South Africa Under the Gun; Part 2

So that for gunned or the gun real too with at least four minutes of overlap from Real One. Second of October 85 WTBH Boston Good Luck. Resurgence of the black peril where badly educated untrained white country boys competed with blacks for work and even for housing gave 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 a tracker monument 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 problems solving. But the point is that they are getting their home lands which can develop into independent countries where they can do what they 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 we 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. All 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 piece of ground too. They are also starting off with scratch through the Bay piece of ground. But we are going to help them. How do you react when they criticize the deaths of people in detention, the banning of people, detention without trial, all those things that attract worldwide condemnation? How do you feel about that? Look, we realize that these are difficult measures to explain. What did you say for this death in detention? Well, those are unhappy things that have happened. Bannings, detentions without trial. Bannings and detentions without trial appears that it has to be necessary for the time. I'm quite confident that anybody who is innocent will not be banned or held into detention without trial. You abide by the law as nothing to fear from the law.

Unless he has the law to fear because the law itself is unjust. The point is the law is protecting me. The facts of Solly Madlala's life speak for themselves. At 4.30 every morning, while his children are still asleep, he gets up to go to work. Like most Soweto houses, Madlala has no electricity, no bath, one cold tap, outside. Breakfast for his eight children is bread, tea and sugar. Madlala, like most of Soweto's blacks, works for a white employer in Johannesburg. He's what they call a delivery boy. He carries diamonds from dealer to dealer across the city, thousands of pounds worth every day. Life inside is bad and terrible.

There's actually no life worth living in Soweto. Because you can be killed or murdered at any moment. So you're not sure of what you are doing or where you are when you're in Soweto. What do you think of white people in this country? Well, the white people of this country are people who are not actually playing ball with us blacks. In more ways than one. But most especially when it comes to living conditions and there's paying conditions of theirs. We are being under people in such a way that we are starving. What about the way they live?

Well, the way they live, they are living splendidly. They've got everything. They've got phlegicals. They've got manchins. Not to compare their houses with these made boxes of water here. This is not a house, it's just a hover. So life for them is just quite alright but not for us blacks. The few middle-class houses in Soweto are held up as an example of what blacks can achieve in South Africa. Natata Motlana has twice been imprisoned without trial for his outspoken political views. His prosperity as a private doctor has only emphasized the gulf he feels between him and the whites. The position is that our lives are poles apart. We could be living in two different countries.

And I have an occasion to go to meetings, to meet for them, to meet people, or to travel around the country and see areas of South Africa like Cape Town. And I feel a complete stranger. Because the facilities, for instance, for holidays are not available to me. The facilities for education, the universities are not available to my children. The places of entertainment, you know, in town like Johannesburg, the Coliseum and South Places are not open to me. So that our lives really are entirely and completely different. And I could relate my life much more easily to a black labourer in South Africa. We were much more in common. I've got much more in common with a black labourer in South Africa than with a white medical colleague. Some people say this is a young and relatively undeveloped country. And that the blacks in this country are better off than the blacks anywhere else in Africa.

And that you have to give the Afrikaner the credit for that, and the time to make changes at his own pace that life isn't so bad here. Look, I don't know how other Africans live in other countries like Uganda and Asia. And I don't know. I'll compare myself, as I've done already, with my white colleagues here. And the Africans compare their living conditions in Sowegu, with the white men living conditions in Ravonia, in Mayfay, in Santana, not in Uganda, not in Laelago, where they've never been. And when we hear some ridiculous statements about how beautiful Sowegu is in comparison to other African states, we don't even hear that. We don't listen. We're not impressed. And the contention of South Africa is a young nation and so on and so on is all nonsense. South Africa is as old as the United States of America, and yet the United States have made such a tremendous progress. Why are we making no breaks at all?

The people with most to lose, if the system is to change, are working class Afrikaners. These are the children of the poor whites who came to the cities in the 20s and the 30s. As long as the blacks are below them on the ladder, they can still live better here than anywhere else in the world. If there are to be changes, men like Fricky Hayza will first need persuading that they're even necessary. Fricky Hayza has no objection to black advancement in principle, but as a shop steward, he knows exactly how far they can go. Can blacks join your union? No. The reason for this is because they've got their own home lands where they can practice their trade. If you allow them, they are on their majority. That will influence the policy and the government of this country. Why shouldn't they join the union in the white area? I don't understand that.

What would happen if they joined a union in the white area? What would happen if they joined your union, the boilermakers? What would happen? That won't happen. But what would go wrong if they did join it? The majority. They will outvote you. They will outvote you. All over the world, it is like that. You don't want to be outvoted. So you want the whites to keep control of the white pass keep control of the union. Of the unions that you sit open to the whites, the whites would keep control of it. What would happen if blacks say we work in the same areas as the whites, we live in the same areas as the whites? We want the same rights in those areas. Look, it's not for them to say they got their own place and there they can do what they like. I can't go to your house and tell you what your family got to do. The same you can tell my family what to do. That's where it comes to. Baruch-like blocks on the edge of Soweto, house another group of workers, migrants,

men who've left their families behind in the rural areas and come to Johannesburg to find jobs. Hostels are a way of life for tens of thousands of South Africa's black workers. Room 1, block B of the Nancefield hostel, home for 16 zoolos, all labourers in a Johannesburg flower mill. Bed number 12 is rented by Petrus Mazibuco. He's been a migrant worker for 17 years. He visits his wife and children for three weeks in November and briefly at Easter and Christmas. What is it like for him being away from his family for such a long time? It is painful for me to be away from my family but then I have no alternative but to be in Johannesburg

because that's the only place I can burn some money and that's the only way I can feed my children. What is it like for him to be a married man who is never with his wife? It's very sad. It's sad. Amelda is Petrus Mazibuco's wife. She lives 300 miles away from Soweto in one of the fragments of Natal allocated to the zoolos by the British in the 19th century. They form the basis of what's now called her homeland, Quazulu. Amelda has a small plot of maize, pumpkin and sweet potato. It's a basic diet, maize porridge in the morning, maize with pumpkin at midday, maize with vegetables in the evening.

Meat or fish once or twice a month if they're lucky. What would happen if your husband came back here, decided to live back here with you? The last profile of a black couple forced to live many hundreds of years ago. The most beautiful place to live is in the north of Soutor. Well, he can come back or write but we can't stop. That last profile of a black couple forced to live many hundreds of miles apart is a graphic example of what's known in South Africa as grand apartheid. The system of laws and practices designed to ensure the segregation by race of people in South Africa. Penny apartheid is the segregation of bathrooms, drinking fountains, restaurants and the like. Grand apartheid controls where people may live and work and so constitutes the very core of white rule in South Africa. In a moment, we'll look at how this policy plays out in the daily life of the country.

But first, two versions of the reality of apartheid, one from the government, the other from the opposition. South Africa's black population is broadly based, comprising 10 major nations and subgroupings. In the central region of the country, the Soutu and Swana nations are dominant. And in the south and east is the Anguni culture of the Kaza and Zulu nations. The South African government's policy for the various black nations is one of self-determination that is sovereign independence for each black nation. To date, four black nations have opted for independence from South Africa, while six are still at a self-governing stage. The lifestyle in the rural areas of the independent and self-governing national states is rich in tradition, pastoral simplicity and collective dignity. Nation by nation, community by community, the political aspirations of the various peoples that make up South Africa and the national states are being accommodated.

The white government has split South Africa into a number of Bantu stands. South Africa alone calls them independent countries. In fact, they are satellite states with puppet leaders. Behind each Bantu stand ruler are white advisors who are really in control. The fiction that each Bantu stand is a self-governing entity is meant to confine black discontent within the reserves away from white South Africa. The Bantu stands divide African from African when nationalism strives to unite. The Bantu stands are desperately poor.

With no work at home, the people of the Bantu stands are cheap labor for white South Africa. The price paid for this internal colonialism is seen in the soul and bellies of children. However, one chooses to characterize grand apartheid, there is no dispute on certain basic facts. Since coming to power in 1948, the Afrikaner nationalist government has forcibly moved nearly four million people into ten fragmented and largely impoverished all black areas called homelands.

Among those most directly and dramatically affected by the policy have been the residents of communities known as black spots. Long time black enclaves and territories now designated by law for whites only. By way of illustration, we have acquired an award-winning report which ran this past April on ABC's nightline. We are grateful to ABC and to correspondent Kenneth Walker for making it available to us. The work is hard but life is good in Imgwali, perhaps as good as it gets for black South Africans. Now Imgwali, it's at its place, really it's at its place. Imgwali is far removed from the daily apparatus of apartheid in the cities. The people here spend their time tending livestock, raising corn and on Sunday they go to church. There is 24 feet. That's right.

