South Africa Under the Gun; Part 1

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Funding for this program is provided by this station and other public television stations, with additional support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. At the southern tip of the African continent lies a vital young nation straddling the first and third worlds, South Africa.

South Africa is ruled like an occupied country. Africans have no voice in the government of their own land. Social protest is to court arrest, torture, even murder. Complete integration in South Africa is quite out of the question. It would lead to chaos, destruction, lawlessness and all the evils which we know of in this world. The whites enjoy what may well be the higher standard of living in the world while the Africans live in poverty and misery. The complaint of Africans, however, is not only that they are poor and the whites are rich but that the laws which are made by the whites are designed to preserve this situation. The most important question in the life of a self-conscious people or racial group is always

governments. It sometimes happens with a much reported story that the more you hear, the less you know. South Africa may be a case in point. While the images grow more familiar every day, the story behind the headlines remains as elusive as ever. I'm Gail Harris. What you'll see over the next two hours is something a little different. A kind of crash course on South Africa gathered from a broad range of sources and intended to make the story from here on a little easier to follow. It is not a single news report or a documentary but a collection of the best film and video material we could find on the subject of South Africa. History, its geography, its politics, and its people.

We devote most of our first hour to a single film. It is called The Search for Sandra Lang and was made in 1978 by British filmmaker Antony Thomas who was perhaps best known in this country for his controversial film Death of a Princess. It is the best place we know to begin. Here then is The Search for Sandra Lang. 200 miles east of Johannesburg, on the main railway line to the Zuru Land Coast, is a place they call Pannbolt. There are only three buildings at the center, a post office, a storage shed, and a tin laboratory. In the open felt, a hundred yards from the railway line is an empty trading store.

It was here 11 years ago that I first met Sandra Lang. Sandra was 10 years old and she stood to one side as her father Abraham Lang sold blankets and cheap plastic shoes to an all-black clientele. A few miles from the store at Pannbolt and screened from the dust road by a grove of water, there's a black location called Brayton Park. On one side of the grove, there's an old African homestead with stone walls and a thetched roof. Facing it, are the ruins of a country post office. Today both buildings are occupied by a black family. Africa has taken back its own. At the homestead, we're met by Shai Swazi Girl, masked in some yellow ointment,

which the black women in these parts used to wipe their skins. The girl tells us that Abraham Lang and his wife Sonny left their home here last October. They have moved far away to a place called Pongola. We ask if we can come inside. It was 11 years ago almost to the day when I last walked through this room. On the edge of a scrum of press men who were tracking down yet another human interest story thrown up by South Africa's relentless pursuit of the laws and logic of a party. In this very room, Abraham Lang was sitting with his daughter, Sandra. Little Sandra had the features and complexion of a half cast,

a colored as this group is known in South Africa. Her parents were white Africaners and staunch supporters of the nationalist government in South Africa's race laws. Mrs. Lang resented the rumors about her daughter's origin. Sandra must be a genetic throwback, but she was still their child. If there's black blood in our veins, this could happen to many South Africans. But it was no use repeating to history or even human feeling.

In South Africa, there are other priorities. Sandra had been officially classified colored and expelled from a white school in the nearest town of Peter Tief. For one brief moment, 11 years ago, this little girl was thrown into the spotlight by accident of birth. She played with her baby brother, Adrienne, who, unlike herself, was allowed to remain a member of the white race. 11 years have passed. Abraham Lang and his wife, Sonny, have left Pondbolt and Briettin Park for good. And nobody here remembers their daughter, a little girl called Sandra Lang. Sandra Lang resented the rumors about her daughter, a little girl.

Sandra Lang resented the rumors about her daughter, a little girl. Sandra Lang resented the rumors about her daughter, a little girl. Sandra Lang resented the rumors about her daughter, a little girl. Sandra Lang resented the rumors about her daughter, a little girl. Sandra Lang resented the rumors about her daughter, a little girl.

The two and a half million Africaners, whose leaders have governed this country without interruption since 1948, are Africa's only white tribe. The French and German blood, the Africaners came under British rule in 1806. South African history books tell us that these trekkers were moving north from the Cape at the same time as the black man was migrating southwards from Central Africa. That neither side has prior historical claim, the facts are disputable.

