Listening to the silent majority

[33]

What goes for individual actors, goes for audiences, I was to find out, firsthand, when I returned from South Africa. I never realized how closed Dutch minds were on the subject of South Africa until I sat in on

[p. 40]

a live program on VARA television in December 1986. Sonja Barend runs a popular talk-show in the Netherlands. I had been on her program several times before, but this time was going to be different. I talked about my recent experiences in South Africa until half-way through the program, Conny Braam, a leading figure in the anti-apartheid movement in Holland, was brought in. Since I had spent most of my life outside my country in New York, I didn't know who she was. She claimed, among other things, that the South African government had begun to build a Berlin-type wall all around Soweto to further close the black township off from the outside white world. I carefully explained, that as far as I knew, the authorities, including the black town council, had approved the building of a wall alongside a parkway with fast-moving traffic in order to prevent pedestrians from being killed by carelessly crossing the road. The audience obviously wanted to believe Conny Braam, because, after all, South African whites were monsters fully capable of building the wall that she had been talking about. They simply refused to believe me, since I, having visited South Africa in violation of a ban on journalists and writers sponsored by the UN, was suspect to begin with. They looked upon my statement of fact as an effort to whitewash the Pretoria government. It was nothing of the sort, but nevertheless, their closed minds did not allow for any possible difference in viewpoint from that represented by the woman carrying national credentials in the fight against apartheid.

Encouraged by what was for her a most favourable audience response, Miss Braam moved in for the ‘kill’. She accused me of having been duped by the Pretoria ‘regime’ and now I was deliberately spreading lies on behalf of Afrikanerdom. She had received irrefutable information, from impeccable sources through the ANC and UDF and passed on by black workers actually working on the proposed wall around Soweto, that this hideous concoction of the apartheid butchers was now actually being erected. Once more, I patiently pointed out that Soweto was a township of twenty square miles and that to build a wall around the entire area was simply not being considered by anyone in South Africa.

Now, the audience in the TV studio went really beserk. They loudly and enthusiastically lauded Miss Braam and simply jeered at me. This was all happening with perhaps some 6 million Dutch viewers looking on in their homes. Each time when I have subsequently returned from

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South Africa, in 1987, 1988 and 1989, I have approached talk-show hostess Sonja Barend, to report the fact that no wall had been constructed around Soweto, asking if she would please correct Miss Braam's story on television. Of course, the story was neither corrected nor repealed. The incident served the purpose of the anti-apartheid movement and the television station perfectly, because it further enhanced the image of South African whites as barbarians. It would be in the interests of journalistic decency for Miss Barend to apologise to her audience and viewers for having deliberately misled them to support Conny Braam's crusade against South Africa.

Of course, this is only one out of many experiences of being eye-witness to some amazing fabrications about South Africa. Not much can be done about it, since people tend to stick, through thick and thin, with their prejudices. True to form, the human brain operates haphazardly. Dutch brains, at least most of them, have reached a dead end on the subject of South Africa. Many are convinced they know all there is to know about South Africa. Opinions have been permanently shaped. There is no need for further information, for instance on developments in black townships or what actually is taking place within South African society to modify and change apartheid concepts and practices. They seem open only to information that reinforces their unfounded convictions about a nation with whom they have maintained ties for over three centuries.