From the Easy Chair

Christian Research of South Africa

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 4-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161B4

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161B4, Christian Research of South Africa from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 36, January 18, 1983.

Today we have with us one of our Chalcedon men, Otto J. Scott. I think all of you are familiar with him, because of his writings I the Chalcedon Report, his books such as The Professional, James I, Robespierre and also The Secret Six. Incidentally, I keep getting questions from a number of you about the availability of James I. Everybody is trying to track down a copy cross country and have not yet succeeded. We do hope in a year or two it will be reprinted.

Otto’s background has been quite a varied one. He comes from an old Scottish family with deep roots in the Americas, in the Caribbean and in Venezuela. Otto has, himself, a varied background in the media, newspaper work as a foreign correspondent and editor, as an oil executive and now as a Chalcedon staff member.

During 1983 Otto spent a great deal of time in South Africa. He is working on a book on South Africa as well as one on Woodrow Wilson and another on industrial research and development. What you are going to hear today is about South Africa, a preview of a few aspects of the book that he will do on the subject.

How long were you in South Africa, Otto?

[Scott] All tolled, Rush, about three months during 1982.

[Rushdoony] Whom did you see while you were there?

[Scott] Oh, I interviewed a number of individuals, most ranging from government officials to private individuals. Early on in the second trip I talked to an official in the South Africa Foundation in Johannesburg who happened to be of English descent, a very interesting young man named Curtis. Mr. Curtis said most of the journalists and writers who come to South Africa are introduced by the department of information. Two are liberals. He said they are invited to embassy parties and they meet with a sprinkling of black people and colored people and they hear things that our embassy officials believe they want to hear. But he said, “What you really should do if you want to understand this country, is to talk to the Afrikaans. The Afrikaners are the ones who are running the country. And of all the Afrikaners the members of the Broderbund are the most important. Therefore, I would suggest to you that you try to get hold of the head of the Broderbund and talk to him.”

I said, “Well, what is his name?”

He said, “His name is Dr. Karl Boschoff. He is a professor of theology at Pretoria University.”

So when I went to Pretoria I looked Dr. Boschoff up and I did interview him and it was fascinating.

[Rushdoony] Tell us a little bit about the Broderbund or brotherhood. I think we hear some strange tales here in this country and I would be interested in your perspective.

[Scott] Well, it is a semi secret organization from what I can understand in the sense that it is not public. One cannot apply for membership. Membership is on the same level as, for instance, the Masonic orders. It is by invitation only and after a certain amount of, I suppose, assessment of the individuals. It seems to be pretty well restricted to Afrikaans individuals, although I am not positive about that. The general description of the Broderbund by the American and English journalists, at least, is that they are sort of a Fascist organization. So therefore when I went to see Dr. Boschoff I was prepared for extreme, rigid attitudes and a somewhat narrow viewpoint and so on. But when I arrived at his estate—and it was an estate with horses and a great deal of ground, landscaped and so forth—he turned out to be a professor of theology, an ordained minister. When I brought up the black community on the edge of Johannesburg called Soweto, he said, “Well, what do you want to know about it? I was a missionary there for eight years.”

And I wasn’t prepared for a missionary. And I asked him what his long range goal was and the goal of his group regarding the black people of South Africa.

He said, “We want to see them to be independent. We want them to be free.” He said, “We want them to have their own culture and their own land and be in charge of their own destiny. We don’t want to be in charge of their destiny.” He said, “We look forward to the creation of a commonwealth of South Africa.”

But I said, “A commonwealth is an English idea. The English tried it and it didn’t work. Why should it work for you?”

He said, “Well, the English made a mistake. They tried to run all the areas, all the elements of the commonwealth.” But he said, “We don’t intend to do that. We intend to run our own area, but we want the blacks to run theirs.”

And then he said, “If we meet on the basis of equality, we think we can create a new kind of society.”

[Rushdoony] He did use the word equality.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] That would seem incredible to a great many Americans given the kind of talk that they hear about the Broderbund and the Afrikaners.

[Scott] Definitely.

[Rushdoony] What do you see being done in that direction?

