Herbert W Armstrong

The world has entered a frightening new era of irrational behavior. Recently, a train was bombed in Italy, killing dozens of people. About twenty terrorist groups stepped forward to claim responsibility, each demanding a share of the media's attention. And in the United States, an emotionally charged "moral crusade" has been launched, leading to the suddenly worsening state of relations between the United States and South Africa.

This state of affairs has far-reaching and potentially devastating implications. President Reagan is under the gun to abandon his policy of quiet diplomacy — called "constructive engagement " — with Pretoria. Municipal, state and university pension fund operators are being pressured by radical protesters to "disinvest" stocks of those companies doing business in or even trading with South Africa. In effect, the activists have declared economic warfare against South Africa. They have chosen the path of confrontation rather than cooperation. If they are successful in their efforts, the most dire consequences could befall not South Africa, but the United States.

American civil rights leaders, politicians and religious leaders demonstrate nearly every day in front of the South African embassy in Washington, D.C. and at consular offices across the country. If ever there was a "made for TV" production, these demonstrations are. Yet they are effective, as James J. Kilpatrick noted in his December 22 syndicated column:

A little after 3 o'clock every weekday afternoon, 30 or 40 marchers assemble near the Embassy of South Africa. For an hour they walk in a tidy minuet. At 4:30, the three honorees of the afternoon step politely through the police lines. They approach the embassy's door and symbolically seek entrance. Finally they link arms and accept an escort to waiting police sedans. A few minutes later, after the TV crews have departed, the demonstration dissolves....

These are demonstrations carefully geared to a society that feeds upon fast food. They are as thick as a sheet of newsprint, ephemeral as the image on a TV screen, but they have been marvelously effective. They ...have prompted the President to speak more forcefully to this issue than he ever has spoken before. The producers and stage managers have much credit coming to them.

An article in the December 31, 1984 issue of THE NEW YORKER was highly favorable of the demonstrations, specifically noting that clergymen are particularly active in this protest action:

Herbert Daughtry, chairman of the National Black United Front, stood on a wastebasket to make some announcements through a bull­ horn: twenty-five ministers from New Haven would be coming to New York on Saturday to face arrest; a clergy-organizing breakfast would take place the next morning at Union Theological Seminary; those wishing to break the law, peacefully, should come to a Brooklyn church on Sunday night for training. Then Daughtry read the list of those to be arrested that day — thirty-seven.

These clergymen are engaged in politics, pure and simple, though they no doubt believe they, in their own goodness, are doing God service. They overlook many scriptural passages concerning living and preaching a peaceful life, concerning respect for constituted authority. They reason they are obeying some "higher moral code." The result is disobedience, strife, and confusion. Yet, Philippians 2:3 counsels "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory." Also note James 3:16: "For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work." Envy is perhaps the most underrated factor in international relations. It is the root cause of strife and warfare (James 4:1). There are those in South Africa who covet the power to control the nation's fabulous wealth.

In a curious twist, many people who urge the Reagan Administration to slam the door shut on all contacts with South Africa and instead impose harsh trade sanctions, are the same ones who want Mr. Reagan to take a much softer line on the Soviet Union and to rush into arms talks. Columnist Patrick Buchanan, in his December 7 syndicated column, discusses the issues that animate what he calls the "hive."

Half the Congressional Black Caucus has now been handcuffed out on Massachusetts Avenue, yet, almost to a man, these gentlemen reacted to America's liberation of Grenada with rage or sullen resentment. Then, there is...Randall Robinson of TransAfrica ... who has as much trouble containing his hatred of Botha's rule as he does his admiration for Castro's.

The campaign against South Africa is beginning to build, to come together the way it did against Thieu in South Vietnam, the Shah in Iran, Somoza in Nicaragua, none of whom, let it be conceded, was without grave flaws, but all of whom were — in the climactic struggle between the Soviet Empire and the West — to the end, resolutely on the side of the United States.... The "hive" — that loose agglomeration of liberals, leftists, socialists, Marxists and Leninists ,...is humming with activity .... Teddy Kennedy has announced plans to visit South Africa ...to speak out. Jesse Jackson, last seen chanting "Long Live Che Guevara" with Fidel somewhere in Havana, hopes to get there first.

