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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JANUARY 4, 1985
PAGE 11
ation of power by the whites the black populace will march into
democracy through some sort of lockstep. The chaos-generating
elements are far too powerful.
In BLOOD RIVER, Free State farmer Jaap de Villiers, quoted earlier, pon
dered the future somewhat forebodingly. He reflected the views of most Af
rikaners, whose forebears settled in South Africa's vast upland plains (de
populated by inter-tribal warfare--up to two million dead!)--and who made a
covenant with God to be "the instrument of His order in Africa":
"I think this must be God's country, truly. 'The Promised Land.'
And it is ours too. God gave it to us and we love it and will
fight for it and die for it if we must. We have claimed it with
our sweat and our blood. We will not just go away. And so, we
will turn to Him, ask Him how to solve this puzzle, because it is
His puzzle. The puzzle of this earth. But He means us to work
for the answers. To keep our faith, to stand if we must against
the forces of evil. There are Cubans and Russians in Angola and
Mozambique and East Germans in the Transkei. Why? What is it
they want here? To take from us what we have built up over the
generations on the pretext of helping the black man? It is not
the black man they care about. It is the gold. The diamonds.
The minerals. The riches of the place. But our riches are these
riches," he continued gesturing to the sweeping land whose con
tours are etched upon his heart. "This lovely land. This place.
And we have been helping the black in good faith. And so we must
go forward in good faith to whatever is there, waiting in the
shadows.
Then, whatever comes, we will know we have tried.
Tried to be just. Tried to be fair. Because I do believe in my
people. I do believe in my country. And I do believe in my God
and with that I must go straight ahead. Yet, if it comes to a
showdown and we find the whole might of the Communist world and
the blacks who court favor with it ranged against us, I do not be
lieve we Afrikaners can sustain ourselves indefinitely. And that
is what is so painful," he added, his voice growing hoarse with
emotion. "Because I do not know what to tell my children when
they ask if a war comes what will become of us•••• Yet I know that
we will fight, even after all is lost, just as we did in the past.
We will go to ground and fight from the land until the last man is
gone. They shall not have this country of ours easily••••"
The liberal activists are ignorant, perhaps willfully, perhaps not, of the
facts of history in this ethnic tinderbox of the world. Reacting to mount
ing pressure, President Botha, in a stern televised warning, recently
blamed the United States and the Soviet Union about equally for many of Af
rica's problems. While Moscow promotes "the heaven of communism as the
salvation" of Africa, he said, Washington has its own ideas to solve the
problems of his country and of Africa as a whole--ideas, he implied, that
are no better or more historically relevant than those of the Soviets.
Mr. Botha, firm but not inflexible, recently held a first-time secret meet
ing with Zulu Chief Gatsha Buthelezi. Government officials are reportedly
even willing to talk to outlawed black power groups, provided they fore
swear the path to violence. That won't be easy for them to do. Mr. Botha,
by this process, also puts himself in hot water with his right-wing, who are
suspicious of any weakening of power.