[Scott] I think the ... the change that was underway when I was there, which has now been announced, of setting up a new government, a new constitution, a new system of voting in which the presidency is made stronger, but the president is advised by a presidential counsel, that he counsel would have... will consist of three chambers. There will be one for the whites, one for the black, or one for the coloreds and one for the Indians. The blacks, so far, are not involved. It is a step in that direction.

As far as the blacks re concerned the steps that have been taken have been in the area of the homelands in which the territory has been put aside for the blacks within which they are independent. Now the critics of South Africa say that this is a farce, that they are not actually independent. But Anne and I crossed the border and went into the black homeland of the Transkei and there was no mistaking the fact that the black official on the other side was in charge. We had to have papers. We had to tell them who we were. They had to look at our papers and they had to let us through. And they had to let us out. And within that Transkei they are sovereign.

[Rushdoony] We hear also from the journalists that these native areas within the commonwealth are the poorest territories. What was your impression of the Transkei, for example?

[Scott] Transkei is not a poor area. On the other hand, my impression was that the people who occupy the Transkei, the black people there, are not farmers. They are husbandmen. They were animal people and not land people. We wouldn’t really expect people who believe in herds of cows and goats and so forth to expect good agricultural land, because they wouldn’t want it. what seems to be overlooked is that most of the land in South Africa is not agricultural land so that the amount of land that was given to the blacks out of the arable land is much larger than the amount of land overall. Therefore, it has been a very special way of presenting this on the part of critics which misleads. They have really received very good territory and lots of it. Many, many areas of which the whites have been forced off in order for the blacks to have a place.

[Rushdoony] They have actually moved out whites?

[Scott] Oh, yes. They have moved out whites.

[Rushdoony] One of the things that I think is particularly interesting is that South Africa appears to be even in peacetime a nation under siege. I would like to read something from the Phoenix letter edited by Antony Sutton, the January 1983 issue describing the intentions of the Soviet regime during the next decade. He lists as one of the key ones, “Towards the end of the decade move for an all out turmoil in South Africa, preparatory to a Soviet takeover. This will place most of the world’s gold and diamonds in Soviet hands.”

Would you like to comment on that and how South Africa views that possibility?

[Scott] Well they regard this effort as ... I wouldn’t say inevitable, but very likely. They have stockpiled three years supply of crude oil. They have stockpiled three years supply of food. It is the only country in the world, so far as I know, that has such a reserve in place. We don’t. Europe has about, I think, six weeks. We have about six weeks of crude oil. Russia certainly doesn’t have a three year supply of food. So the South Africans are preparing for a siege and they expect a military effort to come from Zimbabwe on one side and Mozambique on the other so that you might say the right shoulder and the left shoulder of South Africa will be invaded from the north. They think they can hold out. They hope the West will come to their assistance.

[Rushdoony] Are they counting on the West?

[Scott] Well, I would say they are. I would say that although they are very careful not to say so, my feeling is that they expect the United States to come to their aid. I am not sure that is a very practical expectation.

[Rushdoony] How do they feel the black population will react to such an invasion?

[Scott] Well, I think ... I am not positive as to all their official attitude in that respect, but my own opinion is that the black man has never thrown the white man out of any area. The white man has withdrawn from various areas and on occasion white people have had wars over the proper treatment of black people, but in no area has the black overcome the white. I don’t expect black people of South Africa to rise in rebellion against the Afrikaans. For one thing, they are literate, they read newspapers and the English language newspapers in South Africa are oriented toward a black audience. I talked to the former labor editor of the Johannesburg Daily Mail and asked him why the newspaper carried in every edition items of exacerbation... that exacerbated relations between the races ranging from the very minor to major problems. And his answer was, “Well, after all, most of our readers are black.”

And I thought later in what way did that help them? But at any event, the black people of South Africa read the newspapers and the magazines. They have access to television and radio. They understand the English language. And they mostly understand Afrikaans, too. They know what is happening in the rest of black Africa. They have no desire to go through the equivalent of an Idi Amin.

