5 JULY 1957, Page 36

Dusty Answers

South Africa—Not Guilty? By Basil Fuller. (Jarrolds, 21s.) South Africa in Transition. By Alan Paton and Davis, 16s.)

A History of Southern Africa. By Eric A. Walker. (Longmans, 60s.) A WIlTY South African writer of my youth. used to say of the rivers of the Orange Free State that they were so muddy that when you bathed in them you would come out dusty. Reading and reviewing this collection of books on Southern Africa, two of which have a special emphasis on the Union, leaves a very dusty feeling indeed. It is as if one had been floundering around in a sort of dust-bowl of passion and prejudice. Surely there are no certainties about Africa; everything has to be qualified; ironically, nothing there is truly in black and white.

That is why the, first two books in this list w are each in their way somewhat unsatisfactory. Mr. Sachs, the well-known former general secre- tary of the Garment Workers' Union of South Africa, wrote his book after being thrown out of the country. He has every cause to write pas- sionately. He has been shabbily, indeed shock- ingly, treated by the South African Government and his fight to build up the Garment Workers' Union was a valiant one. He is dedicated to the cause of racial equality and is courageous and single-minded. But the book is a tract, it has a preface by Father Huddleston and its readers will get a picture that is, inevitably perhaps, out of perspective : angry men are never the ones to make the best ,case. To be fair to Mr. Sachs, he says disarmingly, 'Yes, I write with passion and emotion,' and the book which describes the struggles of a trade union will shock, irritate and puzzle.

Mr. Fuller's book is a very different kettle of fish. It is a painstaking but rather tasteless agglomeration of fact and fable with, one sup- poses, the final object of defending the white South African from world criticism. The blurb describes the book, somewhat unfortunately, as a 'new slant on an explosive situation' and tells the reader that Mr. Fuller spent six years in African travel and inquiry before writing his book. Carping as this may sound, the real objec- tion to the book is, I think, the fact that whereas Mr. Sachs is passionate (and thus prejudiced) Mr. Fuller is prejudiced with very little passion. Yet in his very anxiety to seem fair the book loses point and precision and there is not enough wisdom or scholarship in it to give even a qualified verdict of innocent or guilty.

The much-abused word 'compassion' makes the Scribner picture book (grand photographs by Dan Weiner) called South Africa in Transition a delightful compensation for the reviewer. Alan Paton's economical and restrained text, written in beautifully spare, civilised prose, has the com- passionate quality which makes sense of an often seemingly senseless situation. A splendid book in every way.

The Trumpeting Herd is by an Agricultural Officer in Northern Nyasaland who certainly can write. The heroes, hundreds of them, are ele- phants who are .at least more cut and dried in their ways than- the two-legged heroes and villains of the first three books on this list. People will, I suppose, go on indefinitely buying rip-roaring hunting books. This one is well pro- duced, with pleasant drawings by. Ralph Thomp- son.

Finally, Eric A. Walker's A History of Southern Africa, which is a massive new edition, nearly a thousand pages long, of the useful History of South Africa, first published in 1928 and now ex- panded in its scope. This wise and aged Fellow of St. John's, Cambridge, really has the last word. Setting the Southern African stage, he writes in his preface of the thKee principals in the unfold- ing drama. These, are Western civilisation, tribal Africa and, to a less degree, theocratic Asia. In the plural societies that exist in Southern Africa it is the 'humane adjustment of the mutual re- lations of these three cultures' that will be the acid test. Books, however sincere and well inten- tioned, that fail to see this broader aspect some- how miss the point.

ROGER FALK