Angus' Wilson
THE WHITES IN SOUTH AFRICA
Most of my more emotional friends objected strongly
to the narrow terms on which I visited the Republic (then the
Union) of South Africa in January 1961. Was I not like them
l
a man of the left; what then could I want to be doing in South
Africa but meeting the new black African Nationalist leaders?
To go all that way to study the dying White world was surely
the final decadence. The view was echoed again
in
the Union
itself by active members of the Liberal Party, the non-parlia–
mentary, non-racial group that is as left as anyone may admit
to with safety in South Africa. For them the surprise was reason–
able and more sincerely felt. In the land of Apartheid it
is
naturally the wish of any person of either spirit or intelligence
or of both to defy the racial barrier. It is not easy to do so, but it
can
be '
done, particularly in Johannesburg; and it is done
in
artistic, left or "bohemian" circles there and in the other cities.
Who would have better opportunities to leap this hurdle than
a visiting writer with no passport or job to lose? It was difficult,
I think, for many of these avant-garde South African Whites to
take me seriously when they found out my intention.
Of course I was not avoiding Africans, I did in fact meet
a number of them, as well as some Indians and some Cape
Coloureds; but my purpose even with them was to discover their
appreciation of the white life as it is lived in the Union today.
On my last night, it is true, I gave myself the treat of an "even–
ing off" spent with Africans, and the hilarity of the occasion