Western white liberals also refuse to reexamine their pet theories in the light of Africa's turmoil. DAEDALUS, an American arts and sciences journal, devoted its Spring 1982 issue to "Black Africa: A Generation After Independence." In one article, author Hedley Bull, himself a liberal, aptly described the detached head-in-the-clouds liberal viewpoint:

Western liberals...have never made the effort of imagination of putting themselves in the white South Africans' position.... Western liberal opinion may be regarded as irresponsible in that in condemning the course South Africa has taken, it does not consider honestly what the alternatives to that course are. The standard liberal critique of the policy of separate development ...proceeds on the assumption that the alternative to it would be a liberal, multiracial democracy, in which equal political rights were available to all... In any event, the prospect that all likely outcomes will be unsatisfactory when measured by liberal standards is not a reason for abandoning liberal endeavor.

The activists in America refuse to see the South African situation in any other light than that of racial experiences in American history. One of the best background primers on the crisis in South Africa was published in 1978 by Hoover International Studies, entitled "South Africa: War, Revolution, or Peace?" It was written by two of America's top experts on the sub-continent, L.H. Gann and Peter Duignan. I had the opportunity of briefing both these gentlemen at their offices at the Hoover Institute, Stanford, California, about three years ago. Here are excerpts from the preface of their book:

The "neo-abolitionists"...consider the battle against the existing South African establishment as yet another chapter of the civil-rights struggle in America, and even moderate journals have begun to speak their language.... We disagree with many of these assumptions and assertions. South Africa is not part of the United States; it is not Africa's "Deep South," but economically by far the most developed part of the African continent. Black South Africans — Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, and others — are not like black Americans. Blacks in the United States are English-speaking Americans, like most of their white neighbors; Zulu and Tswana, by contrast, form separate ethnic communities that are culturally quite distinct from those of South African whites or Indians. In many respects, South Africa resembles a multiethnic community such as Cyprus or even the old Austro-Hungarian Empire far more than the United States. It is like other African countries split by ethnic rivalries and populated by backward, tribal peoples. South Africa's problems cannot, therefore, be resolved along American lines.

Although Gann and Duignan don't carry the analogy further, others have made these comparisons: First, that South Africa's 2 million Western-cultured Coloureds (mixed race) are more analogous to America's blacks (who previously were often called "colored"). Further, the various pure-blood tribal African nations, in their homeland setting, should be seen more akin to the American Indian tribal nations (Sioux, Navajo, etc.). South Africa's critics, however, gloss over these very real distinctions and portray everything in simplistic white-black terms.

Authors Gann and Duignan take liberal churchmen to task for inflaming the South Africa issue. They write, on page 3:

Churchmen no longer lead protest movements against "Godless Communism"; few leftist students or university teachers cry out for the protection of human rights in the Soviet Union, let alone in North Korea, East Germany, or Vietnam. The liberal left argues that we should "understand" the communists, that we should not "provoke" them, and that we should try to soften their regimes by promoting trade cultural relations, by extending loans on easy terms, and by open or concealed subsidies. This is not the case with South Africa, however; for that nation world opinion — or what passes as such — instead demands sanctions, boycotts, and cultural isolation.

The Mad Campaign for Disinvestment

Throughout America and even parts of Britain the campaign for "disinvestment" (sometimes called "divestment") in South African industry is growing like a snowball rolling downhill. It began as a radical chic movement on university campuses, where activists strongarmed university stock fund managers to sell off stocks in companies (350 of them, often the biggest U.S. corporations) doing business in South Africa. The aim, of course, was to force the stock values in these corporations down so much that the companies would feel compelled to pull up stakes in South Africa. The fact that U.S. companies in South Africa offer the best working conditions and pay for their non-white employees means nothing.

Now the movement has spread to several municipal governments, including those of Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C. This will spread as more cities come under minority control. At least five states have also passed some form of disinvestment legislation. There is no agreed-upon definition of or limits to disinvestment. Some legislation attempts, for example, to force pension fund managers to sell off stocks of banks that lend money to firms doing business in South Africa. Some cities attempt to screen out, from municipal contracts, all companies that even trade with South Africa (about 6,000) not just those with plants there.

Pension fund managers are deeply concerned. They are being forced to get rid of high value "blue chip" investments, replacing them with stocks of lesser value. Pension fund managers claim they may soon be unable to buy stocks of 29 of the top 50 Standard & Poors 500 corporations. Virtually whole segments of industry are proscribed, such as automotive, electronics and pharmaceuticals. Fund managers claim the disinvestment drive seriously affects the balance their portfolios require. Hundreds of billions of dollars could be lost by the pension funds, experts claim. All for a "moral cause."

