Listening to the silent majority

[82]

I asked the four mayors and ex-mayors in the Carlton whether they didn't fear for their lives, since so many blacks considered them to be collaborators with the government. ‘They have tried to kill us,’ they said, ‘they tried several times even. After a period of relative calm, we have noticed that the radicals and the street committees seem to become active again.^61. The problem we face now is that the police and the SADF do not act the way they used to. In the past, troublemakers were simply picked up, all of them. Now, they don't do that any more and that's why our problems in the townships are on the increase again. We have already spoken to the Minister of Law and Order, Adriaan Vlok, about this. We asked for the street-committee leaders, who are aiming at inciting people, and intimidating them with all kinds of terrorist methods, to pick these hoodlums up. All they want is to create chaos and make the townships ungovernable. It was done, but it took a very long time. The poison has already spread. In the past, the rabble-rousers were put away immediately, with no delays whatsoever.’

Discussing the incredible fragmentation in black opinion, former

61. This conversation took place in early May 1989

[p. 105]

mayor Nelson Botile of Soweto remarked, ‘If I differ in opinion from another man, I must go to him and talk, and not grab a gun and start shooting as some seem to prefer. Resorting to violence is a primitive, criminal and unintelligent reaction. To talk face-to-face has always been my policy and this is what I am doing now. What we are presently achieving in Soweto, and the many things that at last are being done there, are the end result of talking and negotiating with the government. If you no longer meet each other, and instead use force, shoot and kill, burn down schools or municipal property, who in the end is losing out? If opponents to a more reasonable line of conduct plan to kill me, they are not destroying apartheid. By killing me, or necklacing a fellow black man, they do not wipe out the oppressor. What they are really doing is killing their own brothers. And where is it leading our radical opponents? Nowhere!’ My mayoral friends also wanted me to understand the following. ‘If you study carefully the entire political situation in Africa, you must begin with posing the following question: how did the white man manage to come to Africa? They were at the time using antiquated wooden ships. If the wind blew the wrong way, they were simply going somewhere else. To them, it was God who had bequeathed them the mission to go to the dark continent and civilize blacks that lived there. Isn't that what happened? The same thing occurred in this country. No man will ever bring the full situation under control without the wisdom of Almighty God. God has done this thing on purpose. He was testing the minds of the intellectuals. He wanted to see how clever they were. Do they perhaps think that they are cleverer than God? God said to us, “I am the man. I will tell you what to do.” And He is going to bring us a man who will unite all the black people of this country and bring them together.’