equally and that it was a good experience. The biggest challenge now is how to help the black African communities, to bring them into the process through, as he hoped, "peaceful evolutionary change."

This is made all the more difficult by the image the country has in the eyes of the world — and the news media. Mr. Wessels recounted that 47 of the 51 nations in black Africa are ruled either by dictatorship or minorities. No one pays much attention to minority rule (black over black) elsewhere in the continent. It's just that in South Africa, the ruling minority is a very visible one. Yet this highly visible minority is absolutely essential for the well-being of much of the continent. "We are doing business with 48 of those states. We help create wealth," said Mr. Wessels.

Conservative Party member S.P. Barnard, representing the Langlaata district in Johannesburg, added that he noted that the demonstrators in the townships, as shown on television, are always well-dressed and well-fed — unlike the appalling situation in Marxist Ethiopia. In the last five years, he said, South Africa has undergone its worst drought in history. Yet, there has been no lack of food for its people.

Why? he asked, adding that many African countries are "dying on their feet." A major problem, he emphasized, was not the weather, but planning — planning the infrastructure of the country, planning to save good harvests to balance the bad harvests of the future. As many other development experts have noted, the concept of planning for the future is not central to the thinking of most black Africans. Mr. Barnard urged outsiders to go slow with their demands for rapid change in his country. "Don't tamper with the clock of Africa," he said. Yet, this morning's paper states that the U.S. will pressure South Africa to quicken the pace of reform.

During the time I spent with these officials, I was struck by the good will and overall good sense they exhibited. Coming from a diversity of backgrounds, they all showed a genuine desire for harmony and progress. But internal security was uppermost on their minds, as it should be with anyone entrusted with maintaining public order. Mr. Wessels said that while he and his party (the Nationalists) are "firmly committed to change" to "accommodate the aspirations of all people," and to address what he admitted was still a "vast number of [black] grievances," the government must at the same time "instill a feeling of security for all groups." This is especially critical, because in South Africa there exists, he emphasized, tremendous "conflict potential not only amongst blacks and whites but amongst blacks and blacks."

This "conflict potential" has been exhibited, on a small scale, in the township unrest. Even Nobel-laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu recognizes this. Referring to the televised picture of the burning woman, he said: "When that woman was shown being burned to death, it was shown around the world and the world is full of people who support us. And when those people saw this they said, 'If these people are doing things like this, maybe they not ready for freedom.'"

The basic issue comes down to this: Will change come about through cooperation, or confrontation? The men I talked to are willing, regardless of background, to patiently work out their sizeable differences. And they ask only one thing, in Mr. Wessel's words: "Allow us to solve our problems ourselves." This is what the revolutionaries are afraid of. Moscow will be pushing awfully hard, even more so now as U.S. and European policies unwittingly fall in line with their own.

Even despite reforms, the social and economic gaps between white and black societies in Africa will remain vast. Assemblyman Barnard said that unfortunately not nearly enough blacks study engineering and related subjects in the universities; they go in more for the professions and the social sciences. Their interests and talents seem to lie more in these directions. The white man's technical skills will still be needed far into the future.

In the final analysis, the struggle over political power — who will rule, and how, and over whom — is central to the whole conflict. Arguments as to how better off economically South Africa's blacks are than blacks elsewhere in the continent matter little to those who crave political power. "Power" and "freedom" seem to be paramount concerns, not what you do with the power and freedom. And it is a sad habit of human nature for people to want to always compare upward, never across or down (which would make most people thankful for what they have). Improper comparisons (note II Cor. 10:12) unfortunately lead to jealousy, envy and strife.

The late political scientist Robert Strausz-Hupe made some very interesting observations in his autobiography, IN MY TIME. He had personally lived through the first colonial breakup in the modern world — that of Central Europe after World War I. He said:

In most parts of the world the peoples who most stridently demand self-government themselves contain in their midst one or several national minorities. These national minorities, too, can and usually do claim the right of self-determination — and so on ad-infinitum. Thus, for example, the Czechs as soon as they had achieved national independence and ceased to be a national minority within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became themselves the target of national minorities under their rule, namely, Slovaks, Sudeten Germans, Carpatho-Ukranians, and Hungarians....

Thus World War I, far from settling the nationality problems of Eastern Europe and the Near East, created at least three new ones for each problem purported to have been solved. On the reduced scale of European geography the conflicts of nationalism in Eastern Europe after World War I anticipated virtually every turn and twist of the drive toward national self-determination in Asia and Africa after World War II. I am deeply convinced that there is no such thing as "just nationalist aspirations."...

In world order under justice, a people should have the right to speak its own language, cook its favorite dishes, and enjoy the good things that its labor produces. And this is about all there is to the cussed business of national self-determination. If these conditions are met, then it should matter little whether a people flies a flag that is red, white, and green, or black and blue with a unicorn rampant, or no flag at all.

A "world order under justice" is coming — the government of God, to be imposed over the nations. Then the nations will be able to relieve themselves of the burden of politics, of endless majority-minority disputes, of the agonizing need to find humanly-devised formulas to provide equitable governmental arrangements for this group or those sub-groups (such as in South Africa, where all groups are minorities). One is reminded of the old slogan of the Greyhound Bus Company — "Leave the driving to us." Leave the instruments of authority and power in the hands of the government of God.

Relieved of the burden of politics, the peoples of Africa — taught also to respect and profit from each other's talents — will prosper in a future golden age.

— Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau