SOUTH AFRICA: FORGING A NATION : VOICES

* Nadine Gordimer, author, an excerpt from her 1990 novel, “My Son’s Story”:

“These young comrades and thousands of others who have been killed by apartheid’s agents, the police, the army, the withdoeke, have given to the struggle their share of the future the struggle is going to win for us. They will never share with all our people in the country’s wealth, instead of working to provide thirteen percent of the population with the highest standard of living in the world, while the majority of the people cannot feed their children. . . .

When such young men die it’s usual to speak of a senseless death. There’s anger that a life should be so short and brutally ended. Well, for those who shot and killed these nine young comrades last week these really are senseless deaths, because this killing, and all the other killings of our people in the ghettos and in the prisons, will not stop us from winning our freedom.”

* Alan Paton, author, in 1948, the year apartheid was imposed, excerpted from his novel “Cry the Beloved Country”:

“Yes, God save Africa, the beloved country. God save us from the deep depths of our sins. God save us from the fear that is afraid of justice. God save us from the fear that is afraid of men. God save us all.

Call oh small boy, with the long tremulous cry that echoes over the hills. Dance oh small boy, with the first slow steps of the dance that is for yourself. Call and dance, Innocence, call and dance while you may. For this is a prelude, it is only a beginning. Strange things will be woven into it, by men you have never heard of, in places you have never seen. It is life you are going into, you are not afraid because you do not know. Call and dance, call and dance. Now, while you may.

That many (Afrikaners) are upright and God-fearing is beyond all doubt, but their religion has what Shakespeare called a “worm i’ the bud.” It exalts law and order above justice, legality above compassion, stability above change. . . . (Apartheid) is the finest blend of idealism and cruelty ever devised by man.”

* Winnie Mandela, anti-apartheid activist, at a Johannesburg funeral for a young black person killed in a clash with police in 1986:

“We are going to physically dismantle apartheid in this country. You have been patient for too long. We appreciate that, but now it is time to act. . . .

The time has come where we must show that we are disciplined and trained warriors. You will be told when the time has come to take action . . . when we call upon you to go over to that lily-white part of Brandfort and take over that wealth that is rightfully yours and the land that is your birthright. . . .

All those thugs who are in power today should be behind bars.”

* J.G. Strijdom, prime minister of South Africa, in April, 1955:

“Call it paramountcy, baaskap or what you will, it is still domination. I am being as blunt as I can. I am making no excuses. Either the White man dominates or the Black takes over. I say that the non-European will not accept leadership--if he has a choice. The only way the Europeans can maintain supremacy is by domination. . . . And the only way they can maintain domination is by withholding the vote from the non-Europeans. If it were not for that we would not be here in Parliament today. . . . To suggest that the White man can maintain leadership purely on the grounds of his greater competency is unrealistic. The greater competency of the White man can never weigh against numbers if Natives and Europeans enjoy equal voting rights.”

* Brian Lapping, author, in his book, “Apartheid/A History,” in 1989:

“The South African whites did not go wrong suddenly in 1948--or any other year. They did not go wrong because they are a uniquely evil or racist or authoritarian people. They went wrong because the experience of the previous three hundred years had brought them to a state of frustrated and enraged nationalist fervor that desperately needed a target. That is why the only way to make sense of apartheid is by looking at its roots in history.

A person who has been humiliated at work and comes home to thrash the children is acting as the Afrikaners did when they invented apartheid. The majority of Afrikaners--white South Africans who speak Afrikaans--developed a gnawing resentment against the British Empire, which had arrived uninvited at the start of the Nineteenth Century to rule what they considered their country. Until the 1930s the terms “racial conflict” or “the two races” when used in South Africa did not mean black v white. They meant Afrikaner v British.”

* Margaret Thatcher, British prime minister, in June, 1990, after the European Community called on all South Africans to renounce violence and refused to ease economic sanctions against the white-minority government:

“(It is a) great pity (the EC nations were) unable to agree publicly to make a start now on easing sanctions. . . . What they have done is something I am very pleased about. They have condemned pretty clearly anyone who advocates violence . . . and that goes straight to the armed struggle in no uncertain terms, and that ought to be abandoned.”

* Daniel F. Malan, Former prime minister (1948-54) and Afrikaner nationalist:

“We hold this nationhod as our due, for it was given us by the architect of the universe. His aim was the formation of a new nation. The last hundred years have witnessed a miracle behind which must lie a divine plan. Afrikanerdom is not the work of men but the creation of God.”

* Jesse Jackson, U.S. activist, June, 1990, in a commentary in the Los Angeles Times four months after South African President Frederik W. de Klerk released Nelson Mandela from prison and lifted a 30-year ban on the African National Congress and other anti-apartheid groups:

“It is a strange twist of fate: De Klerk once held the keys to Nelson Mandela’s prison. Mandela now holds the keys to De Klerk’s prison. There’s an old adage that says, “You can’t hold someone in the ditch unless you get in there with him.” As long as Mandela was a prisoner and locked out of South Africa’s society, South Africa and its heads of state were locked out of the world society.”

* Myrtle Bothma, athlete, in 1990. She was ranked No. 1 in the world that season in the 400-meter hurdles and spoke of her country’s exclusion from Olympic Games since 1960:

“I don’t see how hurting me, not allowing me to run against the best 400-meter hurdlers in the world, is going to help anything. If they don’t want the white sportsmen to take part, why don’t they take the black man? We would love to see it.

You get a feeling, a kind of anger towards people who sit around a table in their little suits and look at a little bit of paper and say, “South Africa, no.” They don’t know what it’s like to be a sportsman, to struggle, to work. They can decide my future.