But the history of South Africa in the 19th century is laced with stories of bloody encounters between whites and blacks that have since become the stuff and substance of Africanophobic law. Out of this violence, two independent African's republics were born, the Transval and the Orange Free State, only to be crushed a generation later under the full weight of the British Empire. Throughout history, the Africaners have had to fight for their survival, as they are never allowed to forget. The republics of the Free State and the Transval were confronted by the whole world. There is only one message that we can give to that world today. Let the whole world know it. South Africa and her people will fight for what belongs to us.

The original Africaners were semi-nomadic stock farmers, driving their herds in seasonal migrations across the land they had won. Farming was at the root of the Africaners' identity, and indeed their word for farmer, Boer, became a Syrenin for Africa. They worship the god of Abraham and Isaac, and indulge in a romantic identification with the Israelites of the Old Testament. The African-American formed a particular relationship with the Black Sea dominated, physically close, emotionally and intellectually separate. On his lands, the African-United Black Labor depended on their sweat and muscle as they came to depend on him.

The Constitution of the Boer republics had decreed that there should be no integration between blacks and whites. Yet the African's child can be closer to his black nanny than his own mother. They have no other playmates except the black children on the farm. They have no real spirit. From birth, the young Boer was allowed to develop a casual love, a physical familiarity with the Black.

At puberty, this contact was suddenly forbidden, a traumatic experience for many Africaners. Today, the child of an African's country family experiences this trauma even earlier. At the age of seven, he or she is taken to board a school hostel in the nearest town, maybe a hundred miles away from home. When an African's child arrives here on the eve of the first term at school, the blurred lines that have hitherto distinguished the races are drawn firm. The child is crossing the threshold into an exclusively white community. The pattern which must be followed for the rest of life is suddenly written clear. This is the boarding hostel for primary school children in the town of Peter Tief. It is dedicated to the borough of Tief, daughter of the Boer Pioneer who gave his name to the town.

It was here that a little girl arrived with her mother on an afternoon in January 1963. A little girl who called herself a white African, but carried the physical markings of a coloured, a half-cast. She collected Sandra Lang on the grounds of her racial impurity. I'm standing here in the black dance of Peter Tief, where you have the best view of Peter Tief. Mr. Cox, the man from Bonto administration, thinks that the best view of Peter Tief is on the hill above the black township. From this vantage point, Peter Tief is South Africa in microcosm. The foreground is crammed with a tin and breeze block that houses black South Africa. Beyond that, there's a low hill which screens the township from white Peter Tief, crowned by the Dutch Reformed Church. Moving to your right, you find a little small community where the coloured community stay.

A rare houses has been dropped into the empty fence. These are for coloured, half-casts, who have been expelled from their previous homes in white Peter Tief. Separated from the colours by a decent stretch of No Man's Land is the Indian township. The homes of shopkeepers now barred from trading or living in white Peter Tief. Funny enough, the smartest house of Peter Tief is standing in that township. In the white township of Peter Tief, there's a competition match on the perro grounds and golf at the country town. By late afternoon, the last stragglers have arrived at the Dabora Ratif hostel. The formal induction into the white tribe can begin.

Mr. Fantonda has been principal of the hostel since 1961. At town counsellor and elder of the Dutch Reformed Church, this man was instrumental in sound relaying's expulsion. The children unpacked under the gaze of Miss Van Athe. In this very room, Sandra Laying also spent her first night away from home. In the hostel, the day starts at 5.30 in the morning.

At this hour, the working day is already begun in the black township of Peter Tief. In the morning, the children unpacked under the gaze of Miss Van Athe.

In the morning, the children unpacked under the gaze of Miss Van Athe. In the morning, the children unpacked under the gaze of Miss Van Athe. By 6 o'clock, the hostel corridors reverberate with 120 independent readings from the Bible. This is the first of seven formal periods of worship and study that punctuated Sandra Laying's first day at a white school. Sandra Laying was surrounded by African children for the first time in her life. Today, her brother Adrian is also here.

Adrian Laying, the baby who was hugged and carried by his sister Sandra in the garden of Breton Park 11 years ago. Mr. Fontonda, the hostel principal. When the parents bring the children to the hostel, then they give the children to us. And the usually tell us, here is my child, you know what to do with my child. I think the main success that we like to have in this hostel is to develop the child as a person, which one day will be acceptable to the people of South Africa. You know, it must be a person that is available to his country to summarize the philosophy of the orphan corner. His life is based on the Bible, everything.

We're reading the Bible that we've got to be obedient to our government. We've got to love our neighbor because it is a command of God. He loved his neighbor, he loved anybody. And that's what we do. We love a big person. Even people may not think it is self, but we love a big person. But then again, I must say, now I won't tell you anything else. I would like to think that Mr. Fontonda permitted himself one-feeting thought about the meaning of Buddha, neighborness to blacks. But like all the good citizens of Petritif, like Miss Fontsail, the church social worker, here on our call of duty to the poor, Fontonda seems to draw the boundaries of his Christian compassion around his own tribe.

Love thy neighbor, as long as he is white. There's a small pocket of poor white Afrikanas, even in this wealthy town. Miss Fontsail dispenses her efficient charity to them all. There are a few state bendings, but the congregation of the Dutch Reform Church will foot all the bills. Electricity? No. There's electricity, water, rent, 80 pounds a month for food and 20 pounds for clothes. And then they're made. She's 10 pounds a month. Even the poorest whites are not expected to survive without the full-time support of a black servant. And up the road in the town hospital, Mrs. Elenfeldt and Mrs. Vesthoff of the Afrikan's Women's Federation, deliver flowers and chocolates and brisk conversation to those elderly patients who have no friends or relatives to visit them. It is their Christian duty, so does ladies say, to care for all the poor and lonely people in the town.

But what in God's name are people? Are they, this is their own alongside? No, is it like that? Mrs. Elenfeldt had no doubts at all. When asked if she ever visited the lonely and elderly blacks in their segregated hospital wards, she said, For the blacks, the missionaries, they do that. We don't interfere with them, we leave them alone. You know, they do their part for them. And when you visit the poor and needy outside the hospital, do you ever include blacks? No, no, not at all. Mr. Fontaine, there seem to think the blacks might one day become people. It was all a question of development. We accept that man. We accept him for what he needs. We try to develop him. And the day when he reaches the same point of development of what we are, they will accept him on the same level. But that doesn't say that I do not love him.

If I hated the black man, I wouldn't help him. After breakfast, there's a further dose of Bible reading. This time from Mr. Bester, Fontaine's seconding command. But chance, the text for the first day of term is also concerned with good navelness. It is the parable of the good Samaritan. But in this place, the point seems to have been lost. Petrutee Primary School The first day of term, the entire school hears the word of Christ from Pastor Skitter, the blind fundamentalist from the dopper church.

Every branch that does not bear fruit, he cuts away. I am the vine and you are the branches. This is my father's glory that you may bear fruit in plenty and be my disciples. A stirring performance of disdain, the anthem of white South Africa. We will answer your call, we will offer what you asked. We will live and we will die for you South Africa.

And then the pupils are squeezed tightly into the mold that must shape him for life. In the history class, they hear how Petrutee, the great poor leader, was murdered by Dingdan, king of the juniors, 150 years ago. How the blacks snickered Lord, the treaty that had been drawn up between them. What does our skin look like? What color is it? A light skin. And our eyes? What are they like? We have light eyes. What are our lips like? Our white lips? They are not so thick, are they? Another black people. What is their skin like? Dark skin. There is a difference in the eyes and the noses and the monks.

They call this Christian national education and the syllabus hasn't changed since little Sandra Lane was taught this very lesson during her first term at school 14 years ago. The hair is crinkly and the noses are flat. What are their mouths like? Their lips, thick lips. Where do these black people work? Andres, what do they plant? With their animals, yes. Now we come to the white. What do you see here? A teacher. A nursing sister. What else do we see? This lady, what does she do? She works in the house. There are many kinds of work that we whites do.

