The Wrong Tribe

The British captured South Africa by force of arms, established its parliamentary tradition and civil service, dug out its gold and diamonds and built its roads and factories. Yet for years these onetime conquerors have been little more than a permanent opposition. With a population of 1.5 million compared with 3 million Afrikaners, English-speaking South Africans are a prosperous minority, controlling perhaps 80% of the economy. Why are they so politically powerless?

"The English didn't realize that government was the biggest business in the country," says Helen Suzman, with a touch of exaggeration and a touch of bitterness. Now entering her 34th year as an opposition M.P. (for some of that time the only one), she is among the leaders of the English-speaking minority. Other well-known members tend to pursue different lines of work: Golfer Gary Player, Novelist Nadine Gordimer, Dancer Juliet Prowse, Tennis Player Kevin Curren. "And then the English were just outnumbered by the Afrikaners," Suzman adds, "especially in the civil service."

Harry Oppenheimer, son of the founder of the Anglo American Corp., the gigantic mining, manufacturing and retailing conglomerate that controls about a quarter of the country's wealth, used to take an active part in politics. He sat as a liberal in Parliament and financed the opposition Progressive Federal Party. But his efforts came to nothing. Though the corporations that the English speakers control might be expected to give them considerable political clout, the Afrikaner regime runs the country. When asked to explain the gap between English economic power and political impotence, Anglo American's current chairman Gavin Relly says simply, "We're from the wrong tribe."

Novelist Alan Paton (Cry, the Beloved Country) has elaborated: "We never trekked, we never developed a new language, we were never defeated in war, we never had to pick ourselves out of the dust." Paton, 84, once served as president of the now defunct Liberal Party and feels the Afrikaners' tribal sense outweighed the English fondness for making money and playing golf. "The English here don't want to rule everything and everybody," he says. "Both Afrikaners and English have a love of the country, but the Afrikaner's love is in general more fierce, more emotional, more aggressive. It is his history that has done it to him."

There was a time, after the elections of 1948, when the English speakers tried to resist the Afrikaners' complete political takeover. Some 250,000 mainly English war veterans, bitter about their antagonists' widespread pro- Nazi sympathies, formed a paramilitary organization called the Torch Commando (with Oppenheimer financing) to oppose the Afrikaners. There was even talk of secession in the pre-eminently English-speaking province of Natal in 1953 and again in 1960-61, when the Nationalists declared South Africa a republic and led it out of the Commonwealth. But eventually the English minority fell back on the comfortable tradition of live and let live and returned to making money. That minority still pays 60% of all personal taxes in South Africa and 75% of all corporate taxes.

The English speakers tend generally to be more liberal than Afrikaners on racial questions. In September 1985 Relly and a cohort of other corporate leaders voyaged to the Zambian capital of Lusaka to confer with Oliver Tambo, the exiled president of the African National Congress. Relly later declared, "All of us at that meeting wanted to see a new coherent society based on demonstrable justice and a court-monitored bill of rights." Murray Hofmeyr, incoming chairman of the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce, has called on South African business leaders to oppose injustice. And Michael Rosholt, chief executive of Barlow Rand, South Africa's second largest industrial empire, has also appealed to business leaders to support reform.

In the wake of bloodshed on both sides of the racial conflict, however, a , number of executives are emphasizing caution. Concerned about the A.N.C.'s endorsement of violence and the substantial number of Communists in its ranks, Oppenheimer said the organization should get "neither moral support nor material support."

Some English speakers are now beginning to give up. South Africa last year suffered a net loss in immigration, with 6,717 more departing than arriving. About 5,000 were highly trained professional and managerial people. Some 5,500 of the emigrants went to Britain and 4,000 to Australia. This exodus of many of the best and brightest is something that South Africa can ill afford.