One day, I wish I was a fly with a sting. I could sit in that boardroom with the (International Olympic Committee) in their meeting. When they decide not to let South Africa compete, I would give them one sting, to make them think what are they doing. I think they see the issue as something on a piece of paper, not people.”

* Pieter W. Botha, then-president of South Africa, in September, 1986:

“We do not desire sanctions but, if we have to suffer sanctions for the sake of maintaining freedom, justice and order, we will survive them. Not only will we survive, we will emerge stronger on the other side! . . .

We are not a nation of weaklings! We are not jellyfish! We will not be broken so easily; in fact, we will not be broken at all!”

* Athol Fugard, in his play, “My Children! My Africa!” in 1989. It is the first visit to a black South African classroom for Isabel, a white girl from a posh school, who is giving a lesson in debating:

“I know I’m a good debater, and one of the reasons for that is that I always talk very directly to the audience and the opposition. . . . Well, when I did it this time, when it was my turn to speak, and I stood up and looked at those 40 unsmiling faces, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t prepared myself for one simple but all important fact: They had no intention of being grateful to me. They were sitting there waiting to judge me, what I said and how I said it, on the basis of total equality. Maybe it doesn’t sound like such a big thing to you, but you must understand I had never really confronted that before, and I don’t just mean in debates. I mean in my life!”

* Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, Zulu leader, in 1986:

“One man, one vote is not worth destroying ourselves and our country for when we can work out a compromise. I am not abandoning that ideal and all that it means, but I don’t want to see our liberation postponed and the country torn apart to attain it. No, the time has come to talk, to negotiate, to compromise, to reconcile. . . .

For someone in whose veins courses the blood of warriors who fought the English and the Afrikaners, whose people staged the last armed struggle against white rule in this country, it is not easy to preach nonviolence and negotiation. . . . But I recognize that (Prime Minister) Botha’s defense forces cannot now be challenged . . . and that most of the casualties of an armed struggle today would be black.”

* President Ronald Reagan, in a speech in July, 1986:

“It would be a historic act of folly for the United States and the West--out of anguish and frustration and anger--to write off South Africa. . . .

I urge the Congress--and the countries of Western Europe--to resist this emotional clamor for punitive sanctions. If post-apartheid South Africa is to remain the economic locomotive of southern Africa, its strong and developed economy must not be crippled. . . .

If disinvestment is mandated, these progressive Western forces will depart and South African proprietors will inherit, at fire sale prices, their farms and factories, plants and mines.

How would this end apartheid?”

* Bono, lead singer for the rock band U2, in “Silver and Gold.” This anti-apartheid song is about a man living in a shantytown outside Johannesburg:

No stars in the black night

Looks like the sky fall down,

No sun in the daylight

Looks like it’s chained to the ground.

Broken back to the ceiling

Broken nose to the floor

I scream at the silence

That crawls under the door (under the floor).

Copyright Island Records Inc. 1988

* Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid activist, in 1985. As read by his daughter to a United Democratic Front rally. He was responding to the government’s offer to release him from prison if he agreed to take no action that would lead to his re-arrest:

“I am not less life-loving than you are. But I cannot sell my birthright, nor am I prepared to sell the birthright of the people, to be free. I am in prison as the representative of the people and of your organization, the African National Congress, which was banned. What freedom am I being offered whilst the organization of the people remains banned? What freedom am I being offered when I may be arrested on a pass offense? What freedom am I being offered when I must ask for permission to live in an urban area? What freedom am I being offered when my very South African citizenship is not respected?”

* Jon Qwelane, a columnist for the Star newspaper in Johannesburg, in October, 1985:

“(Urban black South Africans) have lost faith in some of the biblical teachings, because every day they witness the whites who brought the Scriptures to them breaking every commandment on good neighborliness in their ruthless drive to impose their hated rule over the voteless majority.”

* Desmond Tutu, bishop of Johannesburg, in July, 1986, commenting on a speech by President Ronald Reagan, who was opposing economic sanctions against South Africa:

“The West, as far as I am concerned, can go to hell. . . . (President Botha) must be overjoyed that he has such a wonderful public relations officer in the White House--he could not have written a better speech himself.”

* From a pamphlet, “Race Relations Policy of the National Party,” issued for the 1948 election:

“The choice before us is one of these two divergent courses: either that of integration, which would in the long run amount to national suicide on the part of the Whites; or that of apartheid, which professes to safeguard the future of every race. . . . The fundamental guiding principle of National Party policy is preserving and safeguarding the White race. . . . Churches and missions which frustrate the policy of apartheid will not be tolerated. . . . Educational institutions and social services for Blacks should be situated in the reserves, instead of the present practice of providing them in urban locations. . . . Our party will not tolerate subversive propaganda among the non-whites against the Whites.”

* Harry Schwarz, in February, 1991, just after he was appointed South African ambassador to the United States by President Frederik W. de Klerk:

“Whether sanctions were right or wrong doesn’t really matter anymore. But my view is that the United States cannot now say, “We wash our hands of the post-apartheid South Africa.”

You’ve now got a moral obligation to ensure that the post-apartheid society conforms with your own ideas of democracy. You’ve got involved. Now stay involved and see to it that we get a proper democracy, a proper kind of market economy, and a proper exercise of human rights.”

* Jimmy Krueger Minister of Justice, in 1977, two days after anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko was beaten to death in prison:

“I am not glad and I am not sorry about Mr. Biko. It leaves me cold. I can say nothing to you. Any person who dies ... I shall be sorry if I die

Compiled by Times researcher Ann Griffith

SOURCES: Times files; Apartheid/A History