But disinvestment could be a two-way street. What if South Africa chose to halt its mineral exports, including chromium, manganese, industrial diamonds, vanadium, platinum group metals and paladium, to the United States? Or what if the U.S. had to purchase such metals from the USSR (the only alternate source for some metals) or from South Africa via the more costly third party route? The U.S. stands to be the big loser in this almost insane campaign. Yet business leaders are afraid to speak out, lest they be accused of racism. As the LOS ANGELES TIMES of January 1, 1985 reported:

For many of these [metals], South Africa is the world's largest producer and owner of the largest reserves, rivaled only by the Soviet Union; in most others, it ranks no lower than No. 3 or No. 4. Moreover, South Africa's role as the West's major supplier of such metals and minerals is increasing, despite the West's attempts to diversify its sources ...

"Ready or not, we are in a resource war ...with the Soviet Union," says one South African pamphlet aimed at Americans and West Europeans. The mineral crisis that is coming, South Africa argues, will be much more devastating than the energy crisis of a decade ago. The United States, it asserts, must "stop treating South Africa as a moral leper and look on her as a necessary ally."

"Where would you rather buy — from South Africa or the Soviet Union?" another government official here asked pointedly. "On whom would you rather depend — us or the Russians? That is the only choice you have."

On Sunday, December 16 (coincidentally, South Africa's "Day of the Covenent" holiday) the CBS public affairs program" 60 Minutes" presented a fairly objective 20-minute report on South Africa. President P.W. Botha was given considerable airtime; he emphasized his government's commitment to change — still with the bottom-line necessity of maintaining, as he said, "orderly government." Mr. Botha briefly explained his government's unique attempt at "devolving" power to the country's many ethnic groups. (It is strange, but the principle of self-determination is held to be sacrosanct everywhere in the world — except in South Africa, where all groups, so goes the radical argument, must be kept together. Why? So that there can be enough of the majority to effect majority rule by the self-appointed leaders who covet power.)

Mr. Botha's views contrast sharply with those of the radicals, both inside and outside of South Africa, who demand instant change NOW — an immediate overturn of power. Of course power to command South Africa's wealth is the bottom line, crux issue! Such wrenching, rapid transformation would lead to disruption and chaos — as the woes of the rest of Africa illustrate all too well. In the book BLOOD RIVER, referred to last week, a farmer in western Cape Province pondered his beloved but beleaguered country's future:

Change is coming in South Africa because it has to, ...but it must grow naturally out of our own traditions and cannot be forced before its time; because you simply cannot force civilization on people. Race, after all, is not the real problem in this country. How could it be? We've lived with race all our lives. It's the many levels of civilization that coexist here, from that of the tribal peoples, some of whom are truly primitive, to that of the most sophisticated and modern Europeans — all living cheek by jowl in one country. And because the least developed are in the greatest majority, it does not follow that it would benefit all to hand the country over to them before they are ready to take responsibility for it. Because to do that, you see, would not simply destroy white privilege in South Africa but the black man's own best hope for the future along with it.

Recently in San Francisco, I heard a speech by an American businessman and author, Lynn Casto. Mr. Casto had served in parts of West and East Africa as a business consultant, with the aim of encouraging the development of small-scale black entrepreneurship. He also traveled widely in southern Africa. His wide range of experiences altered his old views, which had once been, he said, "roughly labeled Northern liberal." With regards to South Africa, he told a Commonwealth Club audience:

There is terrible enmity between tribes all over Africa.... One has to make a large jump in optimism to believe that the South African tribes that were doing their best to eliminate each other up to the time the Boers calmed them down, have learned to love each other down through the years....

About five years ago I undertook to interview the Zulu leader, Chief Buthelezi. I traveled to his kraal in...Natal province. The chief was unable to keep his appointment with me. However, ...I was able to interview a sub-chief, a highly educated, sophisticated man. We had a nice discourse. During the course of the conversation, I inquired the source of the name of this instant city that was being built. It was apparently being constructed all at once. The name, he said, was derived from an important battle — Ulundi. It came to me then. That was the battle where Chief Cetshwayo, successor to the legendary Shaka the Zulu, was defeated. The defeat broke the back of the Zulu nation as a warring people.

