He Who Waits

The moment South Africa's tiny new Liberal Party announced its first public meeting, it ran into trouble, as it knew it would. The Liberal Party stands for equal rights for all South Africans, white, black and brown. "Police watch our houses," complained one member. "If we have Negro guests, the police follow them home. We believe our telephones are tapped. They call us Communists."

First they advertised that a Roman Catholic priest named Loretto du Manoir would be chairman. Johannesburg's Bishop William Patrick Whelan (son of an Irish father, a Boer mother) summoned the priest and told him that "it would be impolitic for the church to be mixed up in this." Said Du Manoir later: "He was awfully polite about it, but firm." The next advertised chairman. Philosophy Professor Errol Harris of W'itwatersrand University, quit when the university principal warned him that Witwatersrand dared not anger the Malan government, whose subsidies it needs. Jack Unterhalter, a Johannesburg lawyer, finally got the assignment.

One night last week, 1,200 defiant men & women packed into a small, smoky, underground hall beneath St. Mary's Anglican Cathedral in Johannesburg. As cops of Malan's "Special Branch" looked on, white lawyers, teachers, clergymen and office workers boldly sat side by side with Africans and Indians. Novelist Alan Paton (Cry, the Beloved Country), a party founder, spoke with apostolic fervor: "For the first time we openly proclaim the things we believe ... In Africa the imperative need is to create some kind of common society for white and black . . . Color bars imposed by the whites have produced only misery for white and black alike . . . Take a step toward the future; don't wait for it to overwhelm and crush you!"

The day after the meeting, Johannesburg's Boer newspapers published photos showing whites and Negroes gathered together, captioned: NEGRO MEN GOT SEATS WHILE WHITE WOMEN HAD TO STAND. All over South Africa, good, churchgoing Boers goggled at these revelations of Liberal wickedness, and cried Skande (a scandal). The respectable anti-Malanites were also scandalized. Cried the Rand Daily Mail: "South Africa is not yet ready for Liberalism." Before returning to Natal, where he works in a tuberculosis sanitarium for Zulus, Alan Paton had a parting word: "He who waits until the time is ripe often waits until it is rotten."

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