South Africa

I hope for peace in South Africa but I despair when I realize that Andries Treurnicht (“Forced Unity Is a Form of Tyranny,” Op-Ed Page, Feb. 25) truly believes that he is entitled to a separate white nation after his government forced blacks onto the poorest lands in South Africa.

No doubt his new country should include Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town, gerrymandered for a white minority whose leaders now dare to talk of moral solutions, freedom and resistance against domination.

I am reminded of the words of Frederick Douglass, the 19th-Century abolitionist who contemplated the intransigence of American slaveholders equally glib about the tyranny of the majority.

Douglass said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. That struggle might be a moral one; it might be a physical one; it might be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand.”

Treurnicht makes clear that for the oppressor fear of losing power, “political suicide,” is the essential issue. And because he ignores simple justice, there will be thunder and lightning in South Africa.

SIDNEY E. MORRISON

Los Angeles