And in a country where blacks cannot legally own property, the people of Imgwali hold title to this land. Queen Victoria's government deeded it to their ancestors to reward their loyalty during the last frontier wars. This place must be protected. To the South African government, Imgwali is a black spot, a black area surrounded by white towns. So the government plans to approve the 5,000 people who live here and move them to a tribal homeland. The homeland is Siskai, one of ten set up by the South African government and the one where living conditions are as notorious as the reputation of its leaders, brutal and repressive. Imgwali's people will be moved to this resettlement camp, Frankfurt, where a row of toilets marks the site. These people who wanted no close pictures for fear of the Siskai police already have been forcibly moved to Frankfurt. There's no work, little food, and two children have died since the move. I know this place. There is no water. There is no crazy field.

Herman Guija, who calls himself the old man of Imgwali, was born there 96 years ago. Yes, they said all of us must be removed. I refuse. But over the past 20 years, more than 3 million blacks have been forcibly removed. It's all part of the homeland's policy that every black South African belongs with his own tribe in his own homeland. But for many who live there, this is the reality. This is a very simple symbolism. Just about as fast as the government dumps people in the homelands, they rush right back out again, virtually all to the cities to find work. I'm from Siskai. Christopher Toisee has fled to the squatter camp called Crossroads near Cape Town. Like almost everyone in Crossroads, he's considered illegal and commits a crime because he lacks the appropriate past.

But this past is not right. There's no stamp that gives me permit to work in Cape Town. If caught, he could be jailed, fined, and sent back to Siskai. Even people like Moses Ingovese, who has the proper past to work as a bus driver in the city, still suffer under the system. He can't get a pass for his wife and three children, so he lives in a hostel for men only, and his family remains in the homelands. 900 kilometers from here to there. In Govese, Siskai's family once a year. The whole system of regulating how many blacks can live in this city is called influx control. The people of Inwali want nothing to do with influx control, nothing to do with homelands. Wilson Fanty is leading their fight. This is a white area. And because it's a white area, you have no right to be.

You have as a black person no right to be in this white area. We are born and bred in South Africa. The question of being black and white doesn't work to us because Inwali is ours. Talk like that got Fanty detained for a month, three years ago. And last year, police from Siskai entered Inwali and kidnapped nine residents, including Old Mr. Deja. One of the day they came here. Why did they say they were taking you to jail? They said because I refuse and the people of Inwali follow me, some of them. Geija and the others were released after several days. Now the government has responded to the resistance by prohibiting public meetings. But religious services are permitted, so town meetings are held once a month at church. We fight it by praying. We haven't got ammunition. We haven't got guns to shoot.

We only look up at court to pray with us. Recently, government officials said they were reconsidering their policy of forced removals in an attempt to make them voluntary. Reconsidering plans to force people out of some 60 black spots like Inwali. But there are more than 200 black spots under threat of removal, and the government hasn't indicated which ones, if any, might be allowed to stay. In Inwali, the people are skeptical about government claims of reform. You see this thing. It tells everybody, Peter, even if you are not a political person, you ultimately become political. Because all these things happen around us. You see it with us. You see it with our children. And you see that our children have no future. So that's why I say, if the government does not mean what it says about a reform, then there's going to be a revolution. On Sunday morning, the people of Inwali gather for churches they have for over a century.

But for Mr. Guija, Mr. Fanti, Grace Manbu and the others, the churches become the focus of a new faith. They will fight to stay out of Siskai, their so-called homeland, in order to remain in the only homeland they have known. Kenneth Walker for Nightline in Inwali, South Africa. To better understand the long history of black protest and resistance in South Africa, we turn again to filmmaker Peter Davis and a documentary he made in 1980 called Generations of Resistance. The edited excerpt you'll see profiles the African National Congress, which over time has emerged as perhaps the most influential voice of opposition to apartheid.

For 300 years, white men have sought to subjugate Africans. For 300 years, Africans have resisted. Right has always been theirs. Weapons have not. The black armies that resisted the white invaders in the 18th and 19th centuries fought bravely, but they fought with the weakness of many tribes and not the strength of one nation. By this unity and by the gun, the country was subjugated. An African leader, Pics Liga Semi, called for the formation of the National Congress.