The mention of the battle created a transformation in the behavior of my interviewee. His eyes grew large, his face became suffused, he drew himself up and virtually shouted: "The Zulu nation will rise again." That convinced me. I say forget voting. If the whites go down, the army and police will have Zulu commanders. I think that probability sends chills down the back of every non-Zulu tribesman in South Africa....

It is extremely important that we do not develop policy based on some unrealistic hopeful conviction that in the event of a relaxation of power by the whites the black populace will march into democracy through some sort of lockstep. The chaos-generating elements are far too powerful.

In BLOOD RIVER, Free State farmer Jaap de Villiers, quoted earlier, pondered the future somewhat forebodingly. He reflected the views of most Afrikaners, whose forebears settled in South Africa's vast upland plains (depopulated by inter-tribal warfare — up to two million dead!) — and who made a covenant with God to be "the instrument of His order in Africa":

"I think this must be God's country, truly. 'The Promised Land.' And it is ours too. God gave it to us and we love it and will fight for it and die for it if we must. We have claimed it with our sweat and our blood. We will not just go away. And so, we will turn to Him, ask Him how to solve this puzzle, because it is His puzzle. The puzzle of this earth. But He means us to work for the answers. To keep our faith, to stand if we must against the forces of evil. There are Cubans and Russians in Angola and Mozambique and East Germans in the Transkei. Why? What is it they want here? To take from us what we have built up over the generations on the pretext of helping the black man? It is not the black man they care about. It is the gold. The diamonds. The minerals. The riches of the place. But our riches are these riches," he continued gesturing to the sweeping land whose contours are etched upon his heart. "This lovely land. This place. And we have been helping the black in good faith. And so we must go forward in good faith to whatever is there, waiting in the shadows. Then, whatever comes, we will know we have tried. Tried to be just. Tried to be fair. Because I do believe in my people. I do believe in my country. And I do believe in my God and with that I must go straight ahead. Yet, if it comes to a showdown and we find the whole might of the Communist world and the blacks who court favor with it ranged against us, I do not believe we Afrikaners can sustain ourselves indefinitely. And that is what is so painful," he added, his voice growing hoarse with emotion. "Because I do not know what to tell my children when they ask if a war comes what will become of us.... Yet I know that we will fight, even after all is lost, just as we did in the past. We will go to ground and fight from the land until the last man is gone. They shall not have this country of ours easily...."

The liberal activists are ignorant, perhaps willfully, perhaps not, of the facts of history in this ethnic tinderbox of the world. Reacting to mounting pressure, President Botha, in a stern televised warning, recently blamed the United States and the Soviet Union about equally for many of Africa's problems. While Moscow promotes "the heaven of communism as the salvation" of Africa, he said, Washington has its own ideas to solve the problems of his country and of Africa as a whole — ideas, he implied, that are no better or more historically relevant than those of the Soviets.

Mr. Botha, firm but not inflexible, recently held a first-time secret meeting with Zulu Chief Gatsha Buthelezi. Government officials are reportedly even willing to talk to outlawed black power groups, provided they foreswear the path to violence. That won't be easy for them to do. Mr. Botha, by this process, also puts himself in hot water with his right-wing, who are suspicious of any weakening of power.

As for the United States, radicals are putting the nation's economic livelihood in jeopardy. If the disinvestment process escalates to a total economic withdrawal, the U.S. will be the one hurt primarily, not South Africa. European, Japanese, as well as South African corporations will gobble up the U.S. properties, "for ten cents on the dollar." This might not significantly happen during the Reagan Administration, but rather after four years from now. Senator Ted Kennedy is widely believed to want the Democratic nomination in 1988 (he sacrificed Walter Mondale to the Reagan grinder this time). Jesse Jackson has his eyes on the office of Secretary of State. Open U.S. confrontation toward South Africa will replace constructive engagement. Perhaps South Africa, by then, will have no choice but to greatly strengthen its ties to continental Europe, which by then might also be estranged from America.

As Mr. Botha said at the end of his "60 Minutes" interview: "I don't believe that you have love or friendship between nations. I think you have interests between nations. And I think the United States and the Republic of South Africa have common interests. But the moment the interests between states diminish, that moment they drive apart." The U.S. could end up in a seriously isolated condition.

— Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau