THE
WHITES IN SOUTH AFRICA
619
but
fr~m
either a class or a sexual s!andpoint the Afrikaner re–
action to the overwhelming majority of blacks around him is
different from that of the English. The English and the Mrikaner
community ordinarily speak of their sexual motivations only
inadvertently or under stress-the English are too nice and many
have "chapel origins," the Dutch have years of Calvinism
be–
hind them. Yet the African (and to some extent the Cape
Coloured, though not I think the Indian) does create an im–
mediate sexual impression upon most of the white community.
All the Freudian paraphernalia of jokes, slips of the tongue, be–
trays
this to the visitor almost embarassingly in even the most
genteel gatherings. The English have succeeded in driving their
sexual impulses more deeply into their subconscious. Normally
such feelings only show,
in
particular among the women,
in
the
heightened, excited tone of horror with which they refer some–
what vaguely to the violence with which the "natives" threaten
them. Yet the recent outburst of pistol practice by white women
was, I think, an extemalization of a rape drama that is going
I
on in their minds a good deal of the time. For the rest, like
their "menfolk," the white "missus" prefers to remain
in
a
state of bemused, faintly horrified wonderment at the thought
of the sexual life of the native "boys" who work for her. A
businessman's wife told me of how the wives from the up–
country kraals who visit her "boys" once or twice a year are so
undemonstrative that they never embrace or kiss their husbands
when first seeing them after so long an absence. From this fact
she deduced that the "natives" are naturally cold and unfeeling,
and with some evident excitement that they would be "pitiless"
if
the day ever came when they got power. That her presump–
tion is probably true does not explain the abnormally sexual aura
that surrounded her .remarks. She said nothing, of course, of
what might
be
the natural reticence of "native" families under
her employer's gaze, or of a system that separates husbands
from their families over so long a period. The failure of Mricans
to kiss seems to stick hard in the English gullet. An English-speak-
