Diplomatic Cable from M. Legendre, French Ambassador to Pretoria, to M. Jobert, Minister of Foreign Affairs
D. No. 313/DAM. Cape Town, April 25, 1973
Destiny of the Republic of South Africa
Some six months after taking up my post, I should like to send the Department a synthesis of my correspondence and some reflections on the evolution and destiny of the Republic of South Africa. The Easter recess of the parliamentary session, which is particularly dull this year, gives me the occasion to do so.
Since the Nationalist Party came to power, that is to say for more than 25 years, the Republic of South Africa has demonstrated great political stability, which has manifested itself in domestic policy, essentially in the area of interracial relations, through near-total immobility or a reinforcement of measures concerning “separate development,” and, in the economic sphere, through a dynamism, realistic and often bold, that tends to make South Africa an industrial and modern country. Thus the paradox grows between the way in which political and human problems are approached and treated on one hand, and economic and financial problems on the other. The current parliamentary session is a fresh illustration of this: neither the governing party nor, for that matter, the opposition party, which seems to have lost its momentum, has truly addressed the great problems facing the country; on the other hand, Parliament gave a warm welcome to the Sishen-Saldanha Bay steel project, which represents an investment of nearly one billion dollars, and to a dynamic budget for 1973-1974 proposing a 20% increase in public spending.
How many times, over these past 25 years, has it not been predicted that this paradox could not last and that an equilibrium, whereby barely four million Whites dominated 15, and soon 20, million Blacks, Coloureds and Indians, could only be precarious? Yet, despite the general current of History, despite increasingly violent opposition and criticism, South Africa pursues its course imperturbably and, in certain respects, reinforces its positions.
What are the reasons for this? How long will it last? What may be the destiny of South Africa? These are the three questions to which I should like to try to bring, if not answers, at least some reflections.
The reasons that have made and continue to make this political stance possible are well known. It is not pointless to recall and analyze them anew, for it is from their modification that either inevitable evolution or a grave crisis will come. The reasons are essentially: wealth, remoteness, the immensity of the country and, on the other hand, the heterogeneity of the populations of color.
The wealth is geological; whatever its political destiny, South Africa will remain the richest, or one of the richest, regions of Africa. Beyond gold and diamonds, this country possesses all mineral resources, in quality and quantity, except bauxite and oil. The consequences of this wealth are multiple: on the one hand, despite the immense gap that has opened between Whites and Blacks, the latter benefit indirectly from the general enrichment; nowhere here does one see a misery comparable to that of certain regions of Asia or Africa; despite general poverty and derisory low wages, the most destitute have enough to clothe themselves and subsist; the standard of living of Blacks, however low, is higher than that of many African countries. On the other hand, this wealth allows the government to circumvent, so to speak, political problems through economic achievements of all kinds and through rapid industrialization of the country; it also enables a very modern military arsenal that makes South Africa invulnerable to any other African country.
But remoteness is no doubt the principal factor. It has allowed South Africa to live “in a closed circuit” far from the great currents of today’s world. Southern Africa is an “island” surrounded by seas and, to the north, either by vast deserts (south of South West Africa and Botswana) or by bastions held by white minorities (Angola, north of South West Africa, Rhodesia and Mozambique), which have until now constituted solid buffers against subversion and the spread of new ideas. Across 5,000 km of borders, South Africa is in contact with the outside Black world only along Zambia, on the 250 km of the Caprivi Strip in the northeastern part of South West Africa. A simple reading of South African newspapers shows how far this country is from the world.
Furthermore, the country is immense in relation to its population: more than twice the size of France, and more than three and a half times if one includes South West Africa, while the population is relatively small (23 to 24 million inhabitants). Despite the extent of arid zones, there is truly room for everyone. Outside the industrialized centers (Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth), one has everywhere the impression of a vast emptiness. This has allowed South Africans to maintain or push back, at least theoretically, the Black populations into the reserves, which have become the homelands and the bantustans. If the logical outcome of apartheid were one day to be secession, the immensity of the country would permit it, leaving each group sufficient space to live and prosper.
