White magic
Richard West
Cricket in a Thorn Tree: Helen Suzman and the Progressive Party Joanna Strangeways-Booth (Hutchinson During the Transvaal gold-miners strike of 1922 the local communists coined the slo
gan: 'Workers of the World Unite for a White South Africa'. They went on to attack with physical violence not just their black fellow-miners but the offices of the Johannesburg Star—a liberal newspaper. It is 3 paradox of South African politics that the most stubborn objectors to the advance of the blacks are the white working class and the Afrikaner peasants, while the chamPinns of what we would call the 'left' are the can'talists, above all the Jews of Johannesburg. It is therefore appropriate that Helen Suz.' man, the Progressive Party MP and for manY years a doughty fighter for African rights and dignity, should come from a Jewish middle-class family, and now sits the north Johannesburg constituencY Houghton, which corresponds to Highgale in London or Didsbury in Manchester. This lucid and well-researched h°°' comes to a climax in 1959 when Helen Sul' man and other liberals broke away from United United Party to form the Progressive PartY; on the specific issue of buying the Africans land that had been pledged to them in 1936' It is interesting to be reminded that at the time the Nationalist Party, then under the leadership of the sinister genius Ve.1: woerd, saw clearly that they had to face the tiny Progressive Party a far more serionrist opponent than they had in the comPlacner and cowardly main opposition United rati; ty. Like the Nationalists themselves, t Progressives are unhypocritical. It is a ure of Helen Suzman's success that tn.: Nationalists have had to rethink their entire philosophy to deal with the growing and confidence of the black people through"e out southern Africa. In a curious waYt...,t„s Nationalist Party now needs the Progresstn. in order to have a 'dialogue' with the blactfd Millions of South Africans should be alL are grateful to Mrs Suzman for her cha:s. pionship of victims of the apartheid la.on However one should not get the imPressi .eble .eble that she has all along been a solitarY, e ,,t voice; she has always had the suPPort nvlso only of most of South Africa's press but 3 1, of the capitalist establishment. It is a a
l'A
ec0/. ec0/.
ness of this book that it does not r d
that the Progressive Party has been baticaeir, and financed by Harry Oppenheimer, curciai man of Anglo-American, the corn° arid giant which virtually runs South Africa riot without whose revenue no governnien!.,tir, even nawNeeaktionalist Government, cou
viv la
Previous page
