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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
“Dear Father — Our Black People here have been quiet lately. I still think they’re doing -wrong by burning down their own schools and townships. Why not do it in the white areas?
“There are so many why’s about our black people, will the
S.A. government be able to answer it?
“1. Why is there apartheid in most churches except the Catholic church?
“2. Why does the black man not have the same education as the white?
“3. Why does the black man have to do a job and the white gets the credit for it?
“4. Why can’t the black man occupy the same position as the white?
“5. Why must the black man sit upstairs in a bus, when the white sits downstairs?
“6. Why in the first place did they bribe the black man and steal his land? South Africa belongs to the black people.
“7. Why is there apartheid in hospitals?
“8. Why, if there’s been a road accident, can’t the black man help the white?
“9. Why, if I take Michael to hospital do they first help the white and let me wait for hours?
“10. Why can’t the Black people work in Cape Town? — They must produce a pass.
“11. There are so many why’s who can answer it?
“I have two African guys working for me, and I love them. They’re well educated, decent and religious. I took Michael to work one Saturday. He played with them, walked about the factory with them and even ate with them — the white was astonished. — Do you know what the black man then said to the white? He said, ‘Sir, this child is just like his mother, his heart is open’. Then I thought to myself: Who’s child on this earth will play with a black man and eat with him.
1 Editor of the East London Daily Despatch, and the most fearless and clearheaded journalist in South Africa today. He is quite relentless in exposing the humbug and nastiness of the Nationalist party, and knows that for all Mr Vorster's so‐called pragmatism, they are participated in and boosted by the humbug and nastiness of Mr Vorster himself.
2 The one arch‐virtue for the Boer nationalist is kragdadigheid, strong arm stuff. Mr Vorster has a well deserved reputation for this. The proper English for it is bullying. He is very good at it.
3 South Africa: Dialogue or Disaster; the second of a pair of articles. The first one appeared in August 1971.
4 It is considered rude to call Afrikaaners Boers. But it is time we questioned the right of the Boers to appropriate the name of the whole continent for themselves and their language — especially when we note that this arrogant take‐over makes them refuse the name ‘African’ to the Blacks, and call them ‘Bantu’ instead.
5 I am not suggesting any comparison between Elagabalus and Mr Vorster. I wish I could do so. Had Mr Vorster, and Dr Verwoerd before him, resembled more closely this young Syrian voluptuary, whose chief interests were in racing stables and handsome stable boys, and who was assassinated at the age of 19, I am sure they would have helped to create a happier South Africa today.
6 These are stories one hears from Africans, In my “Arcadia” of independent Lesotho, I recently met Africans from the Republic, and from the affected townships.
7 African National Congress, Pan‐African Congress (both banned since about 1960); South African Students Organisation, Black People's Convention.
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