11 April 1986: Discussing Racial Issues around the Campfire

April 11, 1986, 9:30 PM, Campground southeast of Memel

Now that I’ve proved I can write in the back seat of a bouncing Land Rover, let’s see how I do in a one-person tent.  Problem is, I’m lying on my stomach and can’t sit up in this little tent I brought from Colorado.  I’m not sure my neck can take this for very long.  At least I can be more candid now without Roland looking over my shoulder.  This group of hikers and climbers are all white, and white South Africans are very sensitive about criticism from foreigners, so you get the picture.  But they also like to talk politics without my even steering the conversation in that direction.

During dinner, Ingrid started complaining about how the Black Student Society (BSS) at Wits (University of the Witwatersrand, one of South Africa’s most liberal universities and now integrated) gets away with all sorts of civil disobedience that would get white students immediately expelled.  She described an incident where a black female student was accused of being a government informer by a black mob.  She was beaten up while the Wits security police did nothing. 

Ingrid also talked about recently driving through Kwa Ndebele (a black homeland near Pretoria).  She escribed it as “disgusting” – a bunch of shacks which showed no planning whatsoever.  The government constructs disgusting places like this, she said, and blacks think it’s part of a white conspiracy against them.  She seemed to be drawing a distinction between the government and white South Africans in general. 

Benno, who immigrated here from Munich, Germany 33 years ago, said “The problem is that 90% of the blacks are satisfied with any old shack and never try to improve their lot.”  Paul, a geological engineer who is completing his two-year national service active duty with the Air Force, replied, “Of course!  What do you expect when you bring people out of the mountains and stick them in some desolate place like Kwa Ndebele?  Obviously, they are going to feel depressed.”

Other comments from this group included declarations that the blacks in Malawi were much nicer than those in South Africa.  [I found these comments interesting considering that Malawi, a small country north of Zimbabwe, is ruled by a ruthless black dictator, “President” Hastings Banda, who maintains a good relationship with the white minority government of South Africa.]  They noted that “Blacks breed like flies” – I pointed out that rapid population growth is a problem in most developing areas of the world including Latin America, India, and Southeast Asia.  They seemed surprised to hear that about Latin America. 

Someone complained that black students at Wits so disrupted the appearance of a UNITA guest on campus that he was unable to deliver a speech which had been scheduled by a white student group.  [UNITA is a rebel movement in Angola that is allied with and supported by the white South African government.]  Black students at Wits go around calling each other “comrade.”  Most of the black engineering students at Wits have flunked out this year because they boycotted classes last year – many were probably intimated by the BSS to join the boycott.  One of the stated aims of the BSS is to prevent any moderate black student groups from forming. 

I learned that most in this group of campers are Wits undergraduate or graduate students.  They pointed out that blacks don’t climb or hike, and I had to admit to them that I’ve never seen any blacks on Colorado Mountain Club hikes.  Several agree that blacks will probably be climbing mountains in 20 years.

Most of these comments were not made in a tone that I would call racially hostile.  These are not neo-Nazis and would vigorously deny being “racialists”, the term used in South Africa for “racists”.  Like most white South Africans I’ve met and read about, they are well-meaning, nice people.  However, they don’t seem to fully grasp that they are part of a “first-world” culture living in the midst of a vast “third-world” population.  They apply their standards of acceptable behavior to people who live in a radically different society.  And they apply white standards to people who historically have been kicked around for generations.  As we’ve hopefully started to realize in the USA, if you tell people they are incompetent, stupid, or lazy for long enough, the will probably act that way.  I would.  And, if they decide you are full of shit, they’ll probably be mad as hell and not act according to your rules of polite society.  If you destroy the family life, culture, and self-respect of a society you get the sort of mess black South Africa is in today.  If would take a minor miracle for South Africa to pull itself out of this quagmire.  Look at how difficult it has been to straighten out the racial situation in the USA with less than 20% of our population non-white and oppressed.  Here those percentages are reversed.  Plus, in South Africa they do not have our Constitution and Bill of Rights to mitigate civil insanity.  I weep for the people here – black and white! 

My April 12 hike with the Mountain Club of South Africa took us to the summit of the Transkop.  Photo by Will Mahoney