Little Sandra Lane didn't stand a chance. Sunday morning. Peter Tief has 14 churches to serve the spiritual needs of 4,500 whites. The biggest and the most powerful is this dutch reformed church which dominates the town. The elders and deacons make their ceremonial entry identically dressed in black suits and white tides. Oh God grant that you will rule this land.

But Lord, above all we pray for the weapon that God gave us, your word. That with this holy weapon we will scatter our enemies so that all those who know and see us will begin to see and honor God. Two miles away in the township, there's another dutch reformed church. Congregations are segregated before God. God, we pray to you this morning that you will also bless our guns.

As you'll am in may blay and may for the in yellow. Eleven years ago the school committee dedicated their meeting to God before turning to the business of Sandra Lane's expulsion. Three people present to that meeting are here tonight. The other children had started the antagonism, then the parents and teachers turned against Sandra and petitioned the committee. Mr. Fantonda spoke of that meeting 11 years ago.

And so was Mr. Forster, the other Mr. Forster, they decided that Sandra's case should be referred to the department of the interior. In February 1966, Sandra Lane was officially declared a colored. In this very office, cyber-unfund knee-curk administrator, the Transval authorised her expulsion from the school at Peter Tief. When the order reached the school, Mr. Fantonda volunteered to deliver the child to her parents in Britain Park. In this room, Abraham Lane struggled to maintain his daughter's education through a correspondence course and wrote his appeals to the authorities. Through this doorway, letters arrived from England, America, Scandinavia, Holland, New Zealand and Iran with offers to adopt Sandra. And it was on this balcony that I last saw Sandra Lane standing innocent and unaware before a delegation from the South African press.

15 months after her expulsion from Peter Tief, Sandra was white again. A new law had been passed to creating that children could not be classified differently from their parents. After being rejected by nine white schools, Sandra was accepted here. The peace of the Lord be with you always. Let's offer each other the sign of peace. This is the Roman Catholic Convent in Newcastle, South Africa. Can I forget and be my loved one? How can I be part of my love? Others were less fortunate than Sandra. The new law could force people into a less privileged racial group, simply on the evidence of their parents' colour. But Sandra was a white, and for a while her case was no longer an international embarrassment. We spoke to two elderly nuns in the Convent Garden.

Do they remember Sandra, a girl called Sandra Lane? I think I remember the name, sister. At evening in the common room, we asked the other nuns about Sandra Lane. Sister Flora insisted your dana remember her well. What was she like, sister? I don't know. She was so quiet and she was so retiring from the rest of the group that quite often you tend not to notice her. She brought many problems with her when she was coming. She had missed a year-and-a-half of school with a sister. You had heard about her.

She was much older than the children in her class. When she was 14, she was with children up 10 or 11. That was enough to put her off. She was very shy and very retiring with the staff at Convent. She was happier with black people than with why Joseph is our driver. He just remembered her as a very friendly little girl. Joseph not only remembered Sandra, but added another chapter to her story. She left one town and she never came back. And I heard that she met a Petros' wife in Africa. They went to Swaziland and from Swaziland they were pushed over to the transfer. And since then I've never had anything of them. To establish the next link in the story, we travel to the heart of the sugar country.

We are 60 miles east of Petretif in the Pongola Valley. The climate in Pongola is hot and steam. And the local Africaners can embellish their Spanish fantasies with rich tropical gardens. The black family at Brayton Park are told us that we would find Sandra's parents here. There's a brand new row of white shops at the center of the town. Hidden behind these and linked to the main road by discrete alleyway, there's a parallel row of native trading stores. At the largest in the newest, we found Abraham Lang. His wife Sonny was serving alongside him. The Langs have come a long way since there's hard years in Pumbord.

Without any warning, we simply ask them if they were related to Sandra Lang. Is she a relation of yours? Pepper? Is she a relation of yours? Yes, she is. She's our child. What happened to her? I can't, I'm not prepared to inform you of her in connection with her. Do you still feel as strong as I was you did the living years ago? Yes, that is my children. Who is she living? You have any idea? No, I'm not dispassing any further with you. Do you ever hear from her, Mrs. Lang? Do you ever hear from her? Yes, I hear from her. Is she all right? No, she's all right. Does she ever come and visit you? No, she doesn't. She doesn't want to see her. Why? The South African press helped us to establish the next link in a broken chain.