Called the African National Congress, it would grow into the foremost movement of resistance. Within a year of the formation of the ANC came the most devastating blow to African rights. Until 1913, Africans lived side by side with whites. Many of them were prosperous, out producing white farmers. But these same white farmers dominated parliament. They passed the Native Land Act, depriving Africans of the right to own land in all but seven percent of the country. In the rest of the country, now for whites only, henceforth blacks would be tolerated only as sevens and laborers. Control was exerted through the past system. Without a past, an African was not allowed to live or work in a white area. Since there was no work but in the white areas, an African might have to break the law in order to live. The past book became the symbol of oppression.

During the war, whites had seen Africans doing work, whites had said they were incapable of. The white worker was terrified of black competition, and he had the power to destroy it. In the first post-war election, the white elected voted into power a group of men dedicated to the complete separation of the races in South Africa, apartheid. The laws of apartheid stripped the African of any hope of equality with whites. But there was now a new generation of black activists. No longer willing to acquiesce with the system, this new generation launched the defiance campaign. The chief organizer was Nelson Mandela. Trained and disciplined volunteers were to disobey unjust laws. Whites only signs were ignored, curfew broken.

As the campaign gained momentum, thousands went to jail, refusing to pay fines. The great civil disobedience campaigns of the fifties were on a scale never before seen in South Africa. But white power was able to outmaneuver every black protest, simply by outlawing it, or crushing it with sars and armoured cars. The constant frustration led to the birth of a new organization, the Pan-Africanist Congress. As a target, the PAC chose the passbook. The PAC plan was for all Africans to deliberately seek arrest for not carrying a pass. At Shabville, a small town outside Johannesburg, a huge crowd gathered at the police station. At point blank range, the police opened fire. Of the 69 children, women, men killed that day at Shabville, the majority were hit in the back. Thrown by a police violence, black anger now erupted throughout the country.

A state of emergency was declared. In a massive show of force, Sars and armoured cars and the army were called in. The ANC and PAC banned outright. Open air politics ceased. Government intolerance of dissent created the underground resistance. The decision to answer force by force was made by the young men of both the PAC and ANC. The older generation, which had never used violence, understood. When ANC leader Chief Lutuli received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961, he said that arms struggle was legitimate when provoked by the adamancy of white rule. Nelson Mandela had travelled abroad after Shabville to seek support for armed resistance. Wanted by the police, Mandela was now organising the underground inside South Africa. The ANC had never before initiated violence. The underground army thrown together in haste was armoured too, easy prey to informers.

The arrest of the leadership led to the most famous of South Africa's political trials, the Rivenia trial. Denied a voice any other way, Mandela used the trial as a forum. Basically, we fight against poverty and lack of human dignity. We want equal political rights because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white men fear democracy. An entire generation of resistance in the early 60s had been destroyed. Six years after the destruction of the leadership of the Rivenia era, Steve Biko said, Blacks are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they should be playing.

They want to do things for themselves, all by themselves. This was the doctrine of black consciousness, which began to take root among the new generation in the all black universities. Like many others, Steve Biko was beaten to death in prison. The funeral of a white policeman reflects the society increasingly militaristic. The funeral of Steve Biko, a black nation increasingly militant. The funeral of a white policeman reflects the society increasingly militaristic.

Blacks are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they should be playing. Blacks are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they should be playing. At this point, we pause for a brief who's who, some names you're probably familiar with, others you'll be hearing more of. Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress and the most respected leader among black South Africans. He's been in prison 23 years for sabotage. The Reagan administration and others throughout the world have called for his release. From a tribal royal family, he trained as a lawyer. His ultimate goal, one man, one vote in a United South Africa. There are many people who feel that it is useless and free-future for us to continue talking peace and non-violence against a government whose reply is only savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people.

When at P.W. Burta, president of the Republic of South Africa, he represents the political center of the African Nationalist Party. Under his leadership, black trade unions have been recognized. The mixed marriage act abolished and the Constitution changed to give Indians and Coloreds a form of representation in Parliament. Reform does not come overnight. Real stability and development cannot be achieved by the stroke of a bill. We shall not be stampeded into a situation of panic by irresponsible elements for opportunistic reasons. Reverend Allen Boussac, in South African terms, a Colored, president of the World Alliance of Reform Churches. He helped found the United Democratic Front, the principal legal anti-apartate alliance, charged with planning an illegal demonstration to free Nelson Mandela.

The time has come for white people in this country to realize that their destiny is inextricably bound without a destiny. Bishop Desmond Tutu, first black Anglican bishop of Johannesburg, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his anti-apartate work, considered the voice of nonviolent opposition to the government. I don't want to defy the authorities of this land. But if the formal gate laws which are quite unjust, which are quite intolerable, then I will break those laws. Gacha Boudalese, chief minister of Quazulu, the Zulu homeland, opposes violence and calls for negotiation and reform to end apartheid, black leader with whom the government would most like to deal. Oliver Tambo, president general of the African National Congress, in exile in Zambia since the late 1960s, former law partner of Nelson Mandela.

Dr. Andrey's tourniqued represents the extreme right-wing Afrikaner point of view. Resigned his seat in Birch's cabinet in 1982 to found the conservative party. Nicknamed Dr. No for his opposition to any changes in old-style apartheid. Reverend Bears Nodei, a one-time member of the Afrikaner establishment, now the leading Afrikaner critic of apartheid. General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches succeeding Bishop Tutu, banned for seven years. Gavin Reilly, leading liberal English-speaking white businessman, chairman of Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa, the country's largest company. Recently met with the ANC. We turn now to the more difficult question of what happens next. Clearly, South Africa is changing, but how far it will go and how quickly is a matter of intense debate inside the country and out. What is not disputed is that a new generation of black leadership is coming of age in the townships.

That these young blacks do not have the patience of their parents' generation. And that the forces of white rule and black resistance are more collision-bound than ever. One city that has recently seen this conflict turn violent is East London, a predominantly English-speaking community on the Eastern Cape. Recently correspondent Peter Snow visited East London for the BBC. What follows is an excerpt from the report he filed. East London is a present airy seaside town in the Eastern Cape, with a white population of some 60,000. They're housed in sprawling white suburbs around the town centre. By contrast, most of East London's black population lives not in the town itself, but here far away to the west in the so-called black homeland of the Sysky. Here in the huge township of Ungarnsani, in stricter cordons with the government's policy of separate development, three quarters of a million black Africans live 20 miles away from their main place of work. Now the South African government would like all East London's blacks to live here.

But as so often in this country, the reality isn't quite as neat as the idea, and a substantial pocket of the black population still lives on the fringes of East London itself. In Duncan Village. Conditions in the village are appalling by any standards. Years of neglect, as government has poured money into improving conditions for the blacks further out of town, has left some 50,000 people in a decaying slum near the heart of white East London. Every day and night of the past week, armed South African police in armored vehicles have rattled through the black township of Duncan Village. Their job is to show who's in control and to enforce order with the gun if necessary. The police are armed with tear gas, rubber bullets, and pump action shotguns that fire bird shot. The blacks complain that the police and the army often open fire when they needn't.

The weapon the police find most effective in curbing the more radical of the black leaders here in Duncan Village and elsewhere is their widespread power of detention. But they have another weapon too. They can ban people they see as trouble makers to areas remote from where the trouble is. An area like the black homeland of the Sysky. We called on one banned opposition leader, once an inhabitant of Duncan Village, who now lives here in the Sysky. He's Steve Tretting. Back in the 60s and 70s, he spent 15 years in jail on Roblin, next to Nelson Mandela. Today, though banned, he's still the local president of the opposition rising democratic front. Now, what is happening in Duncan Village right now is no accident at all. Is something that is happening throughout the country, and is something that we are expecting, you know, to see escalating even in other areas that up and now have unaffected. One of the ways the United Democratic Front and other opposition groups are carrying their struggle from the townships across into the white areas is through their boycott of white businesses.

In East London, this has been going three weeks and it is hurting the whites. I'm afraid we must be honest and say that it is very effective. There are signs of terrible insolvencies, liquidations, bankruptcies, pending. We can see it. Last week, I did a round of inspection to report to the city council and found that in many instances leading supermarkets in the centre of the city had dropped in turn over by over 80%. And I don't think any business can stand that. While everyone here is preoccupied with economic security, the nagging worry of personal security is never far behind. Tony Hood says gun sales and whites haven't leapt as a result of the unrest, but it is having an effect. Black people have not got to the rabble rarzers or the freedom fighters with abilities that haven't got into the white townships yet, suburbs.

