Thomas Pettigrew - Dynamics of Desegregation: Caught on the Face of a Cliff (1962)

Jeffrey Butler: The dynamics of desegregation.

Thomas Pettigrew: The ugly face of racial violence looks much the same throughout the world. This is Sharpeville, a usually quiet South African town about 30 miles from Johannesburg. This outburst happened one day in March 1960. Tenth government police opened fire upon a mass of unarmed Africans who were demonstrating against the restrictions placed upon them by the government. In a matter of minutes, over 60 African men, women, and children were killed and many others injured. Once the cauldron was tipped, other critical events poured forth. A fortnight later, the Afrikaans-speaking white prime minister, Andriek Vervoort, was shot and almost killed by an English-speaking white farmer named David Pratt. The nationalist government swiftly reacted to the crisis with mass arrests. Within six weeks, over 19,700 were jailed for every charge from political activity to violating the hated past laws by being without their passbooks. The tragedy of Sharpeville and its aftermath deepens when we realize that it was only the most extreme and best publicized incident of a long series of violent racial outbursts. Indeed, the past decade in South Africa can best be described as a seething era of rising African expectations matched by rising white fears. A closer look at this troubled land, 9,000 miles away, offers us rare insights into our own American racial problems. Alan Paton, the noted South African author of Cry the Beloved Country, puts it this way. A man is caught on the face of a cliff. As he sees it, he cannot go down. And if he stays where he is, he will die. All those who stand watching him have pity for him. But the analogy, alas, is obviously incomplete. For the world's spectators of our drama are seldom pitiful. They are more often reproachful. From their point of vantage, they can see us taking some other way which will lead us to destruction. And the world looks at us in astonishment, wondering what madness has blessed us. Caught on the face of a cliff, a perilous, desperate plight in which approximately 15 million South Africans find themselves today. Slightly over 3 million are white. About 60% of these whites are Afrikaners or Boers, largely the rugged descendants of the early Dutch settlers. These people are zealously proud of their own unique culture and their own language, Afrikaans, a simplified version of Dutch with French, English, and Malayan influences. The remaining 40% of the whites are English-speaking South Africans, largely the descendants of 19th century English settlers. But there are four non-white South Africans for every white. Over 10 million of these non-whites are black Africans, frequently called Bantu because the great majority of them come from tribes whose cultures are part of the vast Bantu language group. Another non-white group is the coloreds, made up of almost a million and a half mulattoes, who are treated as a socially and legally separate group in South Africa. Products of Africana, African, and Malayan stock, the handsome coloreds are perhaps the most troubled group in all of this troubled nation. For until recently, they mostly spoke Afrikaans, identified strongly with the whites, and sought full acceptance in the white community. Now, stripped of the vote like all other non-whites and rejected by whites, they're making their first tentative moves toward alignment with the Africans. The fifth major group in South Africa is the half million Indians, over four-fifths of whom are dark Hindus who descend from the low caste Indians brought to South Africa in the late 19th century by the English to work in the sugar fields. Split themselves by religion, the Indians too are just now beginning to identify with the militant aspirations of the Africans. South Africa is marked not only by a heterogeneous population but also by a turbulent past From the Western point of view, it all began two generations after our own Jamestown. The Dutch colonists van Riebeck landed at Cape Point in 1652 to set up a permanent station to supply India-bound ships with scurvy preventing fresh foods. He imposed a type of segregation from the very beginning, now called in South Africa apartheid. Slavery too became commonplace. In 1807, the British seized the Cape, and in 1836, they abolished slavery. Many Afrikaners, angry at the British and restless for more land, pushed out on a great trek, a miniature version of the American Western Trek, with the same type of covered wagons and other frontier artifacts. Instead of Indians, these Voortrekkers, the Afrikaans equivalent for pioneers, had to fight off attacking Bantu, who were themselves pushing down from the northeast in search for land. Eventually, the Voortrekkers set up two independent republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, leaving the lush coastal areas to English settlement. Near the close of the 19th century, gold was discovered in the Transvaal, and adventurers, particularly English adventurers, flocked to the isolated nation. Soon the inevitable happened. War broke out between the British and the Afrikaners. The best known personalities in this Anglo-Boer War were a brassy young English newspaper man named Winston Churchill and his captor from whom he escaped, Jan Smuts, who later became the prime minister of South Africa and ultimately one of the founders of the United Nations. After the British victory in the Anglo-Boer War, a fair and equitable peace was arrived at with union of the four provinces, the Cape, Natal, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal, taking place in 1909, 1910, forming a nation the size of Texas, California, and Pennsylvania combined, From 1911 to 1948, there was some political cooperation between the two white groups, but little mass contact since the Afrikaners were then a dominantly rural agricultural people and the English an urban mercantile and industrial people. But while the two white groups achieved an uneasy political harmony, extremely little was done to develop a harmonious multiracial state. In 1948, the present nationalist government slipped into power in spite of receiving a minority of the popular vote. It won on the strength of two battle cries, even more complete racial apartheid and the formation of a republic outside of the British Commonwealth. And unlike most politicians, the present government has made good on both of its promises. Its stringent racist policies have led directly to Sharpeville, just as we've seen in the present crisis. To keep its second pledge, it left the Commonwealth and became a republic in 1961. Even this all too brief historical sketch of South Africa suggests interesting and important comparisons with our own country, particularly the South. But before drawing such comparisons, let's consult a staff member of Boston University's African Study Center, Dr. Jeffrey Butler, a South African himself. Instead of looking at your country, South Africa, through our provincial American eyes and comparing it with our South, what are the things you think Americans must know and understand, fully appreciate? What's going on in South Africa?