Finally, apart from the Indians, who are divided between Hindus (three quarters) and Muslims (one quarter), and the Coloreds, who constitute a category apart by their origin, it is true that the Black (Bantu) populations are divided into 8 ethnic groups, different in their history, language and traditions. No doubt the South Africans tend to maintain and exaggerate these differences, but they correspond to an undeniable historical fact; the same is true of the Black populations of South West Africa. Until now, each ethnic group has found itself isolated before the central power and, despite attempts at unity, no collective action by Blacks or populations of color has been able to be carried out successfully.
This being so, the question arises of how these factors will henceforth evolve. The wealth and immensity of the country are permanent facts. It is otherwise with the other factors, which can rapidly change. This evolution will no doubt occur under the effect of factors internal or external to South Africa, which it is interesting to analyze.
The essential internal factor is economic growth, which results from this enrichment and is now taking on a new momentum. This boom will, by its very magnitude, have growing consequences in the area of interracial relations. The regulations under which the labor force of color may hold only inferior jobs, one of the principal and most criticized aspects of “petty apartheid,“ are no longer applied by businesses, with the tacit consent of the administration, except very imperfectly. The demands of economic development outweigh the regulations. Industry thirsts for skilled labor that limited immigration cannot supply. The consequence is that Blacks and Coloreds are gradually rising in the wage hierarchy; a more comfortable middle class is forming, more conscious of its strength and less disposed to accept the inferior status reserved for it. The current draft budget recognizes the necessity of training technicians within the Black proletariat.
Furthermore, in the Black towns of the industrial centers (Soweto, the Black town of Johannesburg, is the best example with nearly 800,000 inhabitants), a vast intermingling of Black populations is taking place, which the administration has been unable to prevent. In principle, a neighborhood is reserved for each ethnic group; in fact, the Black populations are mixing more and more through frequent displacements and unions or marriages, with Zulu becoming the lingua franca. Outside the bantustans, that is to say, for more than 50% of the Black population, ethnic origins and traditions are fading.
Finally, there is no doubt that the still rather mediocre and inadequate education program, crowned by three Black universities, one Colored and one Indian, is beginning to form a certain elite: teachers, lawyers, doctors, administrators, who will less and less accept the status of inferiority that the law imposes upon them.
Thus an evolution has been created, stemming from economic growth, which is still slow but could suddenly accelerate.
But it is the external factors that, in my view, may have the most profound and decisive consequences. The chain of bastions and buffers that the countries led by white minorities constitute, and which to the north protect South Africa, is subject to mounting pressures, whether regarding the status of South West Africa, the fate of Rhodesia, or the rebellion in Angola and Mozambique. The weakest link is currently Rhodesia, whose future is highly uncertain. In any case, as soon as South Africa finds itself in contact with a country led by a Black government, the situation will be immediately transformed. It will be difficult to stem new ideas and subversion. There will inevitably occur the same phenomenon as everywhere else in Africa and in all formerly colonized countries. The South Africans are perfectly aware of this. Already an active guerrilla pressure, coming from Zambia, is being exerted along the 250 km of the Caprivi Strip in northeastern South West Africa.
What conclusions can be drawn from these few observations? What is the future and destiny of South Africa in the medium and long term?
The conclusions must be inspired by the following considerations:
1) The current government appears immovable. The “Nationalist Party” is solidly anchored in power, and one may wonder whether the “United Party” would bring many new ideas. As for the “Progressive Party,” it is reduced to a few personalities, often superficial or socialite. One can, in fact, expect evolution only from internal or external pressure.
Government policy regarding Blacks is simple and logical. It involves maintaining and pushing back into the former reserves, which became the homelands and then the bantustans, the Black populations:
in a first stage, the matter is to discuss indefinitely, possibly for years, the consolidation of lands, borders and powers of these bantustans;
then, in a second stage, to grant them an evolving status of the Transkei type, gradually moving toward a certain autonomy;
finally, in a third stage, as late as possible and in an undetermined future, to move from autonomy of an evolved Transkei type to semi-independence of the Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana type, with representation at the United Nations, but with all these countries remaining within the political, economic and military orbit of the Republic of South Africa. Thus would evolve, but as late as possible, in a distant and unfixed future, Natal (except the Pietermaritzburg-Durban corridor), the eastern part of Cape Province (that is, the Transkei and the Ciskei) and all the north of the Transvaal. This is what has been called the positive part of “separate development.”
