Cry, the Beloved Country

There was a time whilst here that I was resentful towards South Africa, when I couldn’t understand how an entire nation of people could hold so much pride for a country that offered them so little. I couldn’t fathom the standards of a government that could allow so many people to live in homes that would not be fit for animals in most other countries of the world. It didn’t make sense that the people didn’t fight for better lives for themselves.

Everywhere around me I could see injustice, I could see inequality, I could see discrimination. People were treated differently because of who they were. I could sense the tension still resinating amongst a generation of people who saw Apartheid and were punished for the darkness of their skin.

Instead of democracy the pendulum has swung to another extreme. Where black men were previously unable to progress in the fields of government it is now the white man that struggles to get ahead. Pushed to the bottom of the ladder as society overcompensates for the transgresses of the past.

The laws of segregation have been abolished and South Africa has accepted to unite but segregation does not need to be enforced by law if the people are willing to segregate themselves. White with white, coloured with coloured, black with black. Observing the people this is what you see, this is what they choose. Although perhaps unconsciously these new generations follow the same patterns of the past and only when prompted to answer why do you see that segregation is all they know.

When a society cannot function as one, when it replaces one type of injustice with another, when the people are unable to stand on their own two feet and create better for themselves then progress in unattainable.

The world was shown an image of South Africa during the World Cup, this image was of a nation labelled as third world hosting a first world event. A picture of a clean and friendly South Africa where crime was not to be feared, where people could enjoy the city lights without anxiety. The world was shown a nation that could work together and a people that could unite in support of their country regardless of their background. We witnessed a government that was able to fund a billion dollar event, able to distribute this money into projects that would benefit the community, focussing on creating infrastructure whose use would surpass this single event. A government that could prove that South Africa was a capable and proficient country. This was the image, an image that most South Africans feign to remember.

We saw what South Africa could be, a teaser of what we could have but we don’t. We were shown that crime could be controlled but it isn’t controlled now. We had a taste of what efficient government departments were capable of but they aren’t efficient anymore. We saw how funding for roads and transport transformed parts of the city but that funding is now gone.

When you see what South Africa could be, when you see what South Africa was then and when you see where South Africa is now you feel frustrated, you feel disappointed, annoyed, upset, angry. We have seen what South Africa could be, we saw this only months ago and we wonder why can’t we have that?

It was so hard for me to try and understand this country. This country should be better but it’s not, it should be safer but it isn’t, it should be cleaner, it should provide more to its schools, it should offer better health care to its peoples, it should take better care of its streets, it should, it should, it should but it doesn’t and I couldn’t understand why.

In my dismay my mum offered me an opportunity for insight; “Cry, the Beloved Country” a novel by Alan Paton. This book resolved my resentment, this book calmed my anger, took away my disillusionment. For that reason I want to share some of it with you, these are the parts that for me answer all of my ‘whys?’ and although it doesn’t offer any resolution for my disappointment in this country it does offer understanding and with understanding comes patience and patience is exactly what I need. So here I offer you the opportunity for insight into a country whose problems stem so deep that it will take such a great effort to resolve them.

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“What we did when we came to South Africa was permissible. It was permissible to develop our great resources with the aid of what labour we could find. It was permissible to use unskilled men for unskilled work. But it is not permissible to keep men unskilled for the sake of unskilled work.

It was permissible when we discovered gold to bring labour to the mines. It was permissible to build compounds and to keep women and children away from the towns. It was permissible as an experiment, in the light of what we knew. But in the light of what we know now, with certain exceptions, it is no longer permissible. It is not permissible for us to go on destroying family life when we know that we are destroying it. It is permissible to develop any resources if the labour is forthcoming. But it is not permissible to develop any resources if they can be developed only at the cost of the labour. It is not permissible to mine any gold, or manufacture any product, or cultivate any land, if such mining and manufacture and cultivation depend for their success on a policy of keeping labour poor. It is not permissible to add to one’s possessions if these things can only be done at the cost of other men. Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation. It might have been permissible in the early days of our country, before we became aware of its cost, in the disintegration of native community life, in the deterioration of native family life, in poverty, slums and crime. But now that the cost is known, it is no longer permissible.

