Moderates Are a Threat

To the Editors of the Crimson:

It seems that many Americans miss the fundamental point about South Africa: there is a struggle for liberation in progress, and any and every action that is taken in that country is a political action. Americans have only two choices in South Africa: they may work with the system of white hegemony over education, the economy, and the press; or they may respond to the calls of popular Black movements for the political, economic, and cultural ostracism of South Africa, and they may give money, and media support to the freedom struggle.

South African Internship schemes like Constructive Engagement represent the first alternative, they present themselves as initiatives against apartheid but are executed through close consultations with white South Africans. These white South Africans, like Professor James Moulder and Vice-chancellor Stuart Stevens of the University of Cape Town (a government run, almost exclusively white university) are direct beneficiaries of the current distribution of power in South Africa. There are many white South Africans who oppose apartheid but do not support Black majority rule. Their party is the Progressive Federalist Party, which contains the owners of the main gold mines. Such people, and some Americans, really oppose apartheid not I think because they oppose white control, but rather because apartheid makes the system of white domination unstable.

It is thus unfortunate that the Crimson in their Thursday feature on the South African Internship scheme sought to describe such people as "moderate," when in fact they represent some of the most dangerous elements in South Africa. Their role in sustaining Botha's rule is reminiscent of that of the German liberals towards Bismarck's regime: they are a "loyal opposition" which is unwilling to risk the loss of its social privilege by making real alliances for democracy with the majority. By being willing to participate in Botha's sick charade of democracy, they undermine the possibility of creating the South Africa dreamed of in the Freedom Charter of the African National Congress (1955): a land "which belongs to all who live in it, Black and white, in which no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people."

South Africa is not some extension of Appalachia where American youth can do social work. It is a country where the schoolchildren and teachers in Black schools are on strike, and where education is under direct and indirect state control. It is a situation in which you have to take sides. Let us hope that Dan Steiner and Alan Heimert when they go to South Africa later on this month do not lose Harvard or themselves in the crossfire.