[Rushdoony] One of the things that comes through the press is that these blacks of South Africa are living in an incredible poverty in areas where they live in shacks with tin roofs with no water and they must go some distance to haul water and that life there in these settlements is incredibly primitive and bad. Have you seen anything like that? And what was the life of the black community like?

[Scott] Well, Soweto is being electrified at governmental expense. It did not have galvanized huts. It had houses made of brick ranging from very small and modest to quite elaborate installations that would be worth about a quarter of a million dollars.

[Rushdoony] These were black homes.

[Scott] Black homes. On 99 year leases. The majority of the homes in Soweto seem to be rented at something equivalent to about 15 or 20 dollars a month. The minority of the homes are occupied outright on a 99 year lease and they are owned.

The question that I put to Boschoff regarding Soweto, I said, “What do you... what solution would you have for something like Soweto? Because Soweto has at least a hundred or 200,000 more people than its official census indicates.” Black people keep coming in across the border into South Africa in order to have better livelihood and so on. And there... it is impossible of them to close their borders entirely just as it is impossible for us to keep our southern border totally sealed against Mexican immigrants.

And he said, “Well, I think it might be better if we had a half a dozen or a dozen Sowetos rather that simply one. If we had the equivalent of a black city next to all our white cities, it would diffuse the problem and disperse the problem to a considerable extent. The inhabitants of Soweto work in Johannesburg. They go in in busses and they come back in busses at night. They have, of course, they have cars. They have theaters. They have their own schools, private schools, public schools and so forth.”

It was not at all in keeping with the legend that you have described although I do think that that legend is probably true a generation ago. What is hard to keep in mind, not only regarding South Africa, but regarding other parts of the world is the passage of time and the great changes that have taken place on the world wide level in the last 30 years or so. I recall that when I was a boy and we visited South America, in Brazil, for instance, in Rio, Rio was a great big city in the early 1930s. But the majority of people didn’t have shoes. They wore sandals. If you saw people with shoes on you knew they were a doctor. They were a member of the upper class. Well, now, of course, people in South America wear shoes. They have skyscrapers. They have glass homes, monstrosities, the same way we do. And the same is true of people in South Africa.

It is very hard to keep current on the living standards of the world and to realize the fact that in 19... the 1980s the whole world is on a standard that our fathers would have considered incredible, black, white or whatever.

[Rushdoony] In other words, just as American draws the Mexican illegal aliens and we have an illegal alien problem, according to some, they come here because this is where the money is.

[Scott] Right.

[Rushdoony] So the illegal blacks are crossing constantly into South Africa because that is the rich part and where the jobs are.

[Scott] No question. They... the miners, for instance, are recruited from the black countries of South Africa, around South Africa. They... most of the money that they miners make in the South African mines are taken by their governments as a sort of a withholding so that the minors only receive a portion of what they earn. Their governments ship them in to South Africa to work and their earnings constitute a considerable part of the earnings of their parent countries. The miner himself, of course, saves some money via the company and at the end of his contract he can go back to his native village. The company in the meantime has given his family in his native village a certain percentage of his family. Every week their pay masters travel through those villages and give them the allotment. And at the end of the period of time the miner has a certain amount accumulated which the company gives him and which he carries with him when he goes home with which he can then buy a bride or another wife. And so many of these areas the man can have as many wives as he can afford. And the more wives the better because they can help him work his farm or his holdings or whatever. He is, in effect, put into business.

[Rushdoony] How do the surrounding nations view their own people who cross the border illegally? Do they try to keep them in? Is it a problem?

[Scott] Well, here we are confronting a... you... you are bringing up a problem of, I guess, the easiest thing to say would be the modern hypocrisy. All the governments of those countries engage in diatribes and indignant lectures about the racist government of South Africa and eerie one of them are dependent upon South Africa for food, for machinery, for commerce and as a safety valve for the starving of their own people and so on. Now what can we say about this? They all trade with South Africa. They all have secret commerce with South Africa and diplomatically they deny that this exists. Diplomatically they won’t allow the South African Airways to land their planes on their territory. The only place that the South African Airlines can refuel going in and out of South Africa to New York or to Europe is in the Seychelles islands which are actually a part of the old Portuguese empire which is operated by a Communist regime.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] So the Communists will refuel the South Africans where the black governments will not. .