It was permissible to leave native education to those who wanted to develop it. It was permissible to doubt its benefits. But it is no longer permissible in the light of what we know. Partly because it made possible industrial development, and partly because it happened in spite of us, there is now a large urbanized native population. Now society has always, for reasons of self-interest if for no other, educated its children so that they grow up law-abiding, with socialized aims and purposes. There is no other way that it can be done. Yet we continue to leave the education of our native urban society to those few Europeans who feel strongly about it, and to deny opportunities and money for its expansion. That is not permissible. For reasons of self-interest alone, it is dangerous.
It was permissible to allow the destruction of a tribal system that impeded the growth
of the country. It was permissible to believe that its destruction was inevitable. But it is not permissible to watch its destruction, and to replace it by nothing, or by so little, that a whole people deteriorates, physically and morally.

The old tribal system was, for all its violence and savagery, for all its superstition and witchcraft, a moral system. Our natives today produce criminals and prostitutes and drunkards, not because it is their nature to do so, but because their simple system of order and tradition and convention has been destroyed. It was destroyed by the impact of our own civilization. Our civilization has therefore an inescapable duty to set up another system of order and tradition and convention. It is true that we hoped to preserve the tribal system by a policy of segregation. That was permissible. But we never did it thoroughly or honestly. We set aside one-tenth of the land for four-fifths of the people. Thus we made it inevitable, and some say we did it knowingly, that labour would come to the towns. We are caught in the toils of our own selfishness.

No one wishes to make the problem seem smaller than it is. No one wishes to make its solution seem easy. No one wishes to make light of the fears that beset us. But whether we be fearful or no, we shall never, because we are a Christian people, be able to avoid the moral issue.”

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“The truth is that our Christian civilization is riddled through and through with dilemma. We believe in the brotherhood of man, but we do not want it in South Africa. We believe that God endows men with diverse gifts, and that human life depends for its fullness on their employment and enjoyment, but we are afraid to explore this belief too deeply. We believe in help for the underdog, but we want him to stay under. And we are therefore compelled, in order to preserve our belief that we are Christian, to ascribe to Almighty God, creator of Heaven and Earth, our own human intentions, and to say that because He created white and black, He gives the Divine Approval to any human action that is designed to keep black men from advancement. We go so far as to credit Almighty God with having created black men to hew wood and draw water for white men. We go so far as to assume that He blesses any action that is designed to prevent black men from the full employment of the gifts He gave them. Alongside of these very arguments we use others totally inconsistent, so that the accusation of repression may be refuted. We say we withhold education because the black child has not the intelligence to profit by it; we withhold opportunity to develop gifts because black people have no gifts; we justify our action by saying that it took us thousands of years to achieve our own advancement, and it would be foolish to suppose that it will take the black man any lesser time, and that therefore there is no need for hurry. We shift our ground again when a black man does achieve something remarkable, and feel deep pity for a man who is condemned to the loneliness of being remarkable, and decide that it is a Christian kindness not to let black men become remarkable. Thus even our God becomes a confused and inconsistent creature, giving gifts and denying them employment. Is it strange then that our civilization is riddled through and through with dilemma? The truth is that our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of high assurance and desperate anxiety, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.”

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“Have no doubt it is fear in the land. For what can men do when so many have grown lawless? Who can enjoy the lovely land, who can enjoy the seventy years, and the sun that pours down on the earth, when there is fear in the heart? Who can walk quietly in the shadow of the jacarandas, when their beauty is grown to danger? Who can lie peacefully abed, while the darkness holds some secret? What lovers can lie sweetly under the stars, when menace grows with the measure of their seclusion?”

“I say we shall always have native crime to fear until the native people of this country have worthy purposes to inspire them and worthy goals to work for. For it is only because they see neither purpose nor goal that they turn to drink and crime and prostitution. Which do we prefer, a law-abiding, industrious and purposeful native people, or a lawless, idle and purposeless people? The truth is that we do not know, for we fear them both. And so long as we vacillate, so long will we pay dearly for the dubious pleasure of not having to make up our minds. And the answer does not lie, except temporarily, in more police and more protection.”

