THE SCHIZOID STATE
SIR,—Picking one's way carefully through his last letter, it is perhaps possible to form a fairly clear idea of what Mr. Ronald Vincent Smith considers 'impertinent and irrelevant' in British criticism of South Africa or manifestations of it; what is far from clear is what he considers relevant and per- tinent criticism. To my mind, unconditioned it is true by the tribulations of thirty years which Mr. Smith has had to endure, the white man in South Africa is pursuing a foolish, reckless policy and anyone who says he is and further adds he must change it in order to survive, is being eminently per- tinent and relevant.
As for Cant Idealism, on Mr. Smith's terms one would have to be a survivor from an atomic bomb in order to be truly idealistic in supporting the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament or to have suffered in South Africa in order to protest with justification against apartheid. Surely Mr. Smith does not subscribe to the view that experience is an end in itself; if he does, he need only look at what living in South Africa seems to have done to Mr. Garry Allighan, who describes about three million people as instinctively dishonest and con- genital liars and expects intelligent people to take him seriously.
I'm afraid not all Mr. Allighan's smooth veneer of rational argument nor Mr. Smith's deeper disgusts will, alter one basic fact: the white man in South Africa hates because he fears the black man. And Mr. Nicholas Mosley has done intelligent people everywhere a service in trying to discover why this is so. I, for one, am grateful for this and, further, I'm quite prepared to leave it at that.—Yours faith- fully, 15a Philbeach Gardens, SW3
RASHID KARAPIET
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