The day that happens, we'll probably sell a lot of weapons. Is that something that I do believe that civilians are pretty well armed as it is? I think there's about 13 million guns registered in this country. We are hunting nation. We all hunt nearly every one you see in the shop hunts at some time or the other. But I can't want any of your leading questions, as we've already discussed, I must have African all the way. What will happen on the parade, you've seen what might happen, is the gun, and we don't want that. By Joe, we preach against violence, and we must definitely adhere to it. And I don't even think they want violence to blacks. Although certain of their leaders say, you don't listen to us when we want to negotiate, we must resort to violence. But really, I don't think in their hearts I want to resort to violence at all. And that is why now is the time to negotiate. We can negotiate at strength today. One man won't vote. We want nothing less than that. One man won't vote.

That's what they are doing. Even with the under-systems, one man won't vote. If you don't get it, if the president doesn't, as he says, he won't yield one man won't vote. What will happen in the townships and outside? We are going to fight. We are going to ban the townships. They're going to be fired. And the fires are not going to be confined to the townships. Very soon, there will be fires in Oxford Street. We're going to ban the Main Street of East London. There must not be under-work under the impression that the fires are confined mainly in the townships. We are capable of taking these fires right into their own areas so that they realize that we're in business. We're not going to compromise on the question of one man won't vote. We're not going to compromise on that. We're going to fight. On that militant note, we come to our final entry. While only somewhat less gloomy than most of what has gone before, this last report by Brian Stewart of Canadian Broadcasting offers at least a glimmer of hope for the future. Of all the tribes of Africa, one loan is white.

A solitary distinction africaners trace back for a third of a thousand years. To the world, a remarkable tight society. It's tribal image, one of strong religion, and strong living. To the world, it is also the face of unbudging and ruthless white rule. But while africaners know they're not much loved by the outside world, all equally believe they are little understood. I think that the rest of the world, they don't really know what is going on in South Africa.

In fact, understanding is not easy, but the stereotype of the dull, unimaginative, changeless africaner can be dangerously misleading. Barely three million strong africaners are the dominant force throughout all southern Africa. Their own society is surprisingly more diverse than suppose. The contrasts are striking. Repressive politics can coincide with a vibrant literature of protest and reform. The africaner poets and playwrights are world renowned. Changes slow, but it occurs. And daily examples like the impact of television are not to be underestimated. Black-Carmic Bill Cosby is a surprise hit and segregated africaner suburb.

Some still switch off at the mere sight of a black face. Harvey, like sports, has been integrated with an ease few could conceive of just five years ago. Satteras, like Peter Durk Ace, notice fellow africaners, are easy now, starting to laugh at themselves for the first time. In a recent satirical film, he plays a woman South African ambassador to ridicule the government's policy of awarding scattered and impoverished homelands to unwilling blacks. Sorbonne, Dumina, Molo, hello. I am Mrs. Evita Bessadenot, and I am the South African ambassador to the independent homeland of Babitico Sweetie. As you know, there are eight pieces of Babitico Sweetie dotted all over South Africa. Our shame, we had a ninth little piece, but it washed out to the sea during the flats.

Well, you can't always agree with her, but she's a force to be reckoned with. My Odin, my monologue, I want to hit her. She's mad, she's mad. My job has been made tremendously more interesting because people are laughing for the first time in public. I've always believed that Africaners have had a sense of humor. I mean, to have got this far with this political fantasy called apartheid is extraordinary. And so, somebody has had to laugh along the line. In real life, historian Hans Hesse, who has disclosed that seven percent of Africaners, how black or Indian ancestry, finds a reaction surprisingly good humor. Somebody asked me that in the transfer. They said, I don't mind having black blood as long as it is blue blood. So people do laugh about it. And I believe that we have got a new concept of being a nation of immigrants, and not immigrants only from Europe.

