622
ANGUS WILSON
English tradition of disarming revolution by including every
successive wave of potential revolutionary leaders into the social
Establishment. It would be inexact to say that he thinks that
in compromise or delay lies the realistic approach, for his deter–
mination is not to think; he prefers almost self-consciously "to
happen to know it," i.e. to accept his inherited instinct as
superior to any argument.
It is this alone really that divides the two white groups in
their attitude to the African majority, although
this
division of
view on the principal problem of their lives is constantly re–
inforced emotionally by the legacy of historical hatred. The
genuine grievances of the Mrikaner against the concentration
camps and other British Yankeeisms of the Boer War are as
artificially fostered among the younger generations as Confed–
erate history is in the South. Lord Milner and his team of
intellectual young men from Baliol, Oxford, who intended a
high-minded Imperialistic settlement of South Africa immediatdy
after the Boer War are treated in the Government school history
books of today as so many carpetbaggers. The moderation and
compromise of the English Liberal Government of 1906 which
finally created the Union are forgotten or comfortably disre–
garded, or often, no doubt, thought of as English hypocrisy.
Beneath the long period of cooperation from 1906 to 1930 suc–
cessive moderate Mrikaner leaders were taken at their face value
by the English speaking community who wanted only to be left
alone to make money. Smuts, who was primarily an English hero,
was in fact hated by a large part of his compatriots, but the
English community never realized this. When at last the Na–
tionalist Government felt strong enough to discriminate in the
civil service and the professions against the English it came as
a shock, and only with the greatest reluctance have the English
South Africans of Natal and other enclaves turned their at–
tention from "business" to the world of politics. Now among the
youngest generation of English South Mricans the sense of
grievance is considerable, but it's far more likely to turn to a
