APA RTHEID
SIR. It is possible to make a moral defence of onartheid, as Mrs. Atherley does in your issue of July 3. The questions posed are surely as much
practical as moral. There arc now more than two and a half million Bantus in the urban areas, already detribalised and integrated into a European type of industrial system, and their number is still increasing.
Moreover, it already appears that the territories set aside for separate Bantu development will prove quite inadequate, and that the cost of this develop- ment may be prohibitive.
I believe that the attitude of the white population (the great majority of whom arc native South Africans with no European homeland) is dictated not so much by reluctance to give self-government to the Bantus (which, after all, is the logical outcome of apartheid) as by the conviction that multi-racialism will lead eventually to the loss of their own indepen- dence and right to self-government.
Perhaps the eventual solution may be found in some kind of federation, based on racial rather than geographic communities, giving a wide measure of self-government to both races, with built-in assurances internationally guaranteed.
Previous page
