YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTIONnEverybody knows somewhere inside him that SouthnAfrica, since 1984, and really for a generation, hasnbeen a set piece in the bloody farce we call “revolution.”nThe one-sidedness of the farce betrays our unacknowledgednunease: except for a classic article in Commentary by PaulnJohnson and a few other pieces, not a word has been said fornthat country. Recently, a reporter for a major TV networkntold a friend of mine that there has to be another side to thenstory in South Africa. It had taken him five years — no,nprobably his whole life — to ask himself that question.nWe welcome revolutions because the fear of war is sonstrong in us that we cannot distinguish just wars from unjustn(except in Afghanistan). We take revolutions for change —nthe French Revolution mistaught us that—but they arenactually our word for conquest that will not call itself by itsnproper name. This is a lesson the war for Europe thatnfollowed the French Revolution should have taught us.nSince the Second World War, these masked conquests wencall revolutions have sought, first of all, to break the minds ofnpeople outside the countries they attack. Totalitarianismnrarely conquers a country before it has won the acquiescencenof the worid outside. Totalitarian conquest worksnlargely through bluff, through the intimidation of people andngovernments who have little immediate cause for fear. Thenquestion the future will ask of the 20th century, if wenovercome totalitarianism, is why it took so long for us to callnLeo Raditsa is the author of Prisoners of a Dream: ThenSouth African Mirage (Prince George Street Press), justnpublished. He teaches at St. John’s.nSouth Africanby Leo Raditsanbullies by their proper names.nIn contrast to conquests that wear revolution’s mask, realnrevolutions — a people’s repudiation of its government withoutninstigation — are rare. After the French Revolution, theynhave occurred mostly in totalitarian countries; for instance,nPoland. They have all been decidedly against violence, fornthey see the cowardice and weakness of the regimes theynoppose, and have a defiance, confidence, and strengthnbarely imaginable in free countries.nTwo characteristics mark the reporting on South Africansince 1984: the absence of serious attention to the changesntaking place, and suppression of the evidence of a concertednstrategy on the part of the South African Communist Partyn(SACP), the African National Congress (ANC), and itsnsister organization in South West Africa, the South WestnAfrican People’s Organization (SWPO), to overthrow thenSouth African government. The reforms taking place sincen1978 were only acknowledged after the May 1987 electionnshowed Conservative Party advances that might threatennthem. The many documents, trial testimony, and so on,nshowing the SACP’s strategy, its infiltration of the ANC andnSWPO, and the training of youths, not only in Angola,nZambia, and Tanzania, but in East Germany, Cuba, and thenSoviet Union, have been ignored. In the United States, thenmost striking suppression has been of the testimony ofnformer SWPO and ANC members before Senator JeremiahnDenton’s Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism innWashington in 1982, printed along with many SWPOcapturedndocuments in two thick volumes entided The Rolenof the Soviet Union, Cuba, and East Germany in Foment-nnnJUNE 1989/19n