Jeffrey Butler: Well, I think there are three things, really. First, the white population in South Africa is an overwhelming minority. Secondly, South Africa is not a wealthy country like America, even though the whites seem on a comparable scale of living. And thirdly, Africa has been revolutionized in the last 10 years all around it.

Thomas Pettigrew: What about the whites in South Africa? You call them Europeans, I believe. I've never understood that terminology completely. The bottom of Africa, and you call them Europeans. But are they really united in this thing?

Jeffrey Butler: Well, the real difference, I think, with the Deep South is the depth of the division between South African whites. I know American whites are divided, but South African whites are divided on the grounds of language, they have different attitudes to politics, and they are at least organized into different churches, and I think the religious outlook is fundamentally different.

Thomas Pettigrew: This split, do you think, goes right through the whole way of life, style of life people have?

Jeffrey Butler: Oh yes, I think so. I think the segregation of Englishmen from Afrikaners from each other is immense. It's spontaneous. It's not by law, but it is extremely extensive, and I think the The thing that explains a lot of South African political life is the determination of Afrikaners to preserve their cultural identity. Now, what people often forget is that this determination to control the state in the interest of preserving themselves is that this action has been directed as much against Englishmen in the past as it has against Africans. And that until recently, it's been the Englishman who's been the serious threat to Afrikaners, not the African. The Englishman with his world language, with a vigorous and highly developed culture. has been there as a constant threat to the cultural survival of a tiny community with a unique language.

Thomas Pettigrew: Is the Englishman seen as sort of a city slicker in the Afrikaner?

Jeffrey Butler: Yes, he's a city slicker, but he's an alien, and he has tried in the past, militarily and culturally, to destroy Afrikanerdom. This is an historical fact, and this is something which is not forgotten. But what is interesting is that in the last 10 years or so, the two threats have become one. That is, Africa has been revolutionized, the African can no longer be ignored, and the major threat is now becoming an African, not an Englishman threat. And in one sense, Africans see these two outsiders as threatening them together. And one illustration of this came in the Bantu Education Act, which was a major piece of legislation five years ago, In that act, the control of African education was taken out of the hands of the missionaries and put in the hands of a government department. And one Afrikaner minister said that Israel's indictment of missionary education was not that it was training Africans badly, but that it was turning Africans into black Englishmen.

Thomas Pettigrew: You mentioned the government. Now, the government is in, I take it, complete control of the Afrikaans-speaking people, is that right?

Jeffrey Butler: Yes, I mean, the government is an Afrikaner-based government. It's an Afrikaner party, and it governs a country in which The bulk of the white population agree on policies of white supremacy, though it might be argued that English-speaking South Africans are a little bit more flexible.

Thomas Pettigrew: It'd be difficult to make that case, I think. Or would you say more paternalistic?

Jeffrey Butler: Yes, more paternalistic, but I think faced with the sort of pressures that Reducians and Kenyans have been faced, they might have shown more accommodation. I'm not sure. But the one thing that has the real tragedy of South Africa, of course, is that that through all kinds of education and very rapid industrial and social development, you've produced in South Africa a group of educated Africans, highly sophisticated group, much more sophisticated, I think, than their West African contemporaries. But in South African life, they have been denied the chance to take a part in the total community. And the whole attempt of government policy is to try and get them to develop within an African community, which is within a larger South African state, but without major say in policy like foreign policy or income tax or that sort of thing.