Certainly at this monument to tribal endurance and past suffering, one would wish the Africaners could move easily away from apartheid. But while there is some basis for optimism, there is frankly not much. The future is still far too murky. Some Africaners do want massive change, but most still seem remote from the daily clamor or black protest. Or else, comfortably convinced, they can put down rebellion at will and even thrive in a perpetual state of siege. If you live anywhere near, the angry, explosive black townships and state television rarely shows the violence. Even after 600 deaths and 11,000 arrests in a year, most are convinced the crisis is exaggerated. All of these apartheid has ensured that Africaners know next to nothing about the segregated black mass that works their farms, services their cities, and provides the white minority with their extraordinary life of privilege.

For the family of Paul Sneeman, a registrar of theology at Parchist from University, old Africaner values are still cherished. Sneeman would never consider himself a racist, but he believes apartheid is being dismantled too fast. That blacks must be kept separate and away from power. In terms of the western civilization, the blacks is just like children in the ups, the children is growing up. You cannot give the child all the responsibility he wants. But other Africaners, leading the good life, worry about losing them. They know a combination must be made and sooner rather than later. Freedle Vickman is a fairly typical rising executive in a suburb near Pretoria. Neither his family nor friends would ever leave South Africa.

This only one homeland is South Africa. But he watches rising black economic power and feels that, for pragmatic reasons, reforms must come. We move the right from this thing that we are only the super-Africaners, the Africaners, the only, what do you put, a causal group for success? That's not the case anymore, did I? Few Africaners have gone as far as Dr. Bair's Nadia, Secretary General of the South African Council of Churches. Once a pillar of the Africaner establishment, he has been outcast and legally harassed for fighting apartheid. But he believes Africaners could be moved towards power sharing if political leadership was there. If the government uses its extensive powers of influence of presenting through the media and through its addresses, the real situation in the country, I believe that it will have the massive support of the largest section of your African community.

In addition to the support coming from the Progressive Federal Party and from the concerned English community. Because if you go to Sweden... But no one Africaners are dubious of change. Leading author Nadine Gordamer is one of the 40% of whites who is English-speaking. She feels the new urbanized Africaner is more pragmatic, but no less attached to power. I think the political allegiance has a different base. They don't believe any more that they're the chosen people bringing light. But they want to retain white power and white economic power. A long siege seems likely. Africaners are changing, but the problems change incomparably faster. And that gulf between Africaners and blacks remains massive, possibly now unbridgeable. A rugged history left Africaners with tough virtues, but not those of accommodation and concession, so desperately needed now. For the journal, this is Brian Stewart in South Africa.

We are nearly out of time with a great deal left on said. But these points in closing. First, the government has in fact made a number of recent concessions, including suspension, although not abolition of forced resettlement, abolition of white-only job laws, and recognition of black trade unions. Second, there are rising voices on both ends of the political spectrum beyond those heard on this program. On the left, a growing population of angry, disaffected young blacks is gaining power in the townships. On the right, conservative forces are growing increasingly restless with what they see as unacceptable capitulation. Clearly, the prognosis is a gloomy one, and this program lacks a happy ending. In lieu of speculation, we close with a final chorus of South African voices, and the hope that the more reasonable among them may prevail. I'm Gail Harris. Good night.

We're fighting the evil of apartheid, and also ever represents apartheid B. Black or White. That becomes our target. And I can assure you that the government has not used all the force at its disposal yet to fight these forces. And I will keep listening. I will take other steps. It's the violence of the South African government that I want to see ended. It's not the violence of the people trying to resist it. And if I were young African, I would be amongst them. I wouldn't, without any question at all. My ultimate goal is the liberation of my people. It is because I know we are going to win. It is because I also understand what the white man is fighting for. When he loses it, he will lose it forever. And what I'm fighting for, when I get it, I will get it forever. And all I say is now, Vikrana, as we once did when a white nation, namely the British wanted to take us over, we got news for you. And as much as we had news for the British, granted we lost.

So we will have news against those Black South Africans who want to take us over. The South Africa today is the South Africa which cannot be governed by the whites alone. So the implication of a multi-racial society is there. There is no escape from that fact. I'm not saying I'm bringing up my children to hate white people. But I'm bringing up my children to understand the situation, the values. With a strong belief that when they grow up, Black people in this country would be liberated. We won't talk in terms of black and white. We won't talk in terms of majority and minority. We would be talking in terms of people. And people who share a country on equal basis. Thanks. Thanks.

My bhav mucha! Yeah

Yeah My love oh my love my love my love The funding for this program is provided by this station and other public television stations. With additional support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.