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“Some cry for the cutting up of South Africa without delay into separate areas, where white can live without black, and black without white, where black can farm their own land and mine their own minerals and administer their own laws. And others cry away with the compound system, that brings men to the towns without their wives and children, and breaks up the tribe and the house and the man, and they ask for the establishment of villages for the labourers in mines and industry.

And the churches cry too. The English-speaking churches cry for more education, and more opportunity, and for a removal of the restrictions on native labour and enterprise. And the Afrikaans-speaking churches want to see the native people given opportunity to develop along their own lines, and remind their own people that the decay of family religion, where the servants took part in family devotions, has contributed in part to the moral decay of the native people. But there is to be no equality in church or state.

Yes, there are a hundred, and a thousand voices crying. But what does one do, when one cries this thing, and one cries another? Who knows how we shall fashion a land of peace where black outnumbers white so greatly? Some say that the earth has bounty enough for all, and that more for one does not mean less for another, that the advance of one does not mean the decline of another. They say that poor-paid labour means a poor nation, and that better-paid labour means greater markets and greater scope for industry and manufacture. And others say that this is a danger, for better-paid labour will not only buy more but will also read more, think more, ask more, and will not be content to be forever voiceless and inferior.

Who knows how we shall fashion such a land? For we fear not only the loss of our possessions, but the loss of our superiority and the loss of our whiteness. Some say it is true that crime is bad, but would this not be worse? Is it not better to hold what we have, and to pay the price of it with fear? And others say, can such fear be endured? For is it not this fear that drives men to ponder these things at all?

We do not know, we do not know. We shall live from day to day, and put more locks on the doors, and get a fine fierce dog when the fine fierce bitch next door has pups, and hold on to our handbags more tenaciously; and the beauty of the trees by night, and the raptures of lovers under the stars, these things we shall forego. We shall forego the coming home drunken through the midnight streets, and the evening walk over the star-lit veld. We shall be careful, and knock this off our lives, and knock that off our lives, and hedge ourselves about with safety and precaution. And our lives will shrink, but they shall be the lives of superior beings; and we shall live with fear, but at least it will not be a fear of the unknown. And the conscience shall be thrust down; the light of life shall not be extinguished, but be put under a bushel, to be preserved for a generation that will live by it again, in some day not yet come; and how it will come, and when it will come, we shall not think about at all.

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

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The last passage I share with you inspired me, gave me a little push in terms of my own service in South Africa. I have often wondered what brought me here. What brought me to this place that I couldn’t understand with all its problems, problems that don’t just linger in the air but effect every movement you make, every word you speak, every person you meet, every place you go. In everything that is South Africa there is Apartheid. It’s name may be gone, it’s laws and regulations and the power they took from one person and gave to another, these may no longer be but the memory of it is embedded into everything that is South Africa. This country needs service, it needs leaders, it needs change. I don’t know if I can give it these things that it needs, I don’t know if I am any help at all but I am here and I will keep trying..

“Therefore I shall devote myself, my time, my energy, my talents, to the service of South Africa. I shall no longer ask myself if this or that is expedient, but only if it is right. I shall do this, not because I am noble or unselfish, but because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie. I shall do this, not because I am a negrophile and a hater of my own, but because I cannot find it in me to do anything else. I am lost when I balance this against that, I am lost when I ask if this is safe, I am lost when I ask if men, white men or black men, Englishmen or Afrikaners, Gentiles or Jews, will approve. Therefore I shall try to do what is right, and to speak what is true. I do this not because I am courageous and honest, but because it is the only way to end the conflict of my deepest soul. I do it because I am no longer able to aspire to the highest with one part of myself, and to deny it with another. I do not wish to live like that, I would rather die than live like that. I understand better those who have died for their convictions, and have not thought it was wonderful or brave or noble to die. They died rather than live, that was all.”