CHAPTER 1 The Rule of the Boers - Part 3
In its issue no. 29 (April 1987) Vox Africana, an independent publication catering mainly for the English-speaking churches in South Africa, reported on a visit by an American evangelist, Professor Smock, who discovered certain "shocking facts" about South Africa:"When we arrived at the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg we began to look for the notorious apartheid. There was no apartheid in our smart hotel - everything was integrated. Nor was there any apartheid in the posh restaurants that we went to; there were people of all races eating there, and we were served by both black and white waiters."
After his visit to South Africa in 1986 Professor Jed Smock, Director of Campus Ministry, Lexington, USA, wrote as follows: "The inner city of Johannesburg reminded us of Chicago, Detroit and Dallas, with only one difference- here there were three times as many blacks in the busy streets. In the modern department stores and shops all races were served with the same readiness.
"We found the same thing in all the other cities that we visited. When we went to the bank to change our money, there were both blacks and whites behind the counter. In the bookstores we looked in vain for a book in which apartheid was defended. There were indeed plenty of books on the subject, but they were all negative. Every English-language periodical in the country condemned the vestiges of apartheid. The only newspaper that had a word of praise for the government's reforms was The Citizen."
Professor Smock found that the non-whites also participated in the political set-up:
a) A tricameral parliamentary system gives Indians, Coloureds and whites authority over their "own" affairs and a say in "general" affairs;
b) blacks administer their own townships and residential areas;
c) Blacks have complete supremacy in the National States;
d) Non-whites have a voice in the provincial governments. (In Natal that means that for the first time the whites are in the minority.)
e) The integrated provincial governments have laid down the foundations for integrated Regional Service Councils;
f) On the national level there is a multiracial National Council.
a) The newspaper writes: "The Professor was also impressed by the many reforms: The influx control and pass laws had been abolished.
b) Laws that prevented migrant workers from bringing their families with them had been abolished.
c) South African citizenship had been restored to blacks living in white areas.
d) People of all races are issued with the same identity documents.
e) The immigration laws are the same for everybody.
f) Special law-courts for blacks had been abolished.
g) Black urban police had been given more authority.
h) It was now possible for ground and houses to be purchased in black residential areas.
i) Some central business areas had been opened to entrepreneurs of all races."
In a paper for American students Professor Smock wrote:
1) "Blacks are paid three or four times as much in South Africa as in the rest of Africa.
2) Black South African workers have practically the same rights as American workers.
3) In South Africa there are more black women in executive positions than in the whole continent.
4) South Africa is training more black doctors than any other country in Africa.
5) South Africa is the only country in the continent with a black middle class of any size.
6) In South Africa blacks own more cars than the whites in the USSR.
7) The government is building five thousand houses a month and makes housing available to 92 per cent of the black population.
8 South Africa proposes to spend a thousand million rands in the next five years to improve underdeveloped towns.
9) Whites with an income of thirty thousand US dollars a year pay fifty per cent tax to raise the thousand of millions spent on subsidies for non whites."
So much for Professor Smock of America.
These are all hard facts that cannot be argued away when it is alleged that the whites in South Africa oppress or exploit the black majority. It would be far nearer to the truth to say that the whites in this country would be much better off if they did not have to pay the enormous financial costs of supporting and advancing the rapidly proliferating black masses.
Another example of white "development aid" is the very up-to-date medical university Medunsa on the edge of the independent black state of Bophuthatswana, 35 km northwest of Pretoria, built at a cost of seventy million rands. In what amounts to a small town covering thirty-five hectares, with dormitories for male and female students, black doctors, dentists, veterinarians and paramedical personnel are being trained with the most modern equipment and in accordance with the latest methods of instruction.
This is the only specialist university of its kind in Africa and one of the very few in the world. Practically all the students, who come from the black South African National States, are fully subsidized by the white government.
Practical training takes place in the nearby black hospital at Garankuwa, in which the whole range of human ailments can be treated. In addition to the standard equipment there is apparatus for artificial kidney transplants, isotope units and their associated specialized laboratories. Occupational therapists can instruct their patients in hospital in thirty-two different therapies to prepare them for a productive life. Here up to two hundred black doctors are trained annually, so that they can then take over responsibility for medical care in their homelands.
In three centuries the descendants of the Boer pioneers, the Afrikaners as they now call themselves, together with generations of later European immigrants, have developed an almost European-type state at the southern tip of Africa that has grown into the greatest industrial and military power in Africa. Its economic importance to black Africa in general, but especially to its immediate neighbours, is so great that if there were to be a total hypothetical worldwide cessation of economic co-operation with South Africa it would cause severe famine and the collapse of their national economies, while South Africa, even though damaged, would survive intact.
The advocates of economic sanctions against South Africa fail to realize the fact that it produces three-quarters of the industrial capacity of all Southern Africa, employs hundreds of thousands of migrant workers and maintains the only reliable transport communications with the outside world, on which at least seven states, as far north as Zaire, are vitally dependent for their imports and exports.
The well-known British writer and historian Paul Johnson tells us that if the South African economy were to be destroyed by sanctions, "... the driving motor of growth - even of survival - on the continent would be put out of action, and its fall would pull down all the countries of southern Africa with it, probably all the countries of the sub-Saharan zone too ... We should have to number the dead from starvation in millions."
Besides these connections in transport, trade and labour, the regional economic interdependence of the southern African states also extends to electricity supplies across the borders, petrol and other oil products, tour ism, private investments by South African firms, technology and research. The neighbouring states depend on South Africa not only for technical aid by South African experts; they also drive steam and diesel-electric locomotives borrowed from the South African Transport Services (SATS). South African diesel locomotives travel as far north as Zafre and Tanzania. In 1985 thirty-seven diesel and forty steam engines were hired out to the neighbouring states; on average 6195SATS goods wagons a day travelled on foreign rails alone, as against 944 in South Africa itself.
South African technicians of South African Airways (SAA) maintain and repair the aircraft of many other African states that possess neither the technical skills nor the proper equipment to do it themselves. South Africa also trains the crews of the Swazi, Botswana, Zimbabwean and Comoran airlines. South African Hercules C-130 transport aircraft carry urgently needed spare parts, machinery, pharmaceutical and consumer goods of all kinds to most African countries.
For example, when in 1979 the railway line to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, was broken by rebels, South Africa immediately came to the rescue with a fleet of air-transports carrying urgently-needed fuel in drums to keep the economy of Malawi going.
Although most African states deny any official contacts with South Africa and in the UN and other bodies vociferously call for sanctions and boycotts, in fact nearly all of them still maintain close commercial relations with South Africa.
In 1986 alone eighty thousand businessmen from all parts of Africa visited the country to make new deals. In 1984 South African exports to forty-seven African countries amounted to about two thousand million rands, or 7,6% of all exports, while imports amounted to about 480 million, or 2,2%.
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