The Passing Show

South African Revolution

The recent events in South Africa have made starkly clear the real nature of the conflict there. The entire capitalist world, Governments and press, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, has denounced the measures taken by the present ruling class in South Africa to bolster its position. The Nationalist newspaper Die Burger, the organ of the ruling landowners and farmers, admitted that staid Conservative British papers like The Times and the Daily Telegraph had been “practically hysterical in their vehemence.” The Times, indeed, went so far as to say in its leading article of April 6th, that it was sixteen days “since the revolution began in South Africa.”

After the Sharpeville massacre it was announced that the pass laws would not be enforced for the time being. This was an astonishing concession for the ruling landowners’ class to make to the capitalists. It showed how much the landowners had been shaken, for the pass laws are the cornerstone of the society built by the landed interests. The aim of these laws is to keep Africans in the country, where they must work on the white men’s farms in order to live, and to prevent them coming to the towns, where they could obtain higher pay in the capitalists’ factories. If despite the pass laws they come to the towns, they are arrested—in numbers running to hundreds of thousands each year—and sent back in convict gangs to labour on the farms for a mere pittance. The news that the pass laws had been suspended was a tonic to the South African capitalist class: the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, which had slumped at the news from Sharpeville, recovered some of its losses. Then came the announcement that the pass, laws would be reimposed: again share prices fell. And the South African Federated Chamber of Industries was reported to be seeking a meeting with Dr. Verwoerd to urge some modification in his policies.

The question now in South Africa is this: how long will the growing capitalist class allow the landed interests to continue ruling the country?

Calvinism

Christians are sometimes harder on their fellow-Christians than many materialists would be. For example, when on April 8th the House of Commons was discussing the open police brutality against Africans in the streets of South African cities, Sir Godfrey Nicholson (the Conservative member for Farnham) said the situation was partly due to the Afrikaners’ “background of a rigid Calvinistic creed.” This is a case of putting the cart before the horse. Many other peoples in the world share the Afrikaners’ Calvinism, but not being in the same economic position, have no sympathy with the South African landowners’ apartheid. The Afrikaners’ “Dutch Reformed Church” originated in Holland, whose inhabitants are also closely related to the Afrikaners. But far from sharing the Afrikaners’ beliefs, the Dutch leaders go out of their way to criticise apartheid. The Calvinist Scots Presbyterian Church has long attacked the white farmers’ policies in both South Africa and the Rhodesian Federation. No, religious beliefs do not determine political views. Both of them are, in the long run, expressions of the economic and material position in which a particular class finds itself.

Sailing before the wind

The Readers’ Digest, which claims a world circulation of over twenty million copies, is one of the most accurate indicators of the current policies of the American ruling class. During the war it was full of articles showing how bestial the Germans and—even more the Japanese were. As soon as the war was over, and it became clear that in the next war the United States’ enemy might well be Russia, with West Germany and Japan lining up as America’s allies, the content of the articles shifted abruptly. Now it was the bestiality of the Russians which was written about; references to Germany and Japan became friendly. The editors even went so far as to print articles about the heroic deeds of German and Japanese soldiers in the Second World War.

Rome

But besides Germany and Japan, the United States also fixed on the Catholic Church as a useful ally against Russia. References in the Readers Digest to Roman Catholicism therefore became friendly. The fact that the Catholic Church is hand in glove with Fascism in Franco Spain, and supports at least one South American state (Colombia) where Protestants are harried mercilessly, was ignored. In the March, 1960, issue there is an article on “Good Pope John,” in which the writer talks about the “warm humanity, irrepressible humour and amiable wisdom” of the Pope with all the starry-eyed enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old girl listening to Cliff Richard. Still, that’s not surprising. If America’s alleged “defence of democracy” can be stretched to include military and other assistance to the Fascist Franco, it can’t be too much of a strain to take in Franco’s friend as well

The nearly royal family

The news (in the Daily Express, 31/3/60) that at the forthcoming royal wedding there may be present not only Mr. Armstrong-Jones’ father and mother, but also his mother’s present husband, his father’s present wife, and his father’s other previous wife—the five of them all coming roughly under the heading of “the bridegroom’s parents”—reminds one of the extent to which the divorce courts are patronised by the ruling class. The American millionaire Tommy Manville, who has had ten wives (or is it eleven now?) is exceptional, but the difference is not a matter of principle: it’s only a question of how often the principle has been applied. Cases of husbands with three or four successive wives, or wives with three or four successive husbands, are not uncommon, as anyone who glances through the gossip columns can testify. Monogamy, at least in the upper class, now appears to have been replaced by this successive polygamy, at it were. The whole subject is worth careful study by anyone who claims to understand the workings of modern society.

ALWYN EDGAR