After their expulsion from Swaziland, Sandra and her black husband, Petrus, had made their home here. This is Cromclance, in English, the Crooked Valley. We are a hundred miles north of Petrus. Blacks have lived here since 1912, dependent on work in nearby towns. But recently the government changed all that. The Crooked Valley has been re-zoned to white area. The locals told us it was because coal had been discovered here. Hundreds of people have already been evicted from their homes. And the house that we were looking for is a ruin. We heard that Sandra and Petrus have been sent to a homeland, a Ubuntu storm, somewhere near the Swazil border.

Our search might have ended here, had it not been for the great fine of Blacks, South Africa. In this country, information is stored and news travels by word of mouth at a speed that few whites can comprehend. One of the first people we talk to in the nearby town of Carolina is not only new Sandra and Petrus, but agreed to guide us to them. When Sandra took this road to an ethnic homeland, she was traveling in the company of millions of South Africans. In 30 years, the nationalists have redrawn the maps splitting the country on tribal lines. The whites are no longer a minority.

They're one of the largest tribes. By this logic, there is no such thing as a South African. A man is a Zulu, a Tswana, an Afrikaner, an Indian, a Colored. And he has a place of his own. The White Home Lands cover 87% of South Africa. The Blacks have the remaining 13% split into 265 fragments. And this is one of them, a place called Charka started in the furthest Gundu. Here, Black people have a right to earn their homes to vote for their tribal leaders and enjoy their self-determination.

In real terms, this is a dump for surplus people, for the old, the women and the children. Most of the men are away working for white industries and farms. There is nothing to support them here. You reach the edge of Charka Stop. Our guide tells us to stop. This is it. It was a small undarval, a tin shack. And in the tradition of the laying family, one of the few shops in Charka Stop. The property of Keptuswani and his wife, Sondra. We spent that evening with the whole family in the Rondarval.

Pettus and Sondra have two children, a boy of five and a girl of three. Sondra had surrounded herself with the trappings of her Afrikaans childhood. A few precious family photographs. Sondra in the uniform of the school at Mitratif. Her mother, Sani, her own son in Kromkran, some long forgotten holiday by the sea, Abraham laying in his prime. When did Sondra last see her parents? My mother, from September last year. I saw my mother in September last year. And your father? I haven't seen my father since 1973. Whenever I visit, he makes sure that he is not at home. Since Petrus and Sondra moved to this homeland,

even Mrs. Lang has severed all contact. Five of Sondra's letters to her mother are unanswered. The last was sent only a week ago. The conversation slowly turns to the past, to the memories of nuns and bureaucrats, teachers and pupils, the few friends and the many tormentors. One memory stands out. I think the police have seen that. On that day, police arrived at the hostel, and I didn't know why. To rip you on a vase and to say... They went away. And on the following day, my teacher called me out of class, and said I must go to the hostel. I was told to pack all my things, and I was driven to the store at Panboot. I didn't know my father, my uncle, of Halai. When my father saw me, he went.

I stayed with him till he closed the shop for lunch, and then he took me home to my mother. When we arrived at Brayton Park, my mother said, what's happened? My father told me that I'd been expelled from school, and she also cried. Sondra, who drove you from Petratif to your father's store? Is he principal Panboot? Principal of the hostel. Do you remember his name? His name is Panhtonda. Sondra, what do you remember of Mr. Panhtonda? What was he like? I was good, but not that good. Why do you say that? When the other children tease me, I told him. He didn't do anything to help. He just laughed at me. What did he say to you when he drove you back to your father's store?

