On Apartheid and Containment

(The following article, by Azinna Nwafor, assistant professor of Afro-American Studies, is a response to an article by George Kennan which attacked "simplistic solutions" of "foreign critics" to the problem of apartheid in South Africa. )

WITH ALL due respect to Professor Kennan's formidable distinction, his "Fresh Thoughts on South Africa" (The New York Times, 18 Dec., 1970), should more appropriately. have been entitled, "Stale Thoughts on South Africa." Professor Kennan spiritedly argues against the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force against the tyranny of South Africa-one hears, in the italicized words, echoes of Kennan's celebrated "X" article of 1947-as the only dialogue possible with the rulers of that country. Instead, he has now urged the need for anyone troubled by the tragedy of South Africa to "hold the white rulers of that country the recognition that to the outside world the pattern of South African Apartheid is abhorrent in aspect and unconvincing in rationale." That is all. But then there is nothing fresh about such a view, for there has been no end of moral condemnations of apartheid on a universal level, coupled with arguments demonstrating its irrationality and ultimate impossibility.

Professor Kennan should turn at random to the annual debates in the General Assembly of the United Natiohs. These documents are enlightening for their records of verbal exorcism of apartheid by friend and foe alike. Consider, for instance, the session of Autumn 1963 in which the South African system was seen by the United States Government as 'toxic,' by the Soviet Union as 'shameful,' by England as 'abhorrent,' by Belgium as 'thoroughly repugnant,' by India as 'hateful,' by Guinea as 'inhuman,' by Bolivia as 'the negation of all social purpose,' by Japan as 'fundamentally immoral,' by Canada as 'degrading,' by Algeria as 'cancerous,' and by Tanzania as 'a catalyst of violence.' Even the redoubtable Richard Nixon said of apartheid-in his state of the empire address of last Spring-"We abhor the racial policies of the white regimes." Furthermore, how often have we heard appeals directed to the rulers of South Africa-even by critics of the society writing from within that country-on the irrational bases of the policy and its self-negating ends; on the explosive and irreconcilable contradictions of' a pigmentocratic social order: Contradictions between the theory and practice of apartheid. I cite an unlikely source, from a member of the clergy of the State Church of South Africa: The Dutch Reformed Church, one of the pillars on which apartheid solidly rests, "Apartheid," wrote this courageous priest, "with everything it entails, must be carried, out by force; force, where power exceeds justice, thus paving the way for violence. What else can be expected if there is not mutual agreement between the races to live in separate territories? What outcome can there be but that we will have to fight for dictatorial powers in order to enforce our will on others; that we will, as far as we are allowed, move in the direction of a police state?"

The fact is that the South African regimes do not mind the world seeing apartheid as abhorrent or scarifying provided it does not attempt to interfere physically in South Africa. This is the reason Nixon's state of, the empire address was effusively welcomed in South Africa as "realistic and refreshing." For Nixon, even if apartheid is 'abhorrent'-a routine and expected condemnation-the use of force or violence was clearly and explicitly ruled out. It should be noted that the World Council of Churches has adopted a far more progressive attitude on the matter, in its recent decision to give aid to the guerrilla movements in Southern Africa. It does not, therefore, come as a surprise that South African officials hailed Nixon's speech as exhibiting a deeper, more pragmatic, understanding of the complexities of the situation than any other American President. south African thinking on the relationship between verbal disapprobation and physical interference is well-revealed in a pronouncement of former Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. When, in the Session of 1966, the General Assembly decided that South Africa's right to South-West Africa derived exclusively from the mandate conferred on it by the League of Nations, that that mandate has been terminated, and that the United Nations must take over the administration of South-West Africa, Verwoerd simply replied to the resolution: "If the United Nations want South-West Africa they can come and get it." Now with arms from Britain and elsewhere, South African governments are acting in a direction dictated by this world-view.

PROFESSOR KENNAN'S apologia is ultimately bewildering for one who has attentively followed his admirable views on the establishment of NATO as a military defense against an attack no one was planning. Kennan informs us that he was opposed to the formation of NATO because, in his own words: "It was perfectly clear to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the Russia of that day, that the Soviet leaders had no intention of attempting to advance their cause by launching military attacks with their own armed forces across frontiers." Such a procedure, he argued, "fitted neither with the requirements of the Marxist doctrine, nor with Russia's own urgent need for recovery from the devastations of a long and exhausting war, nor with what was known about the temperament of the Soviet dictator himself." The real "threat," according to Kennan, was the threat of revolution, particularly in Europe. Mutatis Mutandis, both Kennan and I can agree that the real threat to peace in Southern Africa does not rise from external attacks across frontiers either from the friends of South Africa: Britain, the United States, or from the enemies of the rulers of South Africa: The Independent African Countries, China, and-doubtfully-Russia. The real threat indeed-and inescapable-is of revolution, particularly in Southern Africa.

A line of Virgil's Aeneid occurs to me. It is from Aeneas' account of the fall of Troy: Jam proximus ardet Ucalegon ! (Close by, Ucalegon's house is already ablaze!) When I contemplate the festival of the oppressed and exploited of South Africa, I shudder at the complacency and mystifications of all the Kennans.