A plague of moralists
Sir: Auberon Waugh's comments regard- ing South Africa (`So it is the punishment freaks who are leading us by the nose', 22 September), are spot on. The moralists do need South Africa as a punishment-object. If you probe these same moralists you will find a not-so-subtle yearning for the `smouldering rubbish dump' scenario in South Africa. Why else would they pursue
. a sanctions policy that leaves 41 per cent of blacks unemployed? As Shiva Naipaul pointed out in his African journey North of South, Africa, in this case he was speaking of Tanzania, 'has stimulated the fantasies of a certain type of outmoded European socialist — men and women of a somewhat pastoral and utop- ian turn of mind — whose socialism fades by imperceptible degrees into a kind of benevolent, condescending patronage of the backward and the deprived'. To the moralists in the Western world who have had their backpacks packed for years while waiting for the revolution the more backward and deprived South Africa becomes the better.
It upsets them when Mr Waugh points out that South Africa is a happy, prosper- ous and, with the leadership of F. W. de Klerk, optimistic society. In a recent two- year working stint in South Africa I was constantly in awe of the calibre of men and women committed to economic prosperity for all and a multi-party democracy in that country.
It was my good fortune to work with these people in areas such as transport, Water, housing and small business: manag- ing directors who spent their weekends building schools in black townships or shire engineers resigning to start up non-profit housing utility companies to get blacks into their own homes.
The moralists have laid waste almost all the economies of sub-Saharan Africa. Like a plague of locusts they descend on a newly independent country leaving its infra- structure ruined and the country for ever dependent on foreign aid. (The Australian Labor government sent a team of tax collectors to newly independent Namibia.) Once the country becomes uninhabitable to all but the unlucky Africans they head
LETTERS
for the next newly independent country leaving it to the missionaries and the IMF to clean up the mess.
No wonder the moralists seem unim- pressed by the process of political negotia- tion that is underway in South Africa. After all, a peaceful settlement would spoil their party.
Nigel Kassulke
Mermaid Beach, Australia
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