[Rushdoony] What about our own embassy staff and personnel in South Africa?

[Scott] I... I...

[Rushdoony] Are they...

[Scott] I avoid them.

[Rushdoony] What are they doing?

[Scott] I avoided them. I am not interested. I was not interested in what our state department people in South Africa think or do. I have had a considerable amount of contact with various people in the state department through the years. They have always represented, as far as I was concerned, a minority viewpoint. They do not represent viewpoints that I found very helpful in my travels. I didn't see any particular point in... in talking to them. On the same token I didn’t make any effort to talk to the leading officials of the South African government. My feeling is in dealing with official bodies that whatever you need to know they will let you know in an official way. It is a waste of time to talk to an official and expect him to tell you something that he wouldn’t tell the world. He is not going to give you any secrets and he is not going to change his viewpoint for you. So therefore you can get from the public print all you need to know from our embassy in South Africa.

[Rushdoony] How about the churches, the seminaries, the universities?

[Scott] Well, that was entirely different. The United States ... in the United States in my opinion journalism long ago overtook literature as the vehicle of education for the people. People tend now in the United States to turn toward journalists and journalism in order to find out what they should know about he world, whereas in previous generations they used to turn to literature. Now one of the earmarks of the American journalist is his obsession with contemporary secular politics and economics. Our coverage of Iran, for instance, went on at great length about the abuses committed by the Shah against the Iranian people. But we were not told anything about the rising tide of Islam within Iran.

In South Africa we hear a great deal about the presumed abuses of the black people by the South African government, but we don't hear anything about the fact that South Africa is a Christian government and that the most important element in South Africa is its Christianity. Christians run South Africa. And this is... they are not hereditary Christians. They are not titular Christians. They are real Christians. They have a larger percentage of Christian clergymen in their government of any government in the West. And it is almost impossible for me not to believe that much of the criticism against the government of South Africa is based on the fact that it is Christian.

[Rushdoony] Is the Christianity of South Africa, its church leaders, seminaries and colleges facing the same erosion that our western church leadership is?

[Scott] Well, I think... I think to an extent, yes. The Afrikaans were extremely poor. They were held back subjugated, bullied and subjected to prejudice when the English were the dominant rule, the dominant group in South Africa.

In 1948 the Afrikaans party, the Nationalist Party which is described by its critics as the Dutch Reformed Church at prayer, achieved a majority in the elections and took over the government. Now they really did take over the government. They took over the government completely from bottom to top so that the minute you go into the country you go by border guards who, both male and female, are all Afrikaans. And the same is true of the leaders of the police, the army, the civil service, the post office, everything.

The English speaking Africans are a dominant factor in the private sector. They are the wealthiest. They run the commerce and the industries, the mining industry and so forth. The Afrikaans run the government. And ma of them, as I have said are ordained ministers. They are almost all members of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Dutch Reformed Church, by the way, has more black members than it has white.

[Rushdoony] That is a surprise.

[Scott] But they have black congregations. They also have in some areas they have congregations that are mixtures of colored and white and they have areas where the congregation is all white. But all members of the Dutch Reformed Church.

[Rushdoony] Do they insist with the black clergy on the same high standard of education that they require of their own?

[Scott] Yes, they do. Yes, they do.

[Rushdoony] So they are producing quite a strong leadership among the black churches.

[Scott] Very strong.

[Rushdoony] What is the relationship of these Dutch Reformed Blacks and other blacks? Are they providing leadership for the rest of the black community?

[Scott] Well, this is a somewhat mixed area. In Soweto, for instance, there are several hundred different religious sects and more being created every week. There is a lingering tribal religions. And, of course, when we talk about tribes in South Africa, we are really talking about black nations. The Zulus are the largest. The Zulus are very proud. They have a very ancient history and they have their own religion, their own customs. And this is true of other black nations in South Africa.

What the average American doesn't quite seem to grasp is that the blacks of South Africa are not integrated with each other. They are separate nations and they vary just as widely as, let’s say, Turks and the Irish, Greeks, Italians and French. They have different language. They have different customs. They don't to integrate with one another. And they think that it would be a monstrous idea of anyone tried to force them to.

