The Moral High Ground
Christopher Hitchens
Washington IVs brass monkey weather on Mas- sachusetts Avenue, especially on that posh but exposed section which features the embassies of Britain, Brazil and the fine vacant property that once housed the envoy of the Shah. Here stands the South African embassy and here, outside it, stands a permanent daily picket. District of Columbia law contains a simple protocol which states that anybody holding a pla- card within 500 yards of a diplomatic legation will be arrested. A police tape is stretched to demarcate this limit for the convenience of demonstrators. Anyone taking the appropriate pace forward is guaranteed, after one warning, a ride in a car and a night in the cells.
With this guarantee comes the promise of an appearance on the nightly nationwide news. In the past fortnight, viewers have seen the black mayor of Detroit, the black head of DC Council, and several Demo- cratic Congressmen escorted away by grave black policemen. On the night before I turned up, it was Douglas and Rory Eli- sabeth, the son and daughter of Bobby Kennedy, who volunteered themselves. Today, it's to be a trade union official and a progressive nun. The picket line is swollen by three busloads of teachers' union members, most of them white and at least half of them female. And today, there's a new development. On the oppo- site corner stands a shivering man in a business suit, holding a home-made pla- card which reads: 'South Africa. Do not give in to ignorant mobs. You do have support.' This fellow is protected by his own personal posse of impassive black
cops. In conversation, he says straight away that he knows very little about South Africa, but that he feels protest should be directed at the evils of black African governments. He accuses the demonstra- tors of being publicity-seekers, and looks genuinely blank when I ask him what he is seeking. 'I'm completely unpolitical,' he says, adding that he is a registered Repub- lican and 'a very strong Reagan supporter'. These two statements are perhaps not as ill-matched as they sound at first. 'Any- way,' he concludes, 'those people should be concentrating on the problems we got right here at home.'
It's difficult to think of any domestic issue that would unite this white Babbitt and the picketers yonder, but as a matter of record his words were an exact repeat of those offered me by the black cabbie who dropped me here. He felt that his repre- sentatives might be better employed on the less glamorous business of the home-front political grind. And it's certainly true that the personalities arrested so far are a perfect cross-section of the forces — trade unions, urban blacks and liberal Demo- crats — who were decisively repudiated by the electorate last month. It will take many renditions of 'We Shall Overcome' and many evocations of the memory of Dr King to obscure this simple truth. The nightly picket may be good for morale, and the 'Honk for Support' placard draws hoots from about one car in three, which isn't bad. But this is a coalition of the defeated.
All the same, it has touched the Reagan administration on an exposed spot. The ostensible reason for the picket is to draw attention to the 17 black labour leaders recently detained in Johannesburg. But the real target is the increasingly warm rela- tionship between Washington and Pre- toria. Under the name of 'constructive engagement', the Reagan administration has relaxed the prohibition on the sale of arms, taken a low profile' at the United Nations and virtually dropped all criticism of the illegal occupation of Namibia. This has of course enraged black America, but it has embarrassed many other sectors too. The quid pro quo for 'quiet diplomacy' was supposed to be a reform programme in South Africa itself. Nothing worthy of that name has resulted, which makes the admi- nistration here look foolish. In an aston- ishing development this week, 35 Republi- can Congressmen, all of them declared Reaganites, delivered a letter to the South African ambassador. It said that 'South Africa has been able to depend on con- servatives in the United States to treat them [sic] with benign neglect. We serve notice that, with the emerging generation of conservative leadership, that is not going to be the case.' This must have been something of a facer for the ambassador, more even than the message of sympathy which the picket line received from Gov-
ernor George Wallace of Alabama, and certainly more than the news that Yale was selling its South African stocks.
Ronald Reagan has been unusually slow to sense this alteration in mood. After his meeting with Bishop Desmond Tutu, he was able to say no more than the usual platitudes. He told the waiting hacks that he had heard, from tribal chieftains in South Africa, how grateful they were for the boon of American investment. The tiny Tutu bears an uncanny resemblance to Bishop Abel Muzorewa, but if anybody had told the President that he sounded exactly like Ian Smith he would probably not have understood the reference. The concept of the loyal chieftain is too close to his generous heart.
For the clever right-wingers, though, the chieftain factor won't quite cover it. There's a concept here known variously as MoHo or MoHiG, which stands for 'Moral High Ground'. It is important to be seen to be in possession of this precious turf, and the Left has more or less monopolised it, in the case of South Africa, these many years. Ideologically speaking, apartheid makes nonsense of the celebrated distinction, between authoritarian and totalitarian, upon which conservatives base their hu- man rights policy. An authoritarian regime may repress dissent, but it is supposed to respect private life and private property, to allow its subjects to worship God in their own way, and to permit such free move- ment. and intercourse as does not pose a threat to its rule. In practice, this is
supposed to translate conveniently but not explicitly into 'any dictatorship that is not Marxist-Leninist'. But South Africa does make laws which rape the privacy of the individual, even as far as the bedroom. It confiscates the property of citizens, and it limits their right to travel and work even in the country of their birth. That all this is done on the basis of colour and race doesn't make it any sweeter. By taking a sterner view of apartheid, then, the smar- ter Republicans are protecting a flank that has long been highly vulnerable. In May 1981 Ronald Reagan defended South Africa by asking, absurdly: 'Can we abandon this country that has stood beside us in every war we've ever fought?' Leav- ing aside the numerous American wars in which South Africa took no part, and assuming that the President was chieflY referring to that greatest of all wars, we're forced to recall that the Afrikaaner Nationalist Party was on the wrong side in that one, and that imprisonment for pa?' Nazi and anti-British activity was and considered a badge of honour among its ruling circle. Reagan may not know this, but many people do. Here is a case which defies the normal Cold War and patriotic categories. The pickets on Embassy ROW may be made up of today's political 'out groups', and they may be whistling some" what when they try to revive the spirit of Selma and Montgomery. But they have in common with their predecessors the fur, tenancy of MoHo, and in America that Will always count for something.
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