South Africa: No Sand Left in the Hour Glass

They call Johannesburg "The Golden City," but it doesn't live up to its name. It is a predominantly ugly metropolis. Although a few handsome towers dot the skyline, most of the buildings that line the streets are old, undistinguished and grime-encrusted. A guide termed Johannesburg "a city with no soul," and it's hard to argue with him. There are several theaters, and pleasant restaurants where a good dinner costs less than ten dollars abound; but other than that the city has little to offer. And it is one of the world's most dangerous cities. Visitors are instructed not to walk anywhere at night, and to exercise great caution during the day, especially on weekends. A downtown neighborhood which contains a few leading hotels has earned the nickname "Murder Mile." Marauders prey on tourists and others and then melt into the lines for the buses to Soweto.

Soweto, the sprawling black township which houses most of Johannesburg's Blacks, suffers from the world's highest crime rate. "Most of Soweto is not fit for humans," declares Fanyana Mazibuko, a banned former Soweto school teacher. It is a dismal place. The government-operated tourist bus drives past rows of uniform dirty gray row houses. Outhouses, made out of strips of corrugated metal, squat behind most of them: 80 per cent of Soweto's homes lack electricity and running water. Barbed wire surrounds a school and many of the homes.

After explaining that the government set the bread or poverty line at 175 rands a month (one rand equals about $1.05), the driver said that Soweto's street cleaners earn 144 rands per month. The tour stopped at a factory for handicapped workers, where crippled and deformed men and women knit fishnet bags, clean foam, and weave tapestries on primitive looms. The chubby white director refused to divulge wages. "I never ask anybody what he makes, so I never discuss these matters," she snapped. One employee said he received 14 rands in July; another said he had been paid eight.

The tour proceeds to Soweto's most fashionable neighborhood, dubbed "Beverly Hills" by Sowetans. The driver points out the homes of prominent Blacks. The residence of one businessman contains 18 rooms and employs three servants. But even Beverly Hills lacks sidewalks and has an alley strewn with garbage. Zuko Tofile, who works for the U.S. government-run American Cultural Center, explains that frustration prevails among the Black middle and upper classes. No Black, no matter how wealthy, can live in a white suburb. The most affluent Blacks still must face poverty and despair every day. And they often are beaten up by other Blacks.

This situation proves that the government's policy of trying to build up a core of urban Blacks as a buffer against Black revolution cannot succeed. Even the most privileged Black can never forget that he is a third-class citizen. Every Black must live in one of the Blacks-only areas, all of which are miserable. Every Black must carry at all times a dark blue pass book. Unless this little booklet bears a stamp authorizing the holder to remain in white South Africa, he or she faces imprisonment or deportation to one of the so-called homelands, regions comprising the poorest and most overcrowded land in South Africa. These homelands, some which have been granted nominal independence, offer few jobs and make up only 13 per cent of South Africa's land area. But they are the official residences for all of South Africa's Blacks.

We visited one of the homelands that has received independence, Bophuthatswana. Garbage lay scattered over barren fields dotted with corrugated iron shacks. Our bus passed another jammed with blacks returning home. A cage surrounded the driver. The Sun City hotel and casino rises majestically out of this wasteland.

That evening, as we walked around the casino, I began to understand the mentality of South Africa's whites. Since Bophuthatswana is in theory independent, there is no segregation. We were surrounded by Blacks, some of whom shot hostile glances at us or appeared to be sizing us up. We had narrowly escaped being robbed in downtown Johannesburg that morning by a young Black with a six-inch knife. Except when he retreats to his home in the suburbs, the white South African feels immersed in a sea of unfriendly Blacks.

It takes an extra step of understanding to realize that these attitudes have been produced by the apartheid system, which the majority of whites tacitly or overtly support. Instead of trying to comprehend, it is far easier for them to retreat into fear and prejudice.