[Rushdoony] What about their attitude towards American Negroes? In other parts of Africa American Negroes have had a very hostile reception from the African community, the black African community. Did you learn anything of that attitude in South Africa?

[Scott] Well, not specifically while I was there. No. I take my cue on that from James Baldwin who, an American black first ran into South African blacks in Paris. And they said, “What is your name?”

And he said, “Baldwin.”

And they said, “Well, that is not your name. That is a white man’s name. What is your real name?”

And that is what led to his essay, “What is my name?” And that was the beginning of the realization on the part of the American blacks that they had lost their heritage. And eventually, of course, this led to roots and things of that sort.

Now the coloreds in South Africa are in a position very equivalent because they are not members of a national... of a black nation and they are not members of the white society. So they are sort of caught between conflict of cultures. And their position is somewhat tragic from one viewpoint, that is from the viewpoint of identity and... and security in identity and things of that sort. On the other hand they are much more prosperous than the black community. They fill many professions, jobs. And in this area, for instance, the gates have been lowered. Segregation in the old American sense does not longer... no longer exists in South Africa. When Anne and I checked in to the Carleton Hotel at Carleton Center in Johannesburg, the fanciest place and the largest city in the country, there blacks in the dining room as guests and so forth.

[Rushdoony] Back to the matter of Christianity in South Africa. Could you tell us a little bit about the difference between the faith, let us say, of the seminaries and of the ordinary Afrikaner?

[Scott] My feeling was, after I talked to the theological seminarians at Stellenbosch, was right in the wake, for instance, of the time that Allen Bolsack, a colored minister, was elected moderator of an international reform synod, so to speak, the first colored man to assume that particular role and at time and at a meeting in which the South African delegation was subjected to a great deal of abuse. And I asked one of the seminarians at Stellenbosch what he thought of Alan Bolsack and he said, “Well, Bolsack may be speaking for God.”

And I was a bit surprised to hear that, because from my point of view Bolsack is peddling the message more filled with hatred than he is with brotherly love. On the other hand when I talked to some professors who were not in the theological department, but who were simple Afrikaans, I got the impression that they were a great deal more conservative than their clergy. So I think South Africa is going through a phenomenon that is familiar to us in the United States in which the clergy is moved ahead left ahead of the congregation. I think also that the Afrikaans, as I earlier said, was very poor in 1948 is now quite wealthy. Their standard of living has moved up geometrically. They live in very elaborate homes, lots of land. Their elite are, you might say, gentleman farmers. They are all... all have big farms. And Mr. Cronyear, head of the Med Bank, very important organization and bank in South Africa, contrasted the present position of the Afrikaans with his parents who were poor farmers in the Transvaal when he grew up. Mr. Cronyear is now 71. He said, “We are no longer raising our young men to become members of the police force. We are sending them to the university. They are becoming professionals.”

He said, “I wonder as this proceeds how we will retain our ties with the people.”

And I think he is right. I think that the greatest challenge confronting the Afrikaners is prosperity.

[Rushdoony] The Afrikaner has been the source of resistance in South Africa and if there is a Communist invasion they will be the fighters. How long do you think it will be before this liberalism in the clergy will reach to the level of these people who now have a very different faith?

[Scott] Another generation. The next 30 years. How... they are to some extent falling into the pattern of the entire West. I thin, to begin with, that one should not view South Africa as a separate culture. The whole West is one culture just as all ancient Greece was one culture. They thought themselves, Sparta as being one place and Athens another and so on. Now from the retrospective view of history we can look back and see that they were all Greeks and it was all one civilization.

We are members of one civilization and we are all brothers. If, for instance, the United States was to be confronted overnight, as it was against Iran, with a hostile and Communist Mexico and a hostile and Communist Central America, we would be in the same position on this hemisphere that South Africa is in the African hemisphere. And our situation in terms of race and religion and economics and military position is comparable to that of South Africa. Just as the situation of the entire West in all its elements are comparable.

[Rushdoony] What is the size of the army in South Africa?

