"They Cannot Kill Us All" by Richard Manning is a book that I first got way back in the late 1980's. I even think that I remember the price: $5.99 before taxes, although I no longer remember the specific store, or anything. But it was on the discount tables, and there were several copies, if memory serves me correctly. Remember, those were the days before the internet, and when apartheid was still actively the law of the land in South Africa. I wanted to get the book to get a better idea of what was actually going on, and how things actually were in South Africa, a country which has fascinated me since I first heard about it (somewhere back in the late 1980's, when I first began to get anything resembling political awareness).
It is informative. Early in the book (within the first 30 pages or so), there is a pretty decent history of the Afrikaner people, who of course created what came to be known as "apartheid," which is an Afrikaans word. Manning also describes how apartheid actually worked, particularly favoring Afrikaners, such as one key requirement to obtaining government jobs being bilingualism in the two European languages of the country. Since English speakers in South Africa (much like English speakers in most other affluent countries like the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom) can often be relied on not to bother learning any other language, that meant, de facto, that government positions were obtained by Afrikaners, to the point where 60% of Afrikaners (at the time) worked in the government sector, on one level or other.
The funny thing is that this is the third time that I read the book, but the first time that I at least remember grasping this simple fact. For some reason, the link between Afrikaners and government jobs largely eluded me. Manning's book (this time around, anyway) illuminates this fact, and goes into specifics as to how the National Party (which largely represented the Afrikaners) specifically set out to devise a system that would privilege Afrikaners over everybody else. That may have been excusable during my first reading back in the late 80's, since I was just a kid. But the second time I read this book was probably in the late 2000's or early 2010's, by which time I was a full-grown adult. Yet, I do not remember this key fact leaving much of an impression on me then during that reading.
Guess that's just one of those things that makes you realize that reading the same book (or watching the same movie or television show, or perhaps hearing the same song) at different times in your life can actually be a remarkably different experience. Because you are, in a very real sense, a different person. So you read the book (or watch the movie or show, or listen to that song) very differently. Hopefully, with a greater degree of understanding.
But I digress...
One thing that I did get in both of my first couple of readings of this book was Manning's use of imagery. Specifically, he talks about the Afrikaner mindset, which he likened to the laager, the defensive position used by the old Afrikaners (then known as Boers) who would circle of wagons when facing attack. It was highly effective, leaving no real weaknesses, and allowed them to defeat enemies in battle while facing very long odds indeed. At this point in time (remember, the book was written in the late 1980's, not long after Manning had been expelled from the country, apparently because the apartheid white minority government simply did not like what he wrote, and presumably how he portrayed them, specifically.
At the time, it helped me to feel like I understood the situation a lot better. The image of a historical connection with their past, with them circling the wagons and fighting seemingly impossible odds against a hostile world that seemed bent on undermining them, or even destroying them, resonated with me. Remember, this viewpoint was not entirely unjustified from the Afrikaner point of view. The first Boers had come to this enormous and largely unknown, largely mysterious "dark" continent, and had merely eeked out a living in a tiny parcel of land largely hugging the coast near the Cape of Good Hope. It was not really a Dutch colony per se, but merely served to provide supplies for Dutch ships passing by on their way from or to Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. Eventually, however, the British came along, and took over during the Napoleonic wars. Once the British outlawed slavery, the Boers decided to escape what they perceived as outside tyranny by the British, and went inland to try and find some new lands where they could live as they saw fit. But the terrain was unknown, tough, and conditions were extremely difficult. Moreover, there were other obstacles, including isolation, and hostilities with the people living in the lands which they traversed through. Hostile African tribes did battle with them, and one Zulu chief (Shingana) invited the leaders of the Boers into their tribe for peace negotiations, only to then turn around and betray and kill them, then went back and murdered the rest of the Boers, including the women and children, as well.
Decades later, the English decided that they should take over the Boer republics, once precious minerals (particularly diamonds and gold) were discovered there. A war eventually broke out, and the Boers gave the British a hell of a time. For a more modern comparison, some people suggest that the Boer War was a somewhat similar experience for the British as the war in Vietnam was for Americans. The British assumed that they were far superior in both numbers and military technology (which they pretty much were), and so they believed it would be a quick and easy victory, especially after they captured the capital cities of both of the Boer republics (Bloemfontein for the Orange Free State and Pretoria for the Transvaal). But the Boers kept fighting, and they were kind of embarrassing the British. It is often considered, perhaps ironically, the first guerrilla war of the modern era, and the Afrikaners were very good with their guns. Eventually, to force issues, the British embarked on a scorched earth policy, destroying the food supplies of Afrikaner farmers, and then bringing the women in children under their control, in what were supposed to be humanitarian conditions, in places which were called "concentration camps." The name itself has become synonymous with nightmarish conditions, and this is what the Afrikaners women and children suffered through, as nearly 10% of the total Boer/Afrikaner population was killed off as a result.
So the perceived threats to their very existence was based on some historical fact. That is not to excuse their own crimes, or the system of apartheid. But understanding all of this history, and how the Afrikaners had come to believe that they had survived all of the obstacles which they had been faced with, including a tough and often hostile land, as well as tough and hostile people seemingly trying to drive them off of that land, and thus felt a certain entitlement to now control their own fate, once they finally got control over the country.
Of course, South Africa, both then and now, has a lot more people in it than Afrikaners. It is a country that is quite diverse, with a complicated history. And Manning delves into that. He has chapters dedicated to the defining groups at the time of this writing, which included what he referred to as the "Soweto Generation" that had rocked South Africa in the late 1970's when protesting the government's attempts to impose Afrikaans as the official language to be used in black schools. He also has a chapter on the comrades, the young activists of the eighties who began the horrific killing practices known as "the necklace." Of course, he also talks of the "other" white group of South Africa, the English-speaking minority.
While I understand the criticism of this book by some, it still feels like a book which sheds some revealing light on the realities of apartheid inside of South Africa during the mid-eighties, as well as some of the paradoxes outside of the country which, on the surface, seemed to oppose apartheid, but which in reality actually reinforced apartheid. That included the vehement opposition to apartheid by the Carter administration in the United States, which was then followed by a complete reversal in policy under "constructive engagement" during the Reagan years. Yet Manning argues quite convincingly that the de facto result of both very different approaches by these White House administrations only served to strengthen apartheid in South Africa.
Indeed, while Manning may have written for a publication known a bit for being more sensationalist than, say, the New York Times or Washington Post, he seemed to show a good and realistic grasp of the reality of the situation in and around South Africa. Yes, there are times when he seems to exaggerate certain scenes, or how own anguish over the situation in South Africa. But there are other times when he quite succinctly describes the paradoxes and complexities of apartheid policies and their impact in and around southern Africa. He describes the pax pretoriana," which was the constant intervention by South Africa under the rule of a white minority government against some neighboring countries in the region, and how the involvement of other countries in these places (particularly the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the United States in the war in Angola) actually helped the apartheid regime stay in power and justify their harsh crackdown measures.
Ultimately, I still very much like this book. Each time I read it, it was quite enjoyable and enlightening, even with some possible flaws or exaggerations. So I would recommend it, even while cautioning about the possible sensationalism that can sometimes be found within the covers of the book. Still well worth reading, in my opinion. It remains one of the books which I most identify with the period when South Africa was struggling with, and eventually out, of apartheid. It is well-written, even if it can be criticized (with some measure of validity to the criticisms) as a bit over the top at times.
Highly recommended.
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