I didn't say anything. I asked him why he was taking me away from him, but he never answered. In contrast to a treatment by whites, Sondra has never been rejected by blacks. He taught her how to manage a home without tap water or sanitation to cope with childbirth and illness without the benefit of a resident doctor. Here in Charkestart, Sondra has discovered a community, a place where people share. Now she has asked the authorities to reclassify her as a black. In this setting, it was astonishing to think back to Petratif, the community that had rejected Sondra and which she and her turn had now rejected. Sondra, how could people who think that they live by the Bible

and the Lord's commandments have turned you away? It was Petratif who answered that. What they did was bad, but that's not my business. All I can say to them is thank you for giving me my wife. A brief post script to the film you've just seen. In 1980, at her own request, Sondra Lyme was officially classified as colored. She's presently working in a cosmetics factory near Johannesburg, earning the equivalent of $32 a week and boarding with a colored family. Now, 29, she has four children, two by Petra Swani, whom she left in 1979. All four children are in foster care or living with their fathers. Sondra says she cannot afford to raise them. She remains in touch with her mother and told us she does not wish to talk about the past. We'll be back in a moment with the second part of South Africa under the gun.

Funding for this program is provided by this station and other public television stations, with additional support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service. For those of you who may have just joined us, I'm Gail Harris.

And we're just short of midway through a two-hour PBS anthology of reporting and filmmaking on South Africa. In our remaining time, we will look at the South African people, who they are and how they've come to their current conflict, at the institution of apartheid and how it manifests itself in South African daily life, and finally, at the rate and degree of change we might expect to see from here on. We begin with a brief history, as told by Peter Davis, an independent filmmaker with a special interest in South Africa. The film from which this very abbreviated excerpt comes is called The White Logger. It was made in 1977, and apart from films made by the government, is as sympathetic a treatment as we've found of the history of the Afrikaans.

The four-tracker monument outside South Africa's capital, Pretoria, is a shrine to Afrika nationalism. The Afrikaan is highly emotional sense of being a unique people, the folk, with a special destiny in Africa. The four-tracker monument is enclosed in a circle of covered wagons known as a logger. For Afrikaan is the central image and their historical memory is this logger, an armed camp surrounded by enemies with guns poking out from behind the covered wagons. Throughout the centuries that the Afrikaan has been in Africa, the image of the logger has undergone a number of changes. But quite clearly, it is still alive. As part of their imperialist expansion in the 19th century, the British ruled that part of Africa where the Boers lived. They interfered very little with the frontier life of the Boers until 1834, when they ordered the abolition of slavery. For the Boers, this meant the wrecking of their economy based on slave labor.

In 1836, in an extraordinary gesture of self-reliance, courage and determination, 2,000 Boers crossed the orange river into the wilderness, out of the bondage of British rule, searching for free land in which to form a republic. This movement northwards is called the Great Trek, those who trekked to survive had to be hard, called the four-trackers. They have a romantic place in the hearts of Afrikaaners. The four-trackers pushed into lands the Zulu considered theirs, and the many clashes are the fabric of Afrikaaner mythology. In December of 1838, a Boer commando of 500 men faced a Zulu army 10,000 strong. The Boers swore a solemn oath to celebrate that day each year to the glory of the Lord if he would grant them victory. At the end of the battle, a nearby river ran red with the blood of 3,000 Zulu's, slain by a Boer cannon and musketry. The Boers, fighting from a lager, had not lost a single man. Blood river showed what a small band of organized, disciplined and well-armed men could accomplish,

and the lesson has not been forgotten. In the wilderness, the Boers established their independent republics, the orange-free state and the transphal. But it was the Boers misfortune that this new soil of the transphal contained the richest gold deposits in the world, the Rand. The Boers had trekked over half of southern Africa to get away from the British. Now the British coveted the gold-rich transphal. The Boers could either capitulate or fight. They chose to fight the foremost imperialist power in the world to keep their republic. Against bands of commandos who probably totaled no more than 40,000 at any one time, the British sent over a quarter of a million troops. The British waged any incompetent and bungling campaign and stumbled their way to victory. The frustration at the success of the Boer commandos drove the British to burn their farms,

the source of the guerrilla's food supplies. They heard of the homeless women and children into concentration camps. Only 5,000 Boers died in battle, but in the camps in appalling conditions, 5,000 adults died and 20,000 children. As a result of the destruction of the Anglo-Boer War, a class of poor whites had come into existence who scraped a bare subsistence from the soil. Distitute almost their one remaining possession was their white skin. During the early decades of the 20th century, these poor white Afrikaners were driven off their land by drought and soil erosion into those cities of the round they looked upon as the devil's own. Seeking the very manual jobs they had despised as fit only for coffers, this mass movement off the land became known as the second great trek. The British imposed a parliamentary system on South Africa, from which most non-whites were excluded.

