West’s Outcry Against Apartheid

Raymond Price’s negative assessment (Editorial Pages, July 31) of the West’s outcry against South African apartheid is pompous and warped.

With his stomach full, his sympathies in check, and his human rights secure, Price states smugly that “What matters in South Africa is not tomorrow or next year but the next decade and the decades after that.” Incredibly, his article contains no hint of support (or hope) for the millions of South Africans who are oppressed now because they are black, and no direct or indirect criticism of the Botha regime for orchestrating and enforcing the ongoing oppression.

Instead, Price praises the Botha regime for trying to stop the communists and warns, cryptically, that in order for institutions in South Africa to remain democratic, a “stable balance” of power must be maintained.

Price does not define what he means by stable balance, but his support for white rule in South Africa is clear. To his mind, blacks are wrong to rock the slave boat, and Westerners are wrong to support them. His thinking is the sort that has allowed communists to gain a solid foothold in South Africa!

In the end, Price sees himself as a defender of the “moral high ground”; yet his notion of the correct response to South African apartheid is immoral and base. What’s more, his characterization of Western opposition to apartheid as a “stampede” is false.

Indeed, it is Price and his small herd of followers who are frightened and frenzied; for they sense, correctly, that their days of trampling the rights of others are numbered.

DAN WIGHTMAN

Fresno