.......... .......... .......... A Time to Speak A TIME TO SPEAK MICHAEL SCOTT FABER AND FABER 24 Russell Square London First published in mcmlviii by Faber and Faber Limited 24 Russell Square London W.C.1 Printed in Great Britain by Latimer Trend & Co Ltd Plymouth All rights reserved © Guthrie Michael Scott 1958 6 -"/ -2 .)..-. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. Ecclesiastes iii, 1-11 Contents INTRODUCTION page 9 I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS 13 II. SOUTH AFRICA, FIRST VISIT 34 III. ORDINATION AND COMMUNISM 51 IV. INDIA AND THE FAR EAST 66 V. WAR BREAKS OUT-ENGLAND 83 VI. CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL 94 VII. CAMPAIGN FOR RIGHT AND JUSTICE 113 VIII. DURBAN NIGHTS 133 IX. DURBAN DAYS 140 X. DARK LAUGHTER-TOBRUK 152 XI. BETHAL-ABODEOFGOD 169 XII. BLACK MAGIC 194 XIII. BECHUANALAND-FOUNDATION FOR HOPE 208 XIV. THE HERITAGE OF YOUR FATHER'S ORPHANS 219 XV. A WHITE MAN'S JESUS 236 XVI. THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY DECIDES 242 XVII. THE AFRICA BUREAU 269 XVIII. '... FOR BIRTH OR DEATH?' 297 APPENDICES 314 INDEX 355 APPENDICES 1. Extract from a letter from Charles Andrews to Gandhi, 314 12th November 1932. 2. Quotations from the South African Sunday Express 314 exposing the Broederbond, 12th May 1957. Contents 3. Records of author's conviction for living in a Native Urban Area, 1947. page 317 4. Extract from the local paper De Echo, Bethal, Friday 30th May 1947. 318 5. Referendum 'To the Natives on the First of February 1946'. 323 6. Letter from Hendrik Witbooi to the Magistrate at Walvis Bay, 1892. 325 7. Contemporary accounts of the Defeat of the Hereros, 1904 327 8. Native Commissioner's Report of Proceedings at United Nations-issued 24th February 1948. 329 9. Resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations, December 1949. 330 10. Extracts from a Statement made by the author at the 653rd meeting of the Fourth Committee, the 26th September 1957. 332 11(a) Sections of a Petition to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II against Federation, made by Chiefs and Citizens of Nyasaland. 341 11 (b) Extract from a Debate in Parliament on Rhodesia and Nyasaland Electoral Bill, 18th February 1958 342 12. Chain letter received by the author from South Africa and referred to in evidence for the prosecution in the South African 'Treason Trial' (1957/58). 344 13. Press Statement, 8th August 1957, by the delegation from the African Elected Members in the Kenya Legislature; Mr. Tom Mboya, M.L.C. and Mr. Ronald Ngala, M.L.C. 345 14. Memorandum to Dr. Nkrumah, 1957: South Africa Versus 348 the Conscience of the World. 15. A Conference sponsored by the Africa Burea on political social and economic development in Africa for 1959 352 MAPS General map of Africa page 191 Detailed map of South Africa 192-3 Introduction Southward, shining and snakelike, the mighty Ganges River sweeps swiftly through the pass of Haridwar-the gateway of " God-and out into the plains where it is lost in the mists of distance. Since this story has no beginning and no ending I may as well begin it somewhere midway. It is January 1950. To the north are range upon range of the Himalayas-for them no word is mighty enough. And there, scarcely discernible from the clouds, are the snows that never melt but are blown from the peaks like still white plumes by winds which no man alone can withstand. We had come here to India in search of peace. We had come from the ends of the earth-I from the United Nations where I had gone to make a petition for some South West African tribes. Others from America, from Japan, Germany, England, Canada, France, China, Pakistan, India, New Zealand, West Africa, Burma, Australia, the Philippines, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Egypt, Israel. There had been an exacting Quaker conference on peace, and the methods and tasks of peace, and now here we were, some of us, after a day's climb, relaxing on the top of Mani Kot. The spurs of the hills were terraced in a marvel of contour cultivation. Below us an eagle was wheeling and banking, alert for a sign of his prey. Faintly, to the ears straining for a sound, came the faraway crowing of a cock, the barking of a dog. Voices of children calling to one another were swallowed up with their distant echoes in the silence-a scene as ageless as perhaps anything human can be. As the story unfolds it will, perhaps, more clearly be seen to be not only a story of Africans, or of a particular African tribe, much less of an individual in search of justice and peace, but a story of the crisis of our time and age; a story of how people, not great people, but ordinary people in the humdrum occupations of our utilitarian Introduction civilization, can rise out of their little ruts to propel and to be themselves propelled by a cause greater than themselves. Their individual acts of choice may have seemed trivial, may have been instinctive gestures with no thought of their deeper or more long-term implications, yet they were more far-reaching than each could measure. By such acts, insignificant in time, are mountains moved, the rocks worn smooth, and the steep slopes terraced. The whole is formed into a landscape touched by the hand of man, as a sudden trifling sound of a cock crowing down in the valley can give life to a scene and charge the whole with meaning. It was only a little while ago that the harsh metallic clatter of our civilization in New York had formed the background of an historic debate at the United Nations. A debate between East and West, as the controversy between capitalism and communism has come to be known. The flight to India had been swift and there they were again, the sights that had sent me across the world from South Africa to the United Nations. The millions of landless and homeless, the dispossessed of the earth living in tents and shanties made of sackcloth and cardboard, fleeing from the wrath of some ignorant bigotry, some half-understood truth disseminated by ambitions prelates or politicians in the minds of the masses, driving them to insensate acts of cruelty and depredation. In Karachi on the pavements the refugees had set up their little shacks and stalls in front of the regular shops. In Calcutta the population had increased from two to four million, and refugees from Pakistan were still pouring in. A million were sleeping in the streets, wrapped in thin cotton blankets, silent spokesmen of our disorder and the ineptitude of our statesmanship. It was for the dispossessed that a band of unlikely helpers strewn along the path from the edge of the Kalahari to the shores of Lake Success had joined in an effort to enable the voices of an obscure African tribe to be heard by the United Nations. Mostly they were white people drawn from small scattered groups of volunteers and amateurs separated by thousand of miles in a country where the whole white population, Dutch and British, does not amount to more than the population of a large town in Europe or America (3 million). There the political life is mainly influenced by the powerful monopoly groups, the mining industry, the farmers and the white trade unions. And there are few white people who do 10 Introduction not find themselves attached by some economic or social tie to one or other of these groups which are all concerned to maintain the colour bar and cheap migrant labour. My very grateful thanks are due to Mary Benson, to Mrs. Gibson and Mrs. Cruickshank for all the hard work they have devoted to this manuscript, pruning and piecing it together, typing and retyping it in order to make it a more connected and readable story than it could otherwise have been. This encouragement has repeatedly stimulated my flagging efforts to complete this book, while trying to do many other things at the same time. First Impressions A a boy I used to worry very much about the 'question'. In fact A cannot remember any time in my life when it was very far Afrom my thoughts: not that it was a question which I ever really formulated.