Since Afrikaners outnumbered those of British origin, potentially they could win by the ballot what they had lost by the bullet. If only they could apply the motto of their lost republic, unity makes strength. Seeking that Afrikaner unity early in 1914, the national party was formed, the party of Afrikaner nationalism, in protest against continuing British domination. It was led by General Herzog, whose slogan was, South Africa first. Herzog had said, only one person has the right to be boss in South Africa, namely the Afrikaner. South Africa's economic strength lay in the mines, diamonds, then gold, coal, iron ore. And the mines were British-owned. White workers, called civilized labor, had always been paid more than blacks with all the best jobs reserved for white men. The mine owners said that mines could stay in operation only by cutting labor costs,

that is, by employing cheaper black labor and jobs reserved for whites only. The white miners, terrified by this black peril, seized the British mines. Their slogan was, workers of the world unite to keep South Africa white. The strikers were bombed, shelled, and machine-gunned into submission. But within two years of the Rand rebellion, white workers voted into power a nationalist labor alliance. General Herzog promised them protection from the British capitalists and the black peril. By the end of the 30s, Afrikaners were fast reaching that unity which would guarantee them full political power in South Africa when Britain declared war on Germany. In the massive effort to feed and equip the allies, South Africa went through a boom period. There was plenty of work and the influx of Afrikaners to the towns increased.

Because there was a labor shortage, blacks also flocked to the towns and took jobs previously closed to them. This resurgence of the black peril where badly educated, untrained white country boys competed with blacks for work and even for housing to give the national party the formula for victory in the first post-war election the apartheid election of 1948. The first South African cabinet, composed purely of Afrikaners, began to implement the final answer to the black peril apartheid. The emotional strength of Afrikaner nationalism was evident in 1949 when 250,000 Afrikaners made the pilgrimage to Pretoria for the inauguration of the Fort Recre monument. It was a triumphal march. Now united, these were the people who would decide South Africa's destiny. The years of division, of second-class citizenship in their own country, had conditioned Afrikaners to thinking of themselves as a people besieged. Built like a fortress, before trekker monuments symbolized,

not just the people, but the state, as longer. Next, we take a brief look at five South Africans, two whites and three blacks,

whose lives help illustrate the dilemma of South Africa. These many profiles appeared in somewhat longer form in a highly regarded BBC series called The White Tribe, which was made in 1979. And to the best of our knowledge has never been shown on American television. The three black men should be noted are all residents of the black township of Soweto, outside Johannesburg. Rian Creel has two farms in Natal, on the border of the Zulu homeland. A leading Afrikaner in the district and an elder of his church,

he's as concerned about the problems his people face as any politician. He can see the old relationships changing and threatening his almost feudal way of life. Will black people ever accept anything less than a full equal role in South Africa, which they see as their country as much as yours? I don't think so. So what are you going to do about it? Well, you're asking me question to solve problems which the government has trouble in solving. But the point is that they are getting their homelands which can develop into independent countries where they can do a say like, they can live out all their aspirations in their own country. Do you really believe that?

I believe that firmly. I can't see why not. Do you think they believe it? I don't know. But they will find out in time that it will. It's better than what they think it is. In the end, aren't you saying, really, the Afrikaners will decide for all these people what their future is and they just have to take it or leave it? No, that is an incorrect statement. What we are doing, we are saying you live there and you live according to your beliefs and your traditions and your governing your way. We want to live here and we want to live and govern ourselves and live by our traditions. That's all. Except that you're taking three quarters of the cake. Yep, we developed the country. We worked for it with the help of other countries. It was our expertise. The point is South Africa, the country we got was a Bay Peace of Ground 2. They are also starting off with scratch for the Bay Peace of Ground.

But we are going to help them. How do you react?