THE PRICE OF STAYING ON
South African whites are forced to accept black lawlessness and victimisation by the new governing correctness, says Alec Russell
Johannesburg THE world's unofficial murder capital is at its most glorious at this time of year. The jacaranda is cloaking the suburbs in pur- ple; the heady sweet smell of syringa is in the air; the first rain clouds of the summer are rumbling over the veld. So I had no hesitation the other evening when an old Afrikaner friend suggested a jog to wipe away the cobwebs from the Cape Cabernet of the night before. This was my first visit to Johannesburg since I left 18 months ago after five years as the Daily Telegraph's correspondent. It felt excellent to be back.
Within a few 100 yards we had touched on everything from the prospects of the England cricket tour to the pulse of the rainbow nation. We were almost back home when my eye was caught by a famil- iar sign — The Singing Fig — one of my favourite restaurants in my Jo'burg days. 'The Singing Fig!' I exclaimed nostalgical- ly. 'How is it doing?"0h, fine.' There was a pause. 'Well ... they were cleaned out recently. Ten guys with guns walked in or was it five? They took everything.' I grunted as if to say, 'Oh, of course, that old story', and we ran on, turning our thoughts to the Springboks' chances of holding on to their crown.
South Africans of all races have long since learned to inure themselves to the daily threat of violence. Take the protago- nist of Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee's Booker- winning novel, a white academic adrift amid the chaos of the new order. Much has been made of what his daughter says after she is gang-raped. 'What if that is the price to pay for staying on?' she asks her father. 'They [the rapists] see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live here without paying? Per- haps that is what they tell themselves.' More telling is the scene when the lecturer is sidelined by the forces of political cor- rectness at a disciplinary hearing. With a mixture of arrogance and defeatism he despairs of a fair trial and gives up the fight. It is a sequence that rings all too true these days for many whites. It was always clear that race would be a political trump- card in the new order. Enemy number one since the end of white rule has been the Democratic party, the descendant of the old liberal oppo- nents of apartheid. In South Africa's paral- lel universes they are the only trenchant critics of the ANC, or 'reactionary racists', depending on your point of view. But it is not just the old liberals who are taking a pounding.
Now it is the turn of the white left- wingers, who backed the revolution, to pay for their pigmentation. The day of my run through Johannesburg's suburbs, a long- running inquiry into Helena Dolny, the widow of the communist leader, Joe Slovo, was drawing to a close. As managing direc- tor of the Land Bank, she stood accused of granting herself a large salary increase. But there was another element to the Dolny affair: a former colleague had accused her of racism.
If Ms Dolny is a 'racist', then you might as well begin with the premise that South Africa should kick out its four-million-odd whites and start again. Joe Slovo would have laughed off the charge with a loud expletive but in 1999 you have to be more careful. A new concept of 'subliminal racism' is in vogue, and lies behind the Promotion of Equality Bill which was tabled in parliament last week. 'Equality courts' are to be set up. Guilt is assumed. Those accused of 'racism' will have to prove their innocence.
Ms Dolny was cleared of racism, but the lesson was clear: it is open season. Every white manager goes to work wondering which black colleague is going to point the 'Would m'sieur care for a roll?' accusing finger. Some still stick their heads above the parapet and say what they think is right rather than what is 'correct'. But for most, in particular those in the media whose commitment to the 'dream' is on daily show, it is simpler to lie low.
My visit coincided with the funeral of Julius Nyerere. Day after day the newspa- pers printed encomiums. There was barely a mention of his socialist one-party state in Tanzania, the thousands of imprisoned dis- senters, and the economy he bankrupted. A rare article that did touch on such inconve- nient facts qualified them with the sugges- tion that to dwell on them was the mark of a Western mindset.
It is the 'Bloemfontein syndrome', one senior white journalist told me. Lt Sibusiso Madebula did not get much airtime over- seas when he walked into his army base outside Bloemfontein and shot dead seven white colleagues, before killing himself. His spree coincided with a massacre in a Bap- tist church in Texas, a much more com- pelling, CNN-style tale. But it shook white South Africa to the core. It was a reminder of the anger still simmering over three cen- turies of humiliation. It was a cue to do your job and hold your tongue.
South Africa still has, of course, by far and away the world's greatest density of moaners. President Thabo Mbeki has resisted the temptation of penalising white purses. As F.W. de Klerk says in his autobi- ography, 'In the country-club lounges the ladies continued to play bridge and sip tea.' And as for the 'strugglers', as white anti- apartheid activists were known, it is hard not to sympathise with Mondli Makhanya. a leading black journalist, when he took them to task for whingeing. 'Whites left must still learn that the struggle was not an investment' ran the headline over his piece.
However, by lumping all whites together, the post-apartheid regime may be sowing the seeds of its own destruction — as well as falling into the same trap as the Nation- alists. And the added tragedy is that South Africa is taking this path as most of the rest of the continent moves in a different direc- tion. Yoweri Museveni, the President of Uganda, has no great love for whites but he knows that they need to be wooed, if only for their money. He startled MPs in Cape Town's parliament a few years ago when he told them that 'blaming colonialism is like a drunken man blaming someone who steals his hat'.
I spent my penultimate night on a farm in the bush some 250 miles north of Johan- nesburg. My hosts were attacked last year and were lucky to survive. But they are staying because they believe that lawless- ness is a trade-off for whites living in Africa. It is a bleak vision. Unless the race card is put back in the pack, it will become reality.
Alec Russell's new book, Big Men, Little People: Encounters in Africa, is published by Macmillan.
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