626
ANGUS WILSON
from the English whites of Durban and the whites of both
groups of Cape Town. When the Mricans made their peaceful
march from the township of Langa on Cape Town which so
terrified the white population with fears of a Jacquerie, the
Cape Coloureds (most of whom have for generations thought
of themselves as on the White side of the line) were notably
"loyal." To many whites, by no means liberal
in
their views,
it seems stupid and a little shocking to reward such loyalty by
segregation. And Mrikaner country people of the Cape area, too,
have strong ties with the Cape Coloureds with whom they are
often brought up as children.
It
is
notable that Dr. Verwoerd
prefers not to have native servants
in
his house exactly because of
this corrupting aspect of old plantation paternalism. The Cape
Coloureds have an opera company that performs Italian operas
and the general popularity of this with white audiences
is
in
some degree a mark of dislike of
this
aspect of Government
policy. The English speaking white community of Natal, too,
have found a special affection for their Indian population which
in my boyhood I remember to have been the scapegoat of racial
feeling. I was urged again and again in Durban to take note
of the higher intelligence and education of the Indians as
opposed to the Mricans. This new found admiration is in great
degree, as one of my more cynical business friends admitted,
an
expedient desire for allies against African nationalism, but it
is
also in some degree a feeling by the English Natalers that the
Indians are "their" community, whom the Afrikaner govern–
ment does not understand.
Why in view of this white hostility to these extensions of
Apartheid does the Government persist in it? The witch-hunting
for "black" people that inevitably goes on when mixed com–
munities are classified is one of the most publicly tragic and
brutal aspects of Apartheid as it was of Nazi anti-Semitism. Why
so needlessly outrage the ordinary non-political white man's
sense of decency? The answer
is,
I think, that the sincerity of
the Apartheid theorists demands this logicality; that even the
