by Alan Paton

"when the white man turns to loving, the black man will have turned to hating." James Jarvis (Richard Harris) and Reverend Stephen Kumalo (James Earl Jones) in a scene from Cry, The Beloved Country (Miramax films, 1995).

Alan Paton was born in 1903 and graduated with distinction in Physics. He started his career as a school teacher and also joined South Africa Institute of Race Relations.

In 1948 his novel Cry, The Beloved Country was published and received wide acclaim. A few months later the National Party came into power and instituted apartheid. In 1995 the novel was adapted into a motion picture starring Richard Harris and James Earl Jones.

During Mendala's trial in 1964 Paton gave evidence to mitigate the treason charges against Mandela. Paton also published several other non-fiction works and in April 1988 he died in Natal at the age of 85. --Editor

Preface

I note that the Editor's blurb says to me that I only ever had one thought in mind - South Africa. This isn't quite true, but it's true enough. It is also true of most of the people I know well, and of the people I respect most.

I have come to the conclusion that the best people in the world are those who regard services to their country and society as their chief purpose of their lives, apart from the private and personal duties and obligations.

That is the reason why I dedicate this anthology to Helen Suzman, who has served her country and her society with courage and tenacity, and of course with great distinction, and I choose her as a representative of all those who have tried to do the same.

I must admit that most of my writings in the last 20 and more years has been about South Africa. Does this tend to make one's writings boring and monotonous? That is a danger, of course, but it is not necessary to succumb to it. For our country is a microcosm of the world.

Here you can witness the age-long struggle between good and evil and you can take part in it.

Here you can see how history corrupts men and women, and you can see men and women struggling to free themselves from its corruption.

Here you see riches and poverty, compassion and cruelty, respect and contempt for the Rule of Law, living side by side. Here the people of three continents come together, bringing their language and their customs and their cultures.

South Africa is what they call a "young country" it does not have the libraries and galleries and the noble buildings of the other countries of the world, but it is as rich a country to grow up in as any on the earth. Its written history is short, and it is a story of conquest and rebellion and struggle and oppression as fascinating as any. Therefore, the writer in South Africa has only himself or herself to blame if the writing is monotonous.

The Editor's choice is very catholic, and it certainly does justice to my articles written since 1965. They dealt with leading figures in our history, both White and Black, including four of our Prime Ministers, Smuts, Verwoerd, Vorster and PW Botha, and four of our Black leaders, Luthuli, Sobukwe, Mandela and Buthelezi.

The Government's treatment of Luthuli can only be descibed as scandalous, but he received world recognition when he was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961.

Sobukwe was sent to Robben island for three years for incitement, but Parliament gave the Minister of Justice, Mr BJ Vorster, the power to detain him for a further six years, and in 1969 he returned to Kimberley under ban, and died under ban in 1974, having also been treated scandalously.

Mandela has been in prison since 1964, when he was given a life sentence for sabotage; the Government will commit a grave error if it allows him to die in prison.

Buthelezi is still alive and active and is Chief Minister of KwaZule and National President of Inkatha.

The Government forced the first three of these to spend their lives and gifts in protest; I hope that they will use the life and gifts of Buthelezi before it is too late.

Of the four Prime Ministers mentioned above, it was Smuts who was the Olympian. My favourite story of Smuts was of the time when he visited the scene of the fighting on the Rand during the miners' strike of 1922. He left his car and went forward on foot, but was confronted by a miner with drawn bayonet. Smuts brushed him aside saying: "Kerel, ek het nou nie tyd daarvoor nie." (Chap, I do not have the time right now.)

Yet it was Verwoed who had the greatest effect on our modern history. He, like Smuts, had a first-class intellect, but was driven almost entirely by passion for the supremacy and survival of an Afrikanerdom into which, strangely enough, he had not been born. He was the supreme architect of Apartheid, later called Sepatae Development, whereby the Black races of our country would be given their own homelands where they could preserve their languages and customs and cultures.

Verwoed believed that one day the world would come to South Africa to admire and envy our arrangements, whereas, in fact, they are now falling to pieces about our ears. I have often been asked if I did not think he was an evil man, but have contented myself with the judgement that he was capable of an extraordinary degree of self-deception. This was aggravated by the fact that he was incapable of seeing Black men as his fellow creatures.

The great problem which confronts White South Africans and their country today is whether they will be able to undo the damage of the Verwoerdian doctrines and gain, to some extent at least, the trust and confidence of Black South Africa in the goodness of their intentions.

This collection of articles does not answer that question, but it prepares us for the task of considering it knowledgably and intelligently. I hope it reaches many people.

Alan Paton
September 26, 1987

An excerpt from Paton's article Trying To Put Out a Fire published in Sunday Times, August 4, 1985 and included in the book Save The Beloved Country.

I wrote just four months ago for one of the great papers of North America that my country, South Africa, was in a mess. Well, it still is. A fortnight ago the Government declared a state of emergency in 36 of our 200-odd magisterial districts.

Does declaring a state of emergency do any lasting good? The answer is No. Does it do any temporary good? The answer is, i don't know.

The man's house is burning down and he calls in the whole extended family to fetch buckets of water. But some don't help, because they want the house to burn down. They never liked the house anyway, and it was they who set it on fire. There are others who don't bring in water, because they are afraid of those who started the fire. And lastly, there are those who are closest to the man, his loving wife and his own children, who answer his call and bring buckets of water.

It is a terrible dilemma to have your house burning down when you know that your urgent task is to make it a better house, to build on more rooms and make the whole thing like new. But you can't get on with building because you must first put out the fire.

Your neighbors gather in the street and some of them curse you because you want to put out the fire. Some of your extended family try to obstruct you, and in your anger, or your fear, you knock them down. There is an outcry from the neighbors because you have knocked one of your family down. They threaten you with all kinds of punishments: they will cut off your food, they will knock holes in your buckets. But one of their threats makes your blood run cold. They threaten to cut off your water, they threaten to deny you the very thing that you need to save your house.

This parable, this story, this allegory, tells you what a mess we are in now. I could write it all in much better language, but I haven't the time to write it that way, nor have you the time to read it. This fire that we are trying to put out now has been smouldering for more than three centuries. It is the fire of conquest, the fire of the resentment of the conquered. It has broken out three times in this century: in 1960 (Sharpville), 1976 (Soweto) and 1984 (Uitenhage).

Save My Beloved Country
Alan Paton
H. Strydom Publishers
ISBN:0947025219