That Sad Land
SIR,—Mrs. Price's repeated accusations of cowardice against Randolph Vignc 'and his kidney' (Spectator correspondence, January 22) are all too sadly typical of the attitude of mind of many comfortably- off South Africans who set themselves up in moral judgment over people who work against the regime in South Africa. I see today, January 26, that Mr. J. H. Liebenburg, the senior state advocate in the Abram Fischer case, has also put on the judge's wig. Following advocate Fischer's breaking bail, he told the court: 'It is the desperate act of a desperate man and the action of a coward.'
Why do Mrs. Price and advocate Liebenburg think that it is cowardly to avoid useless incarceration in prison? Do they demand that Mr. Vignc and advocate Fischer behave like `decent chaps' and 'face the music' like good public schoolboys? The South African police would be only too glad if these people give themselves up through some mis- guided sense of duty; and they would not feel bound by any code which maintained that it would not be 'playing the game' to pick up Mr. Vignc and Mr. Fischer by the testicles after forty, fifty or sixty hours of interrogation. May I remind the high-minded Mrs. Price that it was the duty of South African 'officers and gentlemen' to escape from the Germans and Italians 'up north'? And have these people really shown themselves to be cowards in the past? They have risked their lives and their livelihoods for a cause which a great majority of people feel is just. Mr. Vignc lost his job because his employers were intimidated by the Special Branch. Mr. Fischer will lose his right to practise because of an Act of a Parliament 'democratically' elected by that fifth of the popula- tion which has a vested interest in keeping things as they are. I am not discussing whether advocate Fischer and Mr. Vignc used the most effective methods. But, in that sad land of South Africa, they tried to do something, even though there was more chance of their becoming victims before they became victors
I am afraid that Mrs. Price, like so many pleasant and decent South Africans, is indulging in rationalisation---that favourite game of the kaffir- clipped lawns of the swimming-pool belt. Thcrc arc far too few well-off people who will face the realities of the stresses of the industrialisation of South Africa. They should be most careful whom they call cowards
JAMES CURREY
Paddocks Wells, Coffered, Buntingford, Hefts
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