More South African Whites Are Joining the Struggle Against Apartheid

JOHANNESBURG —  White South Africans increasingly are realizing that here, as in Nazi Germany, it is impossible “not to have known.” As a result, they have split ranks and a small but slowly growing number are taking considerable risks in individual skirmishes against apartheid rule. These people probably represent less than 1% of the nation’s 4.5 million whites, but the fact that such a traditionally markedly apathetic group is doing anything against the system that has benefited them so handsomely is in itself remarkable.

It is not known how many of the 8,400 detained thus far, or how many of the estimated 5,000 or more activists in hiding, are white. Perhaps roughly 5%, according to the Detainees’ Parents Support Committee--a multiracial group that monitors detention and repression. But what is certain now is that there has been a far greater crackdown on whites than ever before during this third state of emergency--the second in a year.

Whites remember only too well the 28,000 blacks and whites who died in the decade-long conflict in neighboring Zimbabwe. They debate at dinner parties about the projections by University of Cape Town researchers that 3 million people will die in the war against apartheid. Already more than 2,000 have died in less than two years of unrest.

A new law enacted July 1--the Public Safety Amendment Act--ensures that even if this state of emergency is lifted, partial or nationwide emergencies can be implemented anywhere at any time. With some form of emergency status now a likely permanent feature of South African life, dissenting movements face tremendous challenges in resisting the nationalist government.

With most activists either in hiding or in detention, slowly increasing numbers of ordinary white citizens are taking a more active role in a variety of non-parliamentary organizations such as the End Conscription Campaign, Women for Peace, Let South Africa Speak, Jews for Social Justice, the Johannesburg Democratic Action Committee, Lawyers for Human Rights and the Coalition for the Right to Know--which have a combined membership of roughly 6,000.

Some of the Gucci-and-pearls set volunteer in the Detainees’ Parents Support Committee offices, answering phones and taking testimony from former detainees or their families. Working as volunteers through organizations such as the Black Sash, a white women’s anti-apartheid organization of about 2,000, a few businessmen shuttle wounded or badly beaten township residents to “safe” doctors where the victims do not face arrest, as they might at a state hospital.

Some white suburbanites have taken to offering temporary, short-term shelter to blacks whose homes have been razed, or to refugees from the emergency, or simply to youths looking for a place to study, away from police raids and internecine rivalry on campus.

This defiance in the face of harsh penalties is fueled by a sense of apartheid’s fragility, and the fearful realization that the current clampdown is the reaction of a state that no longer holds all the reins. About a dozen people have been deported since the state of emergency began, and some detainees are facing deportation. The state, alarmed by the possibility of increasing resistance, is harassing whites more than before, whether they are actively involved in anti-apartheid activities or just fringe supporters.

Sporadic sweeps of various white neighborhoods have become rather common, according to Max Coleman, a founding member of the detainees committee, which tries to monitor such activities. Members of armed search parties, who cannot be identified under the terms of the state-of-emergency regulations, photograph all inhabitants of the house, including servants and children. They take names, addresses, car-registration numbers, passport information and bank-account numbers; homes are searched and their floor plans noted. The government appears to be issuing a clear warning: Big Brother is watching.

But ultimately it is the effect on the children that will determine the course of events in South Africa: black youths because of their increasing radicalization and willingness to fight violence with violence, and white children because of their parents’ fear for them as they battle to reconcile their desperate love for South Africa with the dilemma of whether it is irresponsible to stay in what all believe will become an increasingly bloody conflict.

White parents, who may care little for the tragedy of black children’s lives, are terrified about the new menace that shopping centers pose as potential bomb targets; they avoid sand roads for fear of land mines, and their children now do regular bomb drills at school. Their sons face a dilemma of being pitted against fellow South Africans in the townships, or a mandatory six-year jail term for refusing compulsory conscription.

A crumbling economy, currency restrictions that limit the amount that emigrants may take out of the country to about $23,000, plus the immense immigration barriers in other countries, have forced whites to realize that for most of them there is nowhere else to run. But those who have access to another passport, or families abroad, are leaving at a rate of 40 per day, according to recent government statistics.

Whites are being forced to consider their role in a post-apartheid South Africa, which few truly doubt is coming. More are beginning to think about whether what they do now can influence their children’s inheritance--a future of democracy or tyranny.