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Entry: A Separate Peace (Part I) Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/a_separate_peace_part_i#474 Post contents: A very good analysis by Mr Sailer, but I have to take issue with his characterisation of South African apartheid as "dishonest" and his blaming of the Afrikaners for its failure. It is important to realize that white resistance to apartheid came mainly from the English business elite, especially mining with its huge reliance on cheap black labour. Responding to warnings about the dire consquences apartheid would have had for the economy, Verwoerd said "rather poor and separate than rich and integrated". Mr Sailer also accepts at face value the false spin anti-apartheid propaganda gave to his infamous quip about "hewers of wood and drawers of water". Within the context of justifying apartheid he obviously meant that it was immoral for whites to expect blacks to remain serfs in perpetuity. Heinlein's observations strike me as nothing more than a case of the pot calling the kettle black: unlike the US plantation owners, the Voortrekkers never practised slavery. As God-fearing Calvinists they treated their labourers humanely and strived to lead them to becoming upright Christians. That explains why, during the Wars of Freedom when Britain invaded the Boer Republics, instead of rising against their masters, the blacks remained loyal to such an extent that the British found it expedient to also herd them off to concentration camps where some 18 000 perished along with 27 000 Afrikaner women and children. Contra Heinlein, the spirit of Christian charity manifested itself especially under apartheid as Afrikaners set out to build hundreds of hospitals and clinics, drastically cutting the number of fatalities at birth and nearly doubling life expectancy in one decade. Whereas schooling was previously, as was typical under British rule elsewhere, left over to the benign neglect of missionaries, Verwoerd instituted government schooling which was accessible to all blacks. According to Afrikaner historian, H. Giliomee, an international Olympiad conducted in the 60's saw South African blacks outperforming their counterparts in the US. This is only scratching the surface. Successive apartheid governments went to enormous expense to acquire land, set up administrations, develop agriculture and establish universities for blacks. Without expanding on a complex history, suffice it to say that apartheid in the end failed mainly because of the campaign of international isolation - deriving its main impetus from the local English, resentful of their increasing irrelevance in the wake of apartheid and nursing grievances over the crippling blow their empire suffered at the hands of simple Boers. Sent at: 2008 12 02