Ripple of Hope

CAPE TIMES

Welcome, Senator Kennedy!

DEAR Senator Kennedy,
     So many people and even institutions in this country have written you open letters that it would seem almost discourteous, possibly unpatriotic, if we neglected to do so. Some have written letting you know what you should say to us; others have explained about the Africans to the north of us and what you should notice about them; one has even let you know what he never does on Sundays. All this advice and incidental information, we are sure, you must have absorbed with due attention and respect, and we cannot hope to match either the profundity or the patent anxiety to set you on the right path to our hearts.
     But you cannot have failed to notice that this anxiety; sometimes desperate anxiety, to be understood runs through every open letter written to you so far. We do not share this anxiety because we are sure you have come to gain understanding, and that, not least, in the very nervousness about your visit that has been so patently shown, you will see that South Africans are all too human. Of one thing we are absolutely certain, and that is of the warm hospitality you will encounter everywhere in this country except possibly in some very official quarters. We are as delighted to see you in our midst as the great majority of our fellow countrymen, both White and non-White. The only note of regret is that members of the American Press, radio and television were not allowed to accompany you and record for your own great country and for the world the welcome that will be accorded you wherever you go, in the cities, in the platteland, or the embryo Bantustans. We know that however brief your visit your understanding of us and our serious and perplexing problems will be immeasurably increased by this contact.
     Also throughout the numerous remarks, articles, addresses and questions directed to you it is probable you will have noticed an insistence that South Africa is not exactly in the same situation as the United States. One point that has been not infrequently made is that while in the States the Whites outnumber the non-Whites by more than five to one, in South Africa the non-Whites outnumber the Whites by four to one. A further point of comparison is that whereas the majority of Americans have emerged far into modern Western society, only a minority of South Africa's 17,000,000 people have so emerged as yet – and there is the inescapably unnerving presence of lately emerging Africa to the north of us. Finally, there is another point of comparison with the USA which is not so often made–like the American Negroes, the great majority of non-Whites in South Africa want to be more fully integrated into our thriving Western society and do not, as in the rest of mixed countries in Africa, wish to dominate and take it over.
     You will already have heard in your short stay among us a vast number of arguments about "multiracialism", "multi-nationalism", and the like; but perhaps this debate deals all too much with groups and all too little with individual human beings. Yet it is the pride, hope, fears and anxieties of individuals just as much as the demands of group identity that bedevil our problems. The Whites are just as personally and humanly fearful of a sudden reversal of power as the non-Whites are humanly and personally desirous of being accorded full and proper status as men and women in the South African society. It is a very human situation altogether, and it is as full of cruel dilemmas as any human situation can be. It was here long ago in the Cape that South Africans of all colours began to build our country. It was here at the Cape that the first beginnings of a common South African society had been constitutionally worked out by the beginning of this century. That it has not succeeded yet is due to complexity of both our own and the world's history, but we still have the will and historical experience to work on our own. There are no easy answers or simple solutions. We welcome you and Mrs. Kennedy in your first view of the first setting of the enormous and testing task of adjustment and adaptation our essentially common society has before it. May your stay be as enjoyable as it is instructive.