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PAGE 10
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JANUARY 4, 1985
disruption and chaos--as the woes of the rest of Africa illustrate all too
well. In the book BLOOD RIVER, referred to last week, a farmer in western
Cape Province pondered his beloved but beleaguered country's future:
Change is coming in South Africa because it has to, •••but it must
grow naturally out of our own traditions and cannot be forced
before its time� because you simply cannot force civilization on
people.
Race, after all, is not the real problem in this
country. How could it be? We've lived with race all our lives.
It's the many levels of civilization that coexist here, from that
of the tribal peoples, some of whom are truly primitive, to that
of the most sophisticated and modern Europeans--all living cheek
by jowl in one country. And because the least developed are in
the greatest majority, it does not follow that it would benefit
all to hand the country over to them before they are ready to take
responsibility for it. Because to do that, you see, would not
simply destroy white privilege in South Africa but the black
man's own best hope for the future along with it.
Recently in San Francisco, I heard a speech by an American businessman and
author, Lynn Casto. Mr. Casto had served in parts of West and East Africa
as a business consultant, with the aim of encouraging the development of
small-scale black entrepreneurship. He also traveled widely in southern
Africa. His wide range of experiences altered his old views, which had once
been, he said, nroughly labeled Northern liberal.n With regards to South
Africa, he told a Commonwealth Club audience:
There is terrible enmity between tribes all over Africa•••• One
has to make a large jump in optimism to believe that the South Af
rican tribes that were doing their best to eliminate each other
up to the time the Boers calmed them down, have learned to love
each other down through the years••••
About five years ago I undertook to interview the Zulu leader,
Chief Buthelezi. I traveled to his kraal in •••Natal province.
The chief was unable to keep his appointment with me.
How
ever, •••I was able to interview a sub-chief, a highly educated,
sophisticated man. We had a nice discourse. During the course
of the conversation, I inquired the source of the name of this
instant city that was being built. It was apparently being con
structed all at once. The name, he said, was derived from an im
portant battle--Ulundi. It came to me then. That was the battle
where Chief Cetshwayo, successor to the legendary Shaka the Zulu,
was defeated. The defeat broke the back of the Zulu nation as a
warring people.
The mention of the battle created a transformation in the be
havior of my interviewee. His eyes grew large, his face became
<�j�:�yj:ea:.;�he drew himself up and virtually shouted: nThe Zulu�
tion will rise again.n That convinced me. I say forget voting.
If the whites � down, the arm y and police will have Zulu .£2!!!::
manders. I think that probability sends chills down the back of
every non-Zulu tribesman in South Africa••.•
It is extremely important that we do not develop policy based on
some unrealistic hopeful conviction that in the event of a relax-