South Africa: The Great White Laager

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the blacks to govern themselves than with the conditions under which they have been forced to govern. The nations that they took over were artificial, their boundaries carved out arbitrarily in the days when the European powers were grabbing colonies as fast as they could, paying no attention to the hundreds of tribal lines that make up the true political map of Africa.

No less a barrier to stable government is the economic impoverishment of most African nations. With economies still based on agriculture, they have been unable to meet the wild expectations of their peoples that independence would automatically bring prosperity.

There are several notable examples of good government. In the Ivory Coast, President Felix Houphouet-Boigny—who before independence served as French Minister of Overseas Territories —is building a booming economy that has raised the living standards of his people enormously. Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere has managed to absorb Communist-minded Zanzibar without falling prey to the Reds, last year promoted a unique experiment in one-party elections: his Tanzania Africa National Union put up two candidates for each post, with the result that several of his own Cabinet ministers were defeated. Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta has overridden the intense tribal rival ries of the Luo and his own Kikuyu and made a national fetish out of harambee (togetherness), winning the good will of most white settlers in the bargain. Even the disappointments have not been total. The personal tyranny of Ghana's Nkrumah has been succeeded by a military regime that is miraculously popular despite the fact that its firm austerity measures have caused some unemployment. Nigeria has suffered two military coups in seven months, and is so close to explosion that some 300,000 Nigerians who have been living outside their tribal areas are pulling up stakes and heading for home. Yet through it all, Nigeria's able civil service has kept the government running, and the nation's expanding production lines have hardly missed a beat.

There are men in Hendrik Verwoerd's government who lack the statesmanship of Houphouet-Boigny, Nyerere, or Kenyatta. But had these African leaders grown up in South Africa, their abilities would never have been known. They would have been bank clerks, messengers—or in jail.

For all his professed shock at what he calls "the disastrous results elsewhere in Africa," Verwoerd carefully avoids unnecessary irritation at the black governments to the north. He shrewdly plays down his support of the white rebel regime of Rhodesia's Ian Smith, plays up his desire to soften the hostility of black Africa. "We leave the door of friendship open to all other African states," he said last month, "in the hope that more and more of them will in the course of time make use of it."

Doubts of Others. It is an offer that many African leaders cannot ignore. Although they condemn apartheid, they find that they can buy many goods more cheaply from South Africa than from any place else in the world; during the first four months of this year, South African exports to Africa totaled $78 million, up 30% from the year before.

Verwoerd sends technical assistance to the British protectorates of Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland, and when they gain their independence, all three territories