The covenant - James A. Michener [646]
Of the four dozen Afrikaners I know well, forty-seven honestly believe that God has directed them to stay on this land, run it exactly as they are now running it, and defend it against blacks and Communism. I have never known an American to be so sure that God personally looked after American interests, which of course He does.
Like most Americans, I know little about religion, but here one cannot ignore it, it dominates government and gives sanction to whatever the ruling political party decides. Aren't Presbyterians Calvinists, too? I don't remember them behaving like this at home. The Dutch Calvinists, you know, have rejected the South African church, and recently a famous theologian from Holland came out here to try to mend fences. I attended a thoughtful lecture he gave in which he said that John Calvin was firm on this matter of government, and he quoted from Calvin himself, something to the effect that all men are certainly subject to the magistrates that rule over them, but only insofar as the magistrates obey the basic rules of God. If they do otherwise, the citizens should not pay them any regard, nor be overawed by the dignity they possess as governors. The visitor didn't go so far as to call for revolution, but he sure did call for new evaluations of government policy.
As a matter of fact, every sensible Afrikaner, Englishman and black I have met knows that great changes must be made, and they know what changes. But some eighty-five percent of the rural Afrikaner population would rather die than accept even one of those changes, and they are assured by their reactionary leaders, lay and cleric, that they are right. The tragedy is that the philosophers of all sides are prepared to make those changes now, but they will not be made, and ten years from now, when they are grudgingly conceded at the point of a gun, they won't be enough. In every conversation I have I hear comparisons made with Rhodesia. Ten years ago the whites there should have made certain concessions, but they refused. When they became more than willing to make them, the time for accepting that modest change was past.
Seems to me there are four alternatives. First, peaceful, gradual change to a modern multi-racial state. The die-hard whites say they will never accept this. Second, black revolution sweeping the whites from power and perhaps from Africa altogether. The blacks don't appear to be capable of this, yet. Third, continued white domination, with more and more repressive measures as surrounding black nations achieve the power to support infiltration guerrilla forces. The present nation becomes a white laager defending itself from black Africa. Most of my workmen, white and black, think this is what will happen, and that the whites can get away with it for the remainder of this century. But if they persist in rejecting the Coloureds, forcing them into alliance with the blacks, the whites will endanger what chance they have.
In the short run, at least, events will be strongly affected by what the Coloureds do.
The fourth alternative shocked me, but since it was proposed by the finest mind I've met here, black or white, Afrikaner or English, I must take it seriously. He suspects that things are moving so swiftly that