Turning Turtle
Smugness, thick as the fat on a turtle, envelops the most irresponsible critics of the present South African Government . . . responsibility is called for, and with it, regard for the welfare of non-whites---as opposed to self-satisfaction in attacking their oppressors.. .
--Editorial in the Times, March 23.
However justified the police action may prove to have been in the immediate circumstances, the need for .any such action would not have arisen but for the blind obstinacy with which Dr. Verwoerd and his colleagues have been pressing forward with their suicidal policies.
--Editorial in the Times, March 26.
r really looks as if Aunty is beginning to catch Ion at last. Several years elapsed before the old ladies of Printing House' Square were prepared even to consider, let alone to admit, that the notorious Sudeten editorial in 1938 might have been misguided. At the time of Suez the gestation period was reduced to a few months: after en- couraging Sir Anthony Eden to be bellicose in August, the Times turned against.him as soon as he was, in November. Now, the somersault has been-accomplished in three days. After months of angry attackin anybody who has dared to suggest that Verwoerd was leading his country- men to ruin. culminating in the spectacularly silly fat-on-the-turtle• editorial on the 23rd (accusing the Labour tarty of trying to make political capital out of clients in South Africa), the Times on Saturday recanted, in its own inimitable fashion. 'This is a time for plain speaking,' it said, as if nobody had thought of speaking plainly before: and it went on to assert that if Dr. Ver- woerd had been correctly reported, 'he is saying what is not' true and what he knows is not true.' In other words, nothing unkind must be said about hypocritical politicians or disreputable policies until they have led to calamity.
It would not matter if only the Times took this absurd line; but it has also been the Government's attitude to South Africa—at least until the 'wind of change' speech. The Spectator has often been accused—by the Times among others—of being too vituperative about Dr. Verwoerd and his backers; but how else could attention have been drawn to what was happening in South Africa, except by publishing the facts presented by our correspondent there, Kenneth Mackenzie, and making the appropriate warnings? This week Mr. Mackenzie sounds anothel warning note. In South Africa things have be° left too long; there is now no chance—as there in Nyasaland, and in the Western African Stiit6 —of the growth of African, anti-white racialism being avoided. Whether it can be contained re' mains in doubt; but what is certain is that unless the less extreme African leaders are given 04 responsibility they deserve, other and much less palatable leaders will take their place. For the South African Government to give way on the passes issue, but at' the same time to imprison; many of the most respected of the African and Liberal leaders is to.court destruction.
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