Thomas Pettigrew: But these highly educated Africans are really Western there, aren't they, by virtue of their education? Oh, yes. They're asking them to go back to a tribal state which they've left. Yes.

Jeffrey Butler: Oh yes, that is quite clearly so. They are completely westernized and sophisticated people. One can see this very clearly in talking to them.

Thomas Pettigrew: Is there a great irony here that Somehow West Africa got its freedom first but may well have had less capable or at least less trained leaders than South Africa among the Africans Well, yes, I think so South Africa had the chance

Jeffrey Butler: one might say, for a slow and ordered development, a better chance than the rest of Africa. That is, educated people existed, a system of devolution of power could have taken place. But it didn't, it didn't, and the longer it's delayed, and the development of a really revolutionary situation in Africa, outside South Africa, the longer the integration, failure to politically integrate these people, it's not so much social integration, but political integration that counts, is delayed the more the pressures would increase.

Thomas Pettigrew: Well, if I could ask you, Dr. Butler, something I think a lot of Americans have wondered about, What is the influence of our race relations turmoil, particularly in our deep South? Has that had any influence whatsoever on race relations in your country?

Jeffrey Butler: Well, this is an interesting question. Since World War II, the isolation of South Africa has been entirely destroyed. It's destroyed in the sense that people from outside are looking in, and the South Africans themselves are watching the outside world very closely now, in a way they never did before. And everybody looks to the Deep South to read into the Deep South exactly what they want to read. And, oh, Little Rock atrocities or whatever you would call them are given front-page coverage in South African newspapers.

Thomas Pettigrew: Does this sort of reassure them?

Jeffrey Butler: I mean, they weren't the only ones with a sharp wheel? Oh, well, the Deep South reassures a great number of South African whites. It proves them that this is the sort of thing that happens if you try and integrate. Every school riot and the rest of it will be covered. In the reverse... In the reverse direction, of course, the Deep South watches South Africa very closely. I was sent a whole batch of news cuttings when South Africa left the Commonwealth from Deep Southern newspapers, all saying, well, this shows that there's at least one white man's country.

Thomas Pettigrew: You thought it was a good thing you were leaving the Commonwealth. Oh, yes, a lot of them thought this was clear. The secession 100 years later, I suppose, in their eyes. Also, too, 1956, when I had the chance to visit York, beautiful country for five months, beautiful but troubled, I'm afraid. I was impressed that the race relations had reached such a state that I didn't think they could get worse. And yet, judging from the newspapers, reports that I read and so forth, it looks like in the last six, seven, eight years since I was there, it's actually become more desperate. Is that true? And if so, what do you think about the future of South Africa?

Jeffrey Butler: Well of course I mean this is a very difficult sort of question to answer I mean it's very easy in looking at a situation as difficult as this to predict disaster I mean anybody can do that but it might not in fact be correct there's so many elements of change in the situation so much is going on among the Afrikaans community among the African community particularly, that one has no idea really as to what elasticity there is in the system. Each year and with each more, you know, further legislation with, say, Sharpeville riots and this kind of thing, one tends to get the feeling that the thing is much more desperate than it was before, but one is in fact Saying is desperate because nothing has changed or nothing has changed the way one wants it to change Now it's it's not any and not for me To say that some disaster is coming. I mean one can't emphasize too much that South Africa is not the conga You've got there three million white community dispersed over the country highly industrialized.

Thomas Pettigrew: I

Jeffrey Butler: with all the instruments of the power of a modern state and, let it be said, the willingness to use it, should the need arise.

Thomas Pettigrew: And your three million whites are not like colonials. These are people who feel South Africa is their home forever.

Jeffrey Butler: Oh yes, this is their soil, both Englishmen and Afrikaners think this.

Thomas Pettigrew: So we shouldn't predict disaster too quickly when looking at South Africa but things do look somber don't they? I mean I'm impressed with your almost optimism here what were the things you went back to South Africa didn't you?

Jeffrey Butler: Yes I was there a year ago and was impressed with material change certainly but a lot of the other attitudes and positions seem to me to be much the same as they were when I left but I would simply say that It's an attitude of rather anxious open-mindedness rather than optimism. Looking at it as it stands at the moment, the future doesn't look bright, from externally or internally.