This realistic and logical policy, which the government is disposed to apply only as slowly as possible, provides no answer to fundamental problems:
a) What will become of the Blacks who, in principle on a provisional basis, find themselves outside the bantustans, that is, in the so-called “white” zones, particularly in the towns and industrial centers, where their presence is indispensable to the economic life of the country? They represent more than 50% of the Black population, that is, more than 8 million people; they are subject to the strict regulation of “petty apartheid“ and have no rights, not even those of property or free movement.
b) What will become of the Coloreds, and also the Indians, since by definition there can be no bantustan for them? Will they be indefinitely subject to the rules of “petty apartheid“?
c) What will become of the Transvaal which, although the political and historical heart of the Republic, is in fact a Black province, with the bantustans enclosing like a horseshoe the ultra-modern cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria, themselves surrounded by vast and populous Black suburbs?
So many questions that remain unanswered and constitute South Africa’s heaviest burden.
2) An evolution, if it occurs solely under the pressure of internal factors, can only be slow. Despite the recent training of some elites, the Black populations are backward and divided, and until now they have shown themselves peaceful and resigned. Whites and Blacks arrived at the same time in South Africa and have lived side by side for three centuries. They first fought one another, then the stronger imposed his law for common labor. Affinities have been created in which bitterness and hatred have a place, but also more complex sentiments to analyze; to seek to describe them in a few definitive strokes, as travelling journalists sometimes do, is intellectual dishonesty. To consider the Boers as mere slave traders and their country as a vast slave market is a simplistic view of more complicated and nuanced problems. Deep in the countryside, what are the true sentiments of the Black toward the Boer, whose children he raises and who cares for him and protects him in moments of distress? A centuries-old paternalism has created an attachment that is perhaps more than fear or habit.
The Anglican Archbishop of South Africa, Mgr. Taylor, told me: “The Black soul is profoundly and definitively wounded.” This is no doubt true, but in my conversations with Black leaders, I found more resentment than true hatred. Fundamentally, the Black elites know themselves assured of prevailing, given their numerical superiority and the current of History; the Blacks have waited for centuries, they can be patient a little longer to occupy the place to which they have a right, and they would wish to avoid violence.
But how rapid the evolution would be if new ideas and subversion took hold in South Africa! The white minority knows this. That is why it is so severe toward advanced movements, particularly in the universities. Surrounded by a Black multitude to the east and a “Colored” crowd to the west, it lives in the dread that a breach of “petty apartheid“ will allow the wave of color to submerge the country. This is the deep, and truly painful, reason for its intransigence.
3) Thus an evolution, to be rapid, would need the assistance of factors external to South Africa. This is the hypothesis whereby one of the links in the chain that to the north protects South Africa breaks, for example, by the coming to power of a Black government. The hypothesis is today plausible. That is why the South African government considers the Zambezi as its security frontier and maintains police forces there. It follows the situation in Rhodesia and Mozambique attentively and does not spare its support. It opposes obstinately any interference by the United Nations in South West Africa. It is reinforcing its police and its army; the Defense budget has been increased from 370 to 481 million rands for the new year.
But what would South Africa do if the white minority in Rhodesia lost power, or if the rebellion prevailed in Mozambique? It is certain that on that day all elements of the situation in South Africa would be quickly and profoundly transformed.
The conclusion is that South Africa finds itself at a turning point in its history, resulting from its very economic boom, which increases racial pressure, and from possible modifications in the chain of States that protect it to the north.
The Boers hold power firmly. They will not let it escape easily. This country is theirs. A proud, suspicious, obstinate people, hard at work and at hardship, they have, moreover, the sense of bearing a divine message from the Old Testament. At every meal, at every important act of public or private life, they recall through prayer the presence of God in their destiny. They have wished neither to mix with the Black mass, nor even with the Britishers who occupy the country with them, but alongside them, nor to accept a flow of immigrants who would nevertheless have reinforced their presence.
This country, the Boers will defend with the same ardent will with which they built it. Their destiny is not without analogy to that of the people of Israel.
But will they be able to, given the evolution of the world and of today’s Africa? And the gilded youth, born into ease and the increase of wealth, has it kept the inflexible vigor of the old pioneers? What will be its attitude when the time of trial and sacrifice comes?
(Direction des Affaires Africaines et Malgaches, Afrique du Sud, 1973-1978, 309QONT/1)