Prejudice certainly is widespread. Apart from a few extremist groups such as the Afrikaner Weerstands Beweging, which bears more than a faint resemblance to the Nazis, ideological racism is rare. Whites do not openly make bigoted remarks. The literature of the ruling Nationalist Party contains no derogatory references to Blacks. But little things slip out. An English-speaking cab driver, who assured his passenger that he supported the reform-minded Progressive Federal Party, finished a lengthy discourse on poor Afrikaners (of predominantly Dutch stock, Afrikaners make up 65 per cent of the white population) by saying, "Why, some of these Afrikaners are barely a step above the niggers."

Blacks find most of their white countrymen prejudiced. Mazibuko, the former schoolteacher, believes racism is rampant among whites. He worked with many whites who toned down their bigotry, "but it always surfaces." He condemns the lack of interracial communication. "In South Africa, it's racism that's reinforced by ignorance and the fact that when you're born into a racist society, you don't have a chance to make your own judgements," he said. Denis Beckett, editor of the new liberal monthly Frontline, offers a caveat. White South Africans are in his view no more racist that whites elsewhere. "When I go abroad, half the people I meet say things like, "Glad to see you're keeping the niggers in line,'" he said.

Talk of reform frequently comes to the lips of English-speakers. But the changes most of them are willing to allow come nowhere near meeting Black demands. Few whites realize that in the past couple of years, Blacks have come to insist on full equality and freedom. And they want these things right away. In 1979, Prime Minister P.W. Botha declared that apartheid was at an end. South Africans must "adapt or die," he warned. Most Blacks believed him. When his promises of sweeping reform proved to be empty, Blacks were extremely disillusioned--and more bitter than ever. Tofile of the American Cultural Center asserts that many Blacks are no longer willing to share and compromise with whites. "Now they want it all," he said.

Yet most whites blandly assume that South Africa will hold on to its present system of government indefinitely. A young woman who works for a foreign airline in Johannesburg doesn't think Blacks will be ready for the vote for at least another 15 or 20 years. A guide, who voted against the Nationalists in the last election because "every time they hold back (on reform) they're driving another nail in my coffin," opposes granting Blacks the vote "until they've been properly educated."

Others talk of a qualified franchise, based on property and prior education. Since many Blacks receive no schooling and few own property, this arrangement would deny most Blacks access to the ballot box. Even the liberal opposition Progressive Federal Party (PFP) does not advocate one man, one vote, although it would give Blacks some kind of representation. A staffer at a Johannesburg PFP office explains that while she favors one man, one vote, the party would lose support if it came out for equal representation.

Most observers have depicted Afrikaners as more hard-line and conservative than English-speakers. It is true that the Nationalists receive the bulk of their support from Afrikaners, and most of those who vote for the Progressives are English-speaking. Marijuana is widely smoked by English youth but rarely smoked by Afrikaners. But there is no fundamental difference in outlook. Beckett believes that only about 5 per cent of the whites desire geniune reform. The overwhelming majority of English-speakers would fight just as fiercely as the Afrikaners to preserve their privileges. The young airline employee confirmed this view. "There are so many of them against us....," she said. "We certainly need changes, but we have too much here to give it all up. We can't hand it to them on a plate."

She describes the fight against terrorists in South Africa as a battle against Communism. Other whites liberally stick the Communist label on Black opposition groups. Mazibuko finds widespread support among Blacks for Marxism, although most Blacks lack a good idea of Marxian thought, since Marx's writings are banned. But the blame for the widespread popularity of Communism must fall on the apartheid system, which makes Blacks so miserable and leads them to seek radical alternatives as the only way of bettering their lot.

The collision of white intransigence with Black aspirations makes revolution inevitable. Tofile expects a violent revolution to erupt within the next five years, if not sooner. Mazibuko sees a pattern of steadily escalating urban violence, with terrorist attacks on civilians. These incidents will be met with massive Government retaliation, which in turn will cause a mass, uncontrolled Black uprising. Beckett believes South African has about a 1 per cent chance of avoiding revolution. It will be a very long and drawn-out struggle, unlike any revolution in history, he said, adding that there has never been a revolution in a country with such a large and well-entrenched elite.

But most white South Africans don't share Beckett's foresight. As a colored (mixed-race) concierge whispered to a tourist. "They've got a revolution under their noses, and don't even know it."

James S. Altschul '82, who lives in Eliot House, visited South Africa this summer.