Cold spells in South Africa

Richard West

Johannesburg During the winter months in Johannesburg when the temperature falls at night to freezirlg point and below, and even the days can be bitterly cold, it is customary for the Whites to go abroad dressed as they do in summer, in suits, safari gear or even in shirtsleeves — with a sweater or leather jacket as the extreme concession to the weather. The visitor from abroad who puts on an overcoat Or even a raincoat is likely to be the subject of many surprised or indignant stares for breaking the normal rules about how to dress.

As I say, this fashion applies only to

Whites . Those Africans who can afford it muffle themselves in sweaters, scarves, great-coats, hats or balaclava helmets and as often as possible light a fire to warm their cold fingers. I have seen a brazier alight on the back of a moving coal truck, surrounded by black workmen.

It is not true to say that the whites do not suffer from cold, for you frequently see them with chattering teeth, blue fingers and streaming noses; a Johannesburg journalist told me that so many poor whites each winter actually die of cold that the fact is not Worth mentioning in the newspapers. Why then do the whites refuse to accept the realities of the season?

'Because they want to prove that they can stand the cold and that the blacks don't belong so far south,' was the answer given by one long-time Johannesburg resident. Several others I spoke to agreed with this Proposition. In much the same way Italian and Spanish men persist in wearing overcoats well into June in order to prove that they need hot weather, unlike the tourists from the north who go swimming and sunbathing when it is still cold.

It is an article of belief to the white South African that his ancestors arrived in the country either before or about the same time as the Bantu who had been driven so far south by famine and tribal warfare. Anthropologists debate this matter, and in any case there is little evidence that the Bantu's physical composition makes him More susceptible than a white to cold, given adequate clothing and warmth. The highlands of Kenya, even on the Equator, can get very cold at night, and yet it is there that anthropologists have discovered the skeletons of the oldest known human beings who, if not Bantus, were certainly not of the same race as the modern white South African.

The colder the weather, the more the Whites feel that they belong in South Africa, a proposition disputed by much of the rest of the world. The latest threat to them comes in the unlikely form of a board game from the United States called 'South Africa — the death of colonialism', in which one player strives to maintain the regime and the other seeks to achieve a black revolution. The Johannesburg Sunday Express, which first broke the news of this 'war game', explained that the inevitability of black rule is in-built and the white player can only struggle to hold out for a few hours, equivalent to a few years in reality. Before the police seized copies of this 'war game' last week, two alleged experts played a match in Johannesburg, in which Johannesburg itself was the second city to fall to the blacks, although Capetown held on for six hours.

But in real life there seem to be one or two novel aspects of white South Africa's fight to survive that have not been allowed for in the American war game. One factor is the possibility of a collapse into anarchy of the black African states to the north.

In Rhodesia it is beginning to look as if full-scale tribal war may precede the arrival of independence at the end of the year. A three-way conflict between Joshua Nkomo's Matabeles, backed by Zambia, Robert Mugabe's Shonas, backed by Mozambique and, in the middle, the present Rhodesian army would not benefit the cause of black liberation in Africa. Indeed, as one sees in the Vietnam-Cambodia war and in the Ethiopia-Somalia war, these third-world Marxists are just as keen to destroy each other as once they were keen to destroy the colonialists.

At least three white South Africans have said to me privately that they agree with the statement by Andrew Young, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, to the effect that the Cubans are a stabilising influence in Africa. What they meant was that it is better for Africa, to be run by whites, even Communist whites, than for Africa to be run by the Africans.

Readers of the Spectator may recall the great benefit that accrues to South Africa from the immense uranium mine at Rossing which was started by Rio-Tinto Zinc under a contract to supply the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, a contract signed in 1969 by the responsible minister Tony Benn. It now appears that this mine and the two others that may be opened shortly in the vicinity, are of even greater significance to the future of South Africa than any of us had heretofore imagined.

A report in The Times from Ray Kennedy (28 June) says that: 'South Africa is preparing to dictate to the West its terms for maintaining a supply of uranium oxide in return for sophisticated nuclear knowledge. The country supplies about 18 per cent of the uranium oxide needed by the West for nuclear development and enrichment but this percentage could increase considerably as nuclear requirements in the West and South Africa's own production climb in the next few years'.

It has been hinted here that South Africa may be demanding from the United States the guarantee of a number of nuclear fuel services in return for signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Pressure to sign has increased since the reports last year that South Africa has 'developed a nuclear capability', a delicate way of saying that it is making atomic bombs.

The control of supplies of uranium oxide is seen by South Africa as a formidable weapon in bargaining with the western powers. The President of the South African Atomic Energy Board, Dr Ampie Roux said recently on TV that his country had never considered embargoing supplies to western Europe but 'it would hurt if it did so'. The Foreign Minister Mr R. F. 'Pik' Botha was more blunt, as we learn from Ray Kennedy's article in The Times: 'In a briefing for foreign correspondents some months ago Mr Botha . . . said that if sanctions were applied against South Africa it would use its first line of defence, the supply of uranium to western countries. Alternatively, Mr Botha said, South Africa would refuse to service ships rounding the Cape'.

The South African Security Police seem also to have recovered the nerve they lost for a while in the bad publicity caused by the death in detention of Steve Biko. This week an African detainee fell to his death in Port Elizabeth from the very fifth floor police HQ in the Life Insurance building in which Biko was beaten to death.