perial attitude. When help is notnforthcoming, or when it does comenbut disappears in the sea of corruption,na new share of blame is put on thenWest. As a result, a welfare mentalityndevelops in the nonwhite world: thenWest will provide. These things havenalready been made in the West; thentrick is to get them from “them.”n”They” owe it to us.nWhile admiring the social structuresnof Third World societies, we readilynextend sympathy toward their starvingnmembers. Bruckner calls this the “celluloidnpity” syndrome. It arises at thendinner table over television news whennwe are confronted with dying childrennin a remote part of the globe. Tears arenshed, and we absolve ourselves of anynspecific responsibility while at thensame time assuming the burden ofnguilt on an abstract level. The Dostoevskiannattitude that “we are all responsible”nleads to a paralysis of initiativesnto help individuals. We arenencouraged to deal with the questionnof hunger in the world as if it werensolvable by “changing the system imposednby the West” into a Utopia conceivednby Western intellectuals. In thisnUtopian world, the poor will no longernbe with us. By confusing individualnmorality with technical economicnquestions, we falsify our choices. Thenconceptual apparatus of the ANCnstrategist Mfanafuthi Makatini (whomnNeuhaus interviewed) is an example ofntotal surrender to Western Utopias onnthe one hand and hatred of the Westnon another.nRelated to such attitudes is contemptnfor the ruling elites of underdevelopedncountries. They are viewed asnthe westernized Uncle Toms whomnthe revolution must destroy. The goodnguys are the voiceless masses, brutalizednby poverty yet somehow pure andnin no need of repentance. One isnreminded here of 19th-century Russiannideologues who also despisedn”westernizing” Russians as sellouts tonthe West and admired the Russiannpeasant as the repository of virtue.nWhen millions of Russian peasantsnbegan to engage in the destruction ofnmillions of other Russian peasants,nthese Russophile ideologues emigratednto the West.nAre there any solutions? Brucknernurges us to improvise and to travelnbecause “imperfect communication isnbetter than a hostile silence.” Neuhaus’nDispensations is an example ofnenlightened travel. His editorializing isnsparse, in pleasant contrast to thenheavy-handed rhetoric of many recentnstatements on South Africa by politiciansnand journalists. Neuhaus recordsna range of South African opinions andnis wise enough not to offer instantnsolutions. At the same time he is notnunsympathetic either with the “hiddennagenda” of the ruling Nationalist Partynor with the growing conviction amongnwhites that the future of South Africanwill and should be influenced by economicnrealities. As blacks urbanize,nenter the economic mainstream, andnbecome more productive, they willnalso be in a position to demand andngain political power. Neuhaus suggestsnthat this agenda is hidden only fromnthe willfully blind.nA much overlooked fact aboutnSouth African politics is that fromnBeyers Naude leftward, all radical oppositionndepends on overseas funding.nSuch has been the case with Naude’snChristian Institute, with the largelynblack South African Council ofnChurches, and the African NationalnCongress. In contrast, the independentnblack churches which have annaversion to politics are not beneficiariesnof foreign largess.nAnother relevant fact is the Afrikaner’snsense of national identity. Nationalismnhas become a dirty word, ansubstitute for racism and intolerance.nSecure in their unchallenged nationalisms.nWestern men have long lost thensensibility which registers threats tonone’s group identity. We like to emphasizenthat individual rights comenfirst and nationality second. But we arennot in danger of foreign occupation ornof bans on our language. Such dangersnare forever present to members ofnsmall nations, the Afrikaners amongnthem, and not because they “missednthe Enlightenment,” as Neuhausnsomewhat patronizingly suggests. Thenwhite man’s sense of national identitynis a fact of life, and while it may be annunfortunate by-product of Europe’snmany centuries of development, it isnnot in itself evil or backward. ThenAfrikaners know that a civil war wouldninevitably be financed from abroadnand thus would be a war against annexternal enemy.nThis brings us to the underlyingnnncause of the crisis in South Africa.nNeuhaus’ left-wing interlocutors,nalong with public opinion in the UnitednStates, have agreed that the key isn”the cancer of apartheid”: a variationnon what Bruckner describes as thenbash-the-white-man syndrome. EvennWilliam F. Buckley Jr. is so put off bynthe iniquities of apartheid that he recentiyndeclared that were he a blacknSouth African he would join the terroristnANC. Since apartheid is so bad,nsince it is the root cause of the peril tontheir lives and property, one can onlynwonder why the Afrikaners are notnable to grasp the fact and make thenappropriate changes while there is stillntime.nVarious explanations of Afrikanernbehavior have been advanced. Mostnboil down to the premise that thenenhre economy of South Africa isnbased on cheap black labor. There isnalso the complementary notion of Afrikanernracism, which enables Afrikanernconsciences to be untroubled bynthe reality that their comfortable existencencan be maintained only by thenessential enslavement of 70 percent ofnthe population of South Africa. Comparisonsnare made between the Nationalistsnof South Africa and the NationalnSocialists of Germany in thenHitier era.nHow do the widely agreed uponnassumptions above square with thenfacts? First, as to the incipient Nazismnof the Afrikaners, it should be notednthat South Africa was the only Westernncountry which accepted unlimitednJewish immigration in the 1930’s, nonquestions asked, and it has remainednone of the most philo-Semitic countriesnin the world. Any claims of thenfounding of the Nationalist Party basednon neo-Nazi principles are simply ludicrous.nAs to some moral flaw in the mentalitynof the white South African whichnenables him to profit from black anguishnwithout batting an eye, the factsnspeak strongly against it. The Afrikanersnare among the most devout Christiansnanywhere. The Afrikaner Christiansnmight disagree with some of then”main-line” Protestant groups in thenUnited States on homosexual marriages,netc., but their compassion for othernhuman beings, black or white, is asnreal as that of believers anywhere.nLet us consider the notion thatnAUGUST 1987 / 25n