614
ANGUS WILSON
turn~
into. a human being and before the human being turns
into a chair. Without some resolution of
this
conflict between
views we UI)reservedly oppose and the many sympathetic people
who hold them, any liberal, social or political conviction must,
I suspect, be most shaky on exactly that personal and emotional
level where it is most likely to be tested in times of political
stress.
This
principally was at the back of my mind when I
decided to spend some weeks with South Mrican Whites.
In my resolve I was strengthened by watching in reverse
the panic reactions of so many European and American liberals
against Mrican leaders
in
other parts of that continent, when
they discovered too late that the heroic or saintly negro image
they had pasted on to Mrica was roughly broken by gangsterism,
power jockeying, and other illiberal deportments. Let me
be
awake to what may be nice in White South Mrica, I thought,
before the day comes when, threatened with a violent war they
have brought upon themselves, they send out their appeal for
aid. I know now exactly how prepared I think we should
be
with aid of every kind to unwilling white refugees from South
Mrica when that day comes; and exactly how obdurate we must
be in resisting their appeals for armed support for their con–
tinued racial hegemony. At least I shan't suddenly discover that
they are human beings and lose my head at the discovery. The
attitude, of course, can be labeled as smug, but only I
think
because of a current piece of cant that admires calculation in
extremists as realism, but expects of liberals or moderates that
their political tactics should spring whole from a sort of un–
premeditated decency that is
akin
to spontaneous combustion.
In the course of my visit I must also say that, for every
sym–
pathetic white, I met a dozen who strengthened my hostility to
their racial policy-by their personal odium.
If
these reasons for concentrating on White South Mrica
still seem too general and fragile for the reader with his eye on
historical inevitability, let me be
r~
and say that, although I
have spoken of the .day of reckoning, it seems likely that with
