U.S. Role in South Africa?
I have just returned from nearly a month in South Africa. The trip was unplanned and made on impulse from Kenya. I had decided that, based on conflicting reports and an intense conversation with a South African couple I met during my flight from Athens to Nairobi, I needed to see the situation there firsthand.
As an actor, I was interested in the status of artists and the content of plays being produced. As a trustee of Claremont Graduate School, I was intent on finding out if my active fight for divestiture made sense to those who would be directly affected by such action. And, as a citizen of a democracy, which has had its own history of resistance to integration, I wanted to see how another country in the throes of change and resistance to change was dealing with the metamorphosis.
My pursuit of information led me to exactly the same conclusions so sanely and compassionately expressed by Eschel Rhoodie in his article (Editorial Pages, July 14), “Anti-White Racists Blind U.S. to Change in South Africa.”
It is, as he states, only through positive rather than punitive action that we can hope to influence a country, which, having failed to take positive action years ago, is now burdened with the effects of past inertia and present fear.
South Africa should not be punished for its transgressions and deserted by the self-righteous. The majority of whites in South Africa favor power-sharing. Pieter W. Botha’s government publicly supports the majority. Let us not play into the hands of either the extreme left or right.
Sanctions as a means toward change is a negative solution that ensures our withdrawal from any positive involvement in change, and that is more than likely to result in even more resistance on the part of the extreme right in South Africa. Violence as a means toward change is a negative solution whose only guarantee is indiscriminate destruction.
Let us, as a democracy, support the efforts of the majority who want reform and a democratic constitution.
BARBARA BABCOCK
Los Angeles
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