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PAGE 10
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 19, 1986
engagement.
One trouble with stampedes is that they don't
stop when they reach the cliff.
The real struggle in South Africa today is not about race but
about power. It is not a simple question of black vs. white.
It is not about whether apartheid will continue. It is about
who will run the country when apartheid ends, and how much, if
any, freedom there will be for black and white alike•••• The
uncertainty over the•••communist ties [to the African National
Congress] is not over whether they exist but over how
pervasive they are. The ANC openly proclaims its solidarity
with the South African Communist Party•••• There is no
shortage of historical evidence of what happens when an armed
revolutionary movement that is substantially, but not
completely, led by communist clients of the Soviet Union
seizes power•••• So far, the destructive-engagement stampede
has had the effect of rewarding and glorifying black
radicalism in South Africa and thereby strengthening the ANC
at the expense of the country's 30 or so other black political
organizations. The stampede may be good short-term politics
in the United States. But if it does carry us over the cliff,
the all-but-certain future for South Africa is descent through
catastrophic bloodshed into tragedy and totalitarianism.
And in South Africa itself, President Botha, in a major address to his
own party (but intended as much for the outside world) , warned of the
disastrous ·nature of revolutionary movements that promise liberation.
"The international campaign against South Africa, especially from the
ranks of certain leftist Western leaders and countries, is one of the
most extreme forms of political fraud of the 20th century," Botha told
the special party convention. "We are probably no better, but certainly
no worse than the rest of the world.
"Our policy is one of orderly, evolutionary change in contrast to the so
called liberation of violent revolutionaries," Botha said. "In Africa,
we have repeatedly seen the consequences of premature liberation without
proper preparation and planning." He further warned that "the freedom of
one person so easily becomes the oppression of another [andJ •••a freedom
struggle, especially if accompanied by violence, so often ends in
tyrrany." He added that his nation was confronted with the combined
weight of the contemporary views of many Third World nations coupled with
the "historical guilt complex of the First World."
The Strange Border War, and More
<expanded version of August 11
"Worldwide News• "Worldwatch" column) Sunday evening, July 27, my son,
Neal, and two "Plain Truth" photographers, Hal Finch and G.A. Belluche
Jr., had an incredible experience.
We were invited by Harold (Hal)
Ezell, the Western states regional commissioner for the U.S. Immigration
and Naturalization Service, to view what Mr. Ezell calls "the invasion•-
the nightly penetration of America's southern borde·r by swarms of illegal
immigrants. The location was the "square mile of hell," straddling the
border checkpoint with Mexico at San Ysidro, California. (San Ysidro is
a community within the city of San Diego.)