Listening to the silent majority

[45]

Listening to the moderate but no less patriotic views of my friend, Nelson Botile, my own mind wandered off again to the basic mechanics of

[p. 55]

thinking. Botile's mind has been structured from birth and had reached by the age of 6, whether he realized it or not, a basic set of patterns and ideas. Having lived 61 years, he had turned into a calm and balanced person, being able to consider a variety of options in his decision-making, having lost hardly one single particle of his basic anti-apartheid spirit. One morning, we drove together to a meeting at the University of Potchefstroom. I had picked him up in Soweto. We were early, so we decided on an 8 o'clock breakfast in the King's Hotel. We sat down and I knew he had something serious on his mind. He looked me in the eye and observed, ‘Willem, I have lived apartheid all my life. This is the first time, that I sit down with a white man in a Potchefstroom Hotel to have breakfast together.^30. Change has come to South Africa.’

30. The reader should remember that Potchefstroom is in the heart of the Transvaal - Afrikaner territory par excellence