I
THE WHITES IN SOUTH AFRICA
625
theid may be modified by expediency they
will
not be towards
greater humanity or even necessarily towards greater rationality.
Apartheid, as it was expounded to me by the professors of Stellen–
bosch, has a crazy logic of its own, but if Bantustan (the Mrican
side of Apartheid which the Africans don't in any case want)
were to be seriously applied it would necessitate a policy of
extreme complication, subtlety and immense cost with only very
long term hopes of repayment. Apartheid in its full purity is, as
the English businessmen complain, very "idealistic" and "up
in
the clouds." The modifications that expediency makes and will
make to the pure doctrine are more those of an overworked
bureaucracy reducing a perfect blue print to the horrors and
shambles of makeshift practice.
The picture is all too fan1iliar from Nazi Germany. The
idea of Apartheid is regressive, decadent and anti-human; but
much of the inhumanity of the practice is tlle result of human
fallibility, incompetence and cynicism in applying it. I met two
Afrikaner "intellectuals" who, as apostles of Apartheid, were
disturbed at the imperfect application of their ideals. It was
interesting to me to hear from them that should Government
practice stray too far from theory they would not openly oppose,
for to do so would be to split the ranks of Afrikanerdom. They
would seek instead to atone for their mistakes by a more mystic,
personal process of leaving the academic world to work on the
soil from which they had come. Since their whole lives had been
inspired by the hard climb from rural ignorance to a dedicated
life of study, the sacrifice would be a real one. I have never
felt so depressed at the repetition of human patterns as when
I heard this mystic nonsense.
There is, however, one brutal aspect of Apartheid that
might be modified by expediency, although the extreme racial–
ists seem in fact to have won the day. The inclusion of the
large Indian community of Natal, and above all the mixed
community of the Cape-the Coloureds-into all the complicat–
ed categories of Apartheid has aroused considerable opposition
