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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JANUARY 4, 1985
PAGE 7
reacted to America's liberation of Grenada with rage or sullen
resentment. Then, there is•••Randall Robinson of TransAfrica•••
who has as much trouble containing his hatred of Botha's rule as
he does his admiration for Castro's.
The campaign against South Africa is beginning to build, to come
together the way it did against Thieu in South Vietnam, the Shah
in Iran, Somoza in Nicaragua, none of whom, let it be conceded,
was without grave flaws, but all of whom were--in the climactic
struggle between the Soviet Empire and the West--to the end, re
solutely on the side of the United States•••• The "hive"--that
loose agglomeration of liberals, leftists, socialists, Marxists
and Leninists,•••is humming with activity•••• Teddy Kennedy has
announced plans to visit South Africa•••to speak out.
Jesse
Jackson, last seen chanting "Long Live Che Guevara" with Fidel
somewhere in Havana, hopes to get there first.
Western white liberals also refuse to reexamine their pet theories in the
light of Africa's turmoil.
DAEDALUS, an American arts and sciences
journal, devoted its Spring 1982 issue to "Black Africa: A Generation After
Independence."
In one article, author Hedley Bull, himself a liberal,
aptly described the detached head-in-the-clouds liberal viewpoint:
Western liberals•••have never made the effort of imagination of
putting themselves in the white South Africans' position•••• Wes
tern liberal opinion may be regarded as irresponsible in that in
condemning the course South Africa has taken, it does not con
sider honestly what the alternatives to that cour�are. The
standard liberal critique of the policy of separate develop
ment•••proceeds on the assumption that the alternative to it
would be a liberal, multiracial democracy, in which equal politi
cal rights were available to all•••• In any event, the prospect
that all likely outcomes will be unsatisfactory when measured by
liberal standards is not a reason for abandoning liberal en
deavor.
The activists in America refuse to see the South African situation in any
other light than that of racial experiences in American history. One of the
best background primers on the crisis in South Africa was published in 1978
by Hoover International Studies, entitled "South Africa: War, Revolution,
or Peace?" It was written by two of America's top experts on the sub-con
tinent, L.H. Gann and Peter Duignan. I had the opportunity of briefing both
these gentlemen at their offices at th� Hoover Institute, Stanford, Cal
ifornia, about three years ago. Here are excerpts from the preface of their
book:
The "neo-abolitionists"•••consider the battle against the exist
ing South African establishment as yet another chapter of the
civil-rights struggle in America, and even moderate journals have
begun to speak their language•••• We disagree with many of these
assumptions and assertions.
South Africa is not part of the
United States; it is not Africa's "Deep South," but economically
by far the most developed part of the African continent. Black
South Africans--z_ulu, Sotho, Tswana, and others--are not like
�lack Am � ricans. _ Blacks in the United States are English-speak
ing Americans, like most of their white neighbors; Zulu and