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, •PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JUNE 24, 1986
Boer republics," he said in an interview
Town.
"I am prepared to live at peace
"Power cannot be shared, but land can.
republics back."
PAGE 15
with the May 17 ARGUS of· Cape
with my neighbors," he added,
That is why we want our Boer
Terre Blanche's critics claim his program is simplistic and impossible,
given South Africa's highly integrated, modern industrialized economy with
its influx of blacks into the Transvaal.· Thus, South Africa is splitting
apart--white against black, black against black and now once again even
white against white. No one has the answer.·· And meanwhile, the world
turns the screws even tighter.
One very likely consequence is that the growing political forces on the
right, in league with Iike minds in the military, might some day stage a
coup to prevent the country from descending into total anarchy. As Connor
Cruise O'Brien wrote in the March 1986 issue of THE ATLANTIC:
Afrikaners are neither the uniquely virtuous volk of their own
rhetoric•••nor yet the moral monsters depicted by outside
rhetoric.
They are ordinary human beings, with the normal
human quotas of greed, arrogance, and so forth, -operating
within a unique predicament, which they have i1µ1erited and are
now thrashing around in. I suspect that some of the righteous
who denounce them from afar might behave quite like them if
they were caught in a similar predicament--if, for example,
there had been a black majority in America in the 1950s•••• So
it seems that even if a majority of the white electorate were
prepared to throw in the sponge, the struggle to maintain
white, and Afrikaner, supremacy would be carried on by the
armed forces, presumably under martial law••• (which is, in any
case, not a document that inspires any great veneration, even
among white South Africans).
�n the world really would go crazy!
Passing of an Bra
Mention should be made in closing concerning an
individual who inspired the American people at a time of great national
stress. June 17, Kate Smith, who made the song "God Bless America" so
famous it became an unofficial national anthem, died at her home in
Raleigh, N.C., at the age of 79.
Miss Smith was indeed unique. She recorded almost 3,000 songs (700 made
the hit parade), made more than 15,000 radio and television programs and
received more than 25 million 'fan letters. Yet she failed to talk until
she was 4 years old, began singing at age 5--and never took a formal music
lesson in her life. She once said: "The voice is a God-given gift. I
don't· question it and I don't train it, I just use it as I think the Lord
intended."
·-
Kate Smith's rich contralto voice coupled with her inspirational
personality blossomed just when the nation needed it the most, in the dark
days of the Depression and World War II. During the war she travelled
520,000 miles to entertain troops and sold a record $600 million in war
bonds in round-the-clock radio appeals.
She was called "Radio's own
Statue of Liberty." President Franklin Roosevelt once introduced her to