White Dream

Successful as South Africa has been in its battle to keep the white man on his pedestal and the black man in his place at its foot, its rabid Nationalists have always been haunted by a fear of the future. By A.D. 2000, they reckon, the nation's 6,000,000 whites will be swamped in a sea of 25 million blacks. Last week, after five years' study, a government-appointed commission headed by Pretoria University's Professor F. R. Tomlinson, a Cornell graduate with a U.S. wife, brought forth a blueprint for total apartheid (apartness).

Under the plan seven areas of South Africa would be set up and developed as "national homes" on an exclusively black basis. The commission envisioned black towns run by black mayors, all-black factories, all-black farms, railways, highways and power lines where now there are only dirt paths and clumps of native huts. Negroes in 154 "black spots" in the midst of white areas would be transported to the new reserves. The whole western half of Cape province would be set aside for South Africa's 1,000,000 mixed blood "coloreds."

The hope is that by 1985, 15 million blacks will have been settled in these areas, leaving only a manageable 6,000,000 living in the white man's cities and farm areas--enough to dig his gold, fire his furnaces and run his errands. Said the com mission : "Already the middle way leads inescapably toward integration. There is no midway between the two poles of ultimate integration and ultimate separate development of the two groups."

But the dream thus analyzed in black and white raised more questions than even the commission could answer. Essential to the scheme was the incorporation in South Africa of the three enclaves formed by the British protectorates of Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland, a fate that the natives of those protectorates strongly resist. To clear the black areas, thousands of white farmers would have to be moved from their farms and settled in white areas. If the black men still preferred Johannesburg to the bush, they could be forced into the national homes only with troops--an action that might well start off rebellion. A major problem is cost. The commission figured the price would be $300 million in the first ten years. Even this sum would not build many roads, railways, utilities, steel mills or grocery stores. As for private capital, few investors would be much interested in building factories in uneconomic areas to be run by black men.

Total apartheid has long been more of a racist ideal than a specific program even for Nationalist politicians. Faced with the cost and impracticality of such a dream, it remains to be seen whether, for all their violent talk, they are prepared to go all the way.

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