[Scott] I don’t know. I really don’t. The first trip that I made I went with an investment group and we listened to the minister of law and order, the minister of finance and various and sundry other officials. And we heard a great deal about gold and diamonds and the military value of the country, its economic situation and so on. I notice that they are going into deficit financing in order to elevate the blacks. They are going into very expensive educational experiments and I was told that some change agents in the United States have arrived and are teaching confrontation politics and what not to some of the students of South Africa. The universities have become quite liberal. The English part of the population is adamant against government and nags the government constantly in print and socially and culturally regarding this situation so that many of the elements that have created the 60s here are present in South Africa.

If you will remember before Mr. Eisenhower left office, the United States seemed very stable and secure and everything was under control. And then after Mr. Kennedy arrived there was an entire change at the helm and we had the 60s.

South Africa has yet to go through its 60s.

[Rushdoony] Do they have diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union?

[Scott] I don’t believe they do. The Soviet they regard as the fountainhead of all their problems. They know that the campaign against the government in South Africa has its inspiration from the Kremlin. They also know, however, that Holland, Britain, the United States are the great megaphones through which the Soviet speaks. The American press, American literature, the American liberal establishment, the English establishment, the Dutch establishment all join in the vociferous criticism of South Africa. Nothing that South Africans can do is considered sufficient. Nothing is timely. Nothing is enough.

What they are saying to the South African is that you must have one man, one vote. And, of course, we all know that that would mean the extension of the African regime.

Now the same injunction is not applied to Israel because if it were the Arabs, of course, would totally demolish Israel. The Israelis, quite properly respond to such a demand that they are not going to commit suicide because people don’t believe in the Jewish state. The South Africans say, “We have no place else to go. This is our country. We have been here for 400 years and we are going to keep it.”

So they compare themselves to the Israelis.

[Rushdoony] They are tied to Israel with treaty and to Taiwan also.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] How do they view those relations?

[Scott] They take a great deal of comfort in Israel. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, for instance, was widely headlined in the Afrikaans press and whenever anyone citizens the South Africans for going into Mozambique, they point to Israel and say, “Israel engages in preemptive strikes without being told that it is impossible. Why can’t we?”

[Rushdoony] How about Taiwan? How close is that relationship?

[Scott] I think there is a fair amount of interchange, but I didn’t run across it in my interviews.

[Rushdoony] Are there military connections with Israel and exchange of equipment and the like?

[Scott] Well, I understand that there is, but this is an area, of course, which is not for public consumption.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It is almost like the fact that the U N has for many years blockaded South Africa against war material so nobody knows how ... who ... from whom South Africa buys its crude oil today. But we know that they do.

[Rushdoony] In a sense, you have already commented upon Apartheid in that you discussed what is happening within the Church and what has happened constitutionally. But the subject is such a major concern in the United States. Do you want to comment any further on that aspect?

[Scott] Yes. Franz Cronyear said that in order to attract all the possible votes, the Nationalist Party made a deliberate appeal to the Apartheid sentiment. And he said one of the results is that we are left with some very embarrassing laws. For instance, he said, the Immorality Act which forbids marriage between the races is absolutely unnecessary. He said, “No race needs that sort of protection.” He said, “Nobody goes across the lines anyway, except bums and intellectuals.” But he says, “Here we are. We are stuck with it.” And he said, now, he said, “They haven’t quite got the courage so far to abolish it.” But he said, “Of course, we will have to.”

Then I talked to another Afrikaans who said, “Well, on the whole question of the Apartheid and, for instance the permission to live in certain areas.” He said, “This is widely violated.” He said, “There are people living all over the place.” And he said that technically speaking they are not entitled to live here. And he said, “Nothing is said about it until there are some burglaries in the area. Then the police will conduct a round up and everybody that doesn’t have the proper papers will be shipped back.” But he said in the main it is like your laws of prohibition. He said, “If...” They are on the books, but they no longer have the force they had initially.

So we are talking, in effect, about a system of segregation which is dying and falling apart of its own weight as these people become better educated. And I am talking now about all the people, white and black. And of all the subjects for Americans to get indignant about, it seems to me this would be one that they would be most reluctant to open up because it is such a ghastly amount of hypocrisy in the United States on this area.