Thomas Pettigrew: Anxious open-mindedness, a suggestive phrase. Thank you very much, Dr. Butler. Now, let's compare South Africa and the American South. This comparison might prove quite revealing to us actually For it is always easier to look critically at another nation with similar problems Before beginning the sensitive task of looking critically at ourselves To begin with We must recognize that there are a number of important differences which limit any direct comparison between the Afrikaners of South Africa and the whites of the South. Dr. Butler has just mentioned two of them, differences in language and difference in the ratio of whites to non-whites. While Afrikaners have their own language distinct from those spoken by other South Africans, white Southerners speak more or less the same language as other Americans. Now, the difference in racial numbers is perhaps even more crucial While only one out of every five South Africans is white four out of every five Southerners are white Of course, the racial ratio need not determine bad interracial relations in and of itself Brazil and Hawaii are excellent examples of areas that have achieved considerable harmony between groups even though whites are clearly outnumbered by non-whites But if other factors have led to interracial tensions, numbers can act as a catalyst, accelerating an already bad situation into a tragic one by heightening fears and suspicion. A third difference between the two groups involves national power. Though both are minorities, Afrikaners dominate their national government by denying non-whites the franchise, while white Southerners have only their minority status in our federal government. Nevertheless, there are enough similarities between South Africa's Afrikaners and the South's whites to warrant further comparison. Consider the striking parallels between Afrikaners and white Southerners that have extended down through the years. Both of them settled warm and fertile lands in the 17th century and became predominantly agrarian peoples. Both had non-white slaves, which their laws considered mere property, and both set up rigid systems of racial separation. Both were importantly influenced by frontier living, rugged, simple, and isolated from dominant Western thought. And they shaped the rigorously Calvinistic faiths, which they brought from the old world into religious beliefs ideally suited to the stern life of the frontier. Both unflinchingly entered wars of independence against powerful foes, and their inevitable defeats embittered them and further solidified them as distinctive, unified groups. Poor but proud, they remained culturally defensive and distrusting of outside thought, while fashioning myths as to their pre-war greatness. Even now there are similarities. Both people have been rapidly urbanizing and industrializing in the past two decades while simultaneously clinging to outmoded racial practices Let's examine some of these comparisons in more detail. As Dr. Butler has already indicated, the Afrikaners have a religion distinctively different from that of English South Africans, a rigorously Calvinistic religion within three branches of the Dutch Reformed Church. Like most Southerners, they tend to prefer an Old Testament emphasis and relatively literal biblical interpretations. These preferences caused both white settlers and Afrikaners to defend segregation and apartheid with the same interpretations of the same Old Testament passages In addition, these religious orientations led both groups to resist the inroads of Darwin's evolutionary theory Indeed, both had famous anti-Darwinistic trials In 1925, the South staged its famous trial of John Scopes, the Dayton, Tennessee teacher who had dared to teach Darwinistic biology with Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan squaring off as legal opponents A few years later, an Afrikaner theologian named Duplessis was trying for heresy in a church proceeding because he too had advanced evolutionary ideas Now today, fundamentalism has lost some of this old fire and firmness for both Afrikaners and Southerners. though it is still true that they remain among the most intensely fundamentalistic Protestants in the whole world. The two peoples evidence other effects of the frontier, too. Recall the willingness with which both the South and the Afrikaner republics entered fearful wars with stronger industrial nations that over time could obviously defeat them. Tough, out of doors peoples, white Southerners and Afrikaners thought of their wars in personal, not logistical terms. and both won most of the battles but decisively lost their wars. Their wounded pride was relieved in part by the myths they devised of their pre-war greatness. The golden age for the south came to be an antebellum period of vast plantations, happy slaves singing in the fields, cultured country gentlemen and their beautiful and protected ladies, a contented, idyllic scene that unfortunately had little reference to reality. The golden age for Africanism came to be an equally contented 19th century period of Wurtrecher independence and cultural purity, an idealized reconstruction that is just a shade nearer to reality than that of the South. Leading directly from these myths of pre-war greatness, the two peoples have tended to view as aliens their former white enemies and the blacks in their midst For the South, the familiar scapegoats have been the Yankee and the Negro For Afrikaners, as Dr. Butler noted, the familiar scapegoats have been the English and the Africans Indeed, their opposition to these threatening outsiders has long been the central motif of their cultures. It has shaped, colored, and distorted virtually all of their political, economic, and social thought and action. Throughout their similar histories then, South Africa and the South, to paraphrase Alan Paton, have been like two men caught on the face of a cliff. But within the past generation, our South has been slowly, even if somewhat reluctantly, easing itself up from the ledge of cultural and racial fear and hate. South Africa, however, remains caught, its plight growing steadily worse. Thus it serves for Americans as a tragic symbol of what our South might have come to had it also refused to heed the winds of change We can only hope with Dr. Butler's anxious open-mindedness that South Africa might yet join the South and begin to ease safely up from the face of the cliff