Annals of Zeerust
Brief Authority. By Charles Hooper. (Collins,
2I s.) To anyone who has any lingering doubts that the regime in South Africa is an overtly Fascist one, this book will come as a salutary shock. Charles Hooper is an Anglican priest, South African born and bred, whose parish was Zeerust in the Western Transvaal, which meant that, until the Government barred him, he was one of the very few unofficial white men author- iscd to enter the nearby Reserve of the Bafurutse clan on the Bechuanaland border. When the 'reference book' troubles came in 1957, he refused to turn a blind eye to the plight of the Bafurutse, and the rectory at Zeerust became virtually a transit camp for refugees and a dressing-station for those who had been beaten up by the police. The police acted throughout with a sickening, con- sistent and contemptuous savagery against which there was no possible defence or redress. Perhaps their most malicious act of all was to divide the Africans against themselves by creating 'body- guards' to protect the puppet chiefs—bands of armed Africans who were empowered to roam the Reserve beating up anyone they took objec- tion to. The hook has now been banned and Mr. Hooper has taken refuge in Swaziland.
MICHAEL FRAYN
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