[Rushdoony] One of the things that has always tickled me on the subject of Apartheid is that it first began in South Africa as a feeling against the English, not the blacks. They wanted to total separation from the English and they went to war over that issue. And so they still feel very strongly on that and I am told and are inclined to regard the English as still a problem.

[Scott] The English are a problem. The English do not feel the same loyalty to South Africa that the Afrikaans does because the English can leave. They can go back to England. They can go to Australia or Canada or they can come here and they are very quick to say so. And in 1963 they got scared when South Africa pulled out of the English Commonwealth and set up its republic. And they fled in great numbers and they put their property up for sale at bargain prices. And they were positive that the whole place was going to collapse.

Now I think what some of people in our media overlook is that if the English had remained in control in South Africa, they would have turned South Africa over to the blacks 15 years ago as they were prepared to turn over Rhodesia. Dion Smith held out for 13 years after the English told him to turn the country over so that if things had gone in South Africa the way the liberals said he wants to see them go, South Africa today would be a black dominated governed country.

Now in view of the rest of the continent and the sequence of events there, I fail to see how that would have improved either the South Africans or us.

[Rushdoony] One of the things that we encounter as we deal with South Africa and no doubt you could only give us a surmise here, is the suspicion that, like Israel, they have developed weaponry that they are not talking to the world about in South Africa, nuclear weapons.

What was your general impression there of the situation?

[Scott] My feeling is that they probably have that weaponry. I would not believe for a minute that they wouldn’t have it. My feeling also is that they would use it with great digression. They seem to me to be a very common, sensible sort of people, brave, self reliant. But, on the other hand, a people of conscience, not barbarians, people who do believe that they are their brothers’ keeper and who are trying to do their Christian duty.

Now I think the big element of misunderstanding here is that there is a sort of a legend floating through the West that Christianity is a suicide pact and that a Christian is bound to turn the other cheek and to support other people at his own expense. And that is not true.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It is not a Christian duty to turn a country over to unbelievers. And it is not the Christian duty to do the easy thing because it sounds good. And I think that the great flaw in American journalism is its refusal to accept the reality of religion in the affairs of mankind. Therefore, a country like South Africa, civilizations like Islam in many other parts of the world become incomprehensible to us.

[Rushdoony] One of the things that happens when Salazar died in Portugal and that country was in rather unstable hands, was that a number of Portuguese began to see South Africa as the place to migrate to. We never did hear much after the early days as to what happened. Did you encounter a Portuguese element in the population of any size?

[Scott] No. I was told that a considerable number of Poles have been emigrating to South Africa.

[Rushdoony] Oh, that is interesting.

[Scott] And South Africa is very anxious to welcome immigrants with skills. There are a considerable number of immigrants, of course, from former Rhodesia. But there are limits. South Africa will not accept everybody. They don't want elderly people with no means, for instance. And they don’t like people with no skills. What they really want is workers.

[Rushdoony] Well, the Polish element will certainly reinforce the Afrikaners because there is the same characteristic of stubborn resistance.

[Scott] That is right. The same independence.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes.

What about the caliber of the universities there? Apart form the drift to liberalism...

[Scott] Well, they seem very high. They have to ... all the students have to be fluent in Afrikaans as well as English. If you can’t speak both languages and express yourself in writing in both languages, there is no way that you can graduate. But they have a very impressive number of universities, excellent facilities. And most of the interviewing that I did was with university professors. I was very much impressed.

[Rushdoony] Yes, my impression has been that there is a rather old fashioned academic discipline so that it is more education in the classical sense of a very disciplined course of studies.

[Scott] The other thing that I felt was the Europeanization of South Africa. The United States used to be a country that reflected the culture of Europe a great deal more than it does today. South Africa still does. Everything seemed to have an artistic touch, the architecture, the furnishings, the styles, although there was a great deal of evidence of American mass culture in terms of films and our products, tires and everything except automobiles. The automobiles are all Japanese and European. American cars, great big old American cars, they told me, are only favored by the blacks in South Africa.

[Rushdoony] How about television? Is it still barred?

[Scott] Television is allowed only to a limited period of time from about six in the evening until about 11. And it opens with prayers and it closes with prayers. And it is restricted to programs... the programs are restricted.

However, on the news area their news programs on television seem to cover a broader area in a more balanced way than our own. But that is pretty well true almost everywhere.

[Rushdoony] Is it the only part of the world where television is still held at arm’s length?

[Scott] No. Switzerland is another.

[Rushdoony] Oh, that is interesting.

[Scott] Switzerland doesn't believe in television in the afternoon. They think that is decadence.

[Rushdoony] It is decadent in every hour almost. Well, that is interesting. I didn’t know that about Switzerland.

Well, how about the quality of life on the personal level?

[Scott] Very much like middle America.

[Rushdoony] Oh.

[Scott] The area around the Transvaal is like southern California to our eyes, semi desert, sage, cactus, that sort of thing, the same kind of flowers. And the lifestyle of the Afrikaans is very close to that of the Americans outside the eastern seaboard, very simpatico.

And I was very much impressed by the easy and relaxed personal attitude between black, white, colored in the country. I had no feeling of tension, no sense of distance in talking to other people no matter what their race. Everything seemed to be very gentle and polite, friendly.

[Rushdoony] A very prominent American Negros scholar and writer who visited South Africa told me that it was clearly the best part of Africa. And he had no problems with anything there. His one complaint was that they didn’t appreciate he free markets sufficiently and its postal service was very bad.

[Scott] I think that is true and I do think there is a definite socialistic element to their economy. The head, the Afrikaans head of the largest insurance group down there known as {?} has written a very angry book about that and I ... I asked several Afrikaners about it and they said he has a very good point and they are considering this. But they are caught in a dilemma which was posed to them, so to speak by the west and that is that if they are going to be held responsible for the living standards of the majority of the people who are black, there is no way that this can be done involving a people who are not commercially as sophisticated without going into socialistic experiments. And this, of course, is one of the paradoxes of the South African situation and the situation in the West.

[Rushdoony] About 10 or 12 years ago a South African told me in trying to explain what we would regard as Socialism in South Africa by saying that South Africa was European society before the French Revolution, that they represented a world that had never experienced that. And he was afraid that it was the world of the French Revolution that was coming in from the West and that they were hostile and resentful towards that at the culture.

[Scott] That is very astute. The Afrikaans escaped the French Revolution. The Afrikaans are the children of the Reformation. Their language is the most modern language. It is the only that has been created in the West since the Renaissance. The Afrikaans regards Africa as his birthplace. That is where the Afrikaans as a national type emerged. They are mixed with French and other groups. They are not all Dutch. And they believe that there has to be a better way of organizing society in a multi racial society than the one they see exhibited so far in the West.

Now when we consider the size of our demonstrations and riots, for instance, not too long ago, a few weeks back there was a monster riot in Miami.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] If that riot had occurred in Johannesburg, it would have been taken as sign of the death knell of the South African government. Yet nobody is saying that our government is going to collapse. So it seems to me somewhere along the line here we are suffering a series of misapprehensions.

[Rushdoony] Well, is there anything more you would like to add, Otto?

[Scott] Not at all.

[Rushdoony] ... to what you have said.

[Scott] I want to thank you very much for the opportunity to discuss this.

[Rushdoony] Well, we have just skimmed the surface. And those of you who are listening in will no doubt want to read the book which we hope will be out... when do you hope to have it finished and ready?

[Scott] Well, we have to depend upon the publisher for that. As you know, this... the quickest the publisher can publish after he gets the final manuscript and the copy editing is done and what not is six months. So I would assume that the earliest the end of this year, the beginning of next.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, the book will cover a number of subjects we haven't touched on and it will go into what we have dealt with in depth. And we will let everyone on our mailing list know about the book when it is published. And we will look forward also the reprinting of some of your other books as well as a word on the Woodrow Wilson book.

It has been a pleasure to be with all of you again and we will look forward to our next visit and we have some other subjects somewhere down the road we would like to talk about with Otto Scott. But until then thank you for listening and in two weeks we will be back with you again.

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