Six: Afrikaner Education, Art, Race Relations & Economics

We now approach the field of education. Here we need to be reminded that the Heidelberg Catechism of 1562 -- one of the three documents that governs the outlook of the Afrikaner Churches and Afrikaner Calvinists to this day -- in its exposition of the Fourth Commandment requires God's people to maintain schools: daily study for daily work!

In other words, if you are a South African Calvinist, you are expected to be involved in education -- in terms of the Fourth Commandment. I can see this. Exodus 20:8-11. One could perhaps also put education under the Fifth Commandment -- in terms of honouring your father and your mother; and in terms of raising your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. See Ephesians 6:1-4.

At any rate, with this tremendous emphasis upon the necessity of education -- the very first South African Calvinists at the establishment of the Cape Colony in 1652 did indeed educate. Not only parents themselves educated, but the Dutch East India Company garrison at the Cape also supplied the school books and made training facilities available to all of the colonists at the Cape. The Church and her Officials and notably the Preachers were also involved.

What you then have from the establishment of the Cape Colony in 1652, right down till the British occupation of the Cape around 1800 -- is a system of Christian National Schools in which the Church played a big roll. Yet it was not a system of Church Schools as such -- but a system of Calvinist Public Schools in which the Church played a considerable role. See Second Chronicles 17.

But after British takeover of the Cape, by 1820 the whole character of the Public School System had been changed. To a great extent, it had been de-Calvinised -- much to the grief of the South African Calvinists who had not been used to this new kind of Public Education that was now coming in.

This too was one of the fundamental causes of the Great Trek. Many South Africans moved away from the Cape, taking with them some Schoolteachers and Preachers, and setting up mobile Christian National Schools while they were on the ox-wagons as they moved further and further into the interior of Africa. There were schools with a perfect balance between theory (derived from the Bible) and practice (derived from hunting game and defending themselves) -- as they continued to extend the frontier.

Already from 1750 through 1800, there had been growing supra naturalistic rationalism in the schools. Indeed, this was so even in the Cape Colony -- especially after the departure of the Voortrekkers in 1836. Statism and Humanism then endured there, down to around 1900 - though it was never anything like as blatant as it is in the United States or in Europe today. Yet, notwithstanding this, even at that time, the Church still continued to exercise a tremendous influence over the schools even in the Cape -- as we saw in the case of Andrew Murray a little earlier.

Round about 1900, the Fremantle Commission met in the Cape. It revealed a condition of public education there, which had worsened steadily during the past century. As far as the South African Calvinist Republics to the north were concerned, in the short-lived Natalia Republic and the long-lived Orange Free State and Transvaal Republics, Christian National Public Education was the rule. There, inspectors of Education had been established. They were always strong Calvinists, and often Calvinist Preachers appointed by the State to monitor the quality of education in the Calvinist Schools at that time. But with the defeat by Britain of the Orange Free State Republic and the South African Republic in 1902, the Cape System of non-Christian statist public education was extended -- even into the conquered territories to the north.

At this point, some of the more conservative Afrikaner Christian parents in those areas withdrew from the new kind of schools in the public education system. They then re-established Christian National Education, but now in a system of private schools separate from the State School System. These new Christian private schools then competed against the State School System -- for the first time ever in the history of South Africa.

At this stage, these new schools were generally Church Schools -- meeting on church property, and taught by church personnel. But, from 1910 and 1914 onward, we encounter the unification of South Africa. Yet with each Province then being allowed to do its own thing in the area of State Education, and with the emergence even then and ever-increasingly thereafter of dedicated Calvinist School Teachers consecrating their lives to work for the Calvinistic reconquest of the Public School System -- the latter became more and more an option. Consequently, the Christian National Schools -- the private schools that had grown up after the defeat of the South Africans in the Anglo-Boer War then began to wilt away.

What we then find from 1910 onward, is a separate public education system for each Province -- but one in which Christianity in general and Calvinism in particular slowly began to reconquer. It took almost fifty years to engineer its complete reconquest. But the Calvinists finally succeeded.

Already in the 1920's the University of Potchefstroom for Christian Higher Education was created -- by a private act of Parliament. This enabled a first-rate Christian university to exist in South Africa -- a publicly recognised State University which was thoroughly Calvinistic, and which could refuse to employ anyone who would not undertake to teach his own special subjects from a strongly Calvinistic life and world perspective.

It is at this time that Hendrik Stoker, the great South African philosopher, began to teach there. Potchefstroom University started out in a small way -- so let this be an encouragement to you all! Stoker's teaching load in the 1920's was sometimes fifty hours a week.

We also find the increasing re-calvinisation of the other universities. The University of Stellenbosch had been strongly Calvinistic since its establishment in the nineteenth century. But it had to some extent slipped away from that. Now, however, it too became increasingly re-calvinised.

If you go to Stellenbosch today, you will find the most prestigious university in South Africa - a real ivy-league university steeped in tradition. Nearly all of the students, thousands and thousands of them, attend Calvinist Church worship services every Sunday. Indeed, a large slice of the students are also involved in local missionary work every Sunday afternoon -- in taking the Gospel to non-white peoples not very far from the university, and sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them.

I remember the time the famous Oswald Smith of Toronto and later his son Paul Smith -- neither of them Calvinists, but both of them Evangelicals -- visited the University of Stellenbosch. They said they had never been to any place in the world where they had found so many young people committed to the extension of the Kingdom of Christ as at that university. Also, Stellenbosch has to this day by far the largest percentage of students of any university in the world involved in Christian outreach groups. I know of no other situation anywhere else.

At some of the younger universities, this is also very pronounced. The Orange Free State University -- where I took my second doctorate -- is very largely a Calvinist university. More and more, the policy seems to be that of reserving new professorial appointments only for those who are professing Calvinists. That University has excellent faculties of Theology, Philosophy, History and Education -- all of them teaching exclusively from a Calvinistic perspective. Then there is the Rand Afrikaans University, one of the newest in South Africa - and to an increasing extent the University of Port Elizabeth (and so forth).

Well, from 1930 through 1960, the Calvinist educators organised especially underground. They emerged in the 60's. Finally, with the approval of Parliament toward the 70's, they recaptured control of Public Education from kindergarten through the Ph.D. level -- ever increasingly -- and at the South African Universities.

The real turning point in all this, was 1948. Then the National Party of Dr. Malan gained the victory at the polls. The very next week the Bible was being read even in the English language Public Schools throughout the land -- which had not been done before. I remember it vividly, seeing I was about fourteen or fifteen years of age at the time.

Since then, courses and degrees in Biblical Studies have been developed at the Universities more and more. Quite apart from Theology Courses (which are offered specifically to train Preachers for the pulpit), you can today major in Biblical Studies (which are not designed to prepare you for a preaching ministry but to give you at least a Bachelor's degree and thereafter a Masters degree to enable you to become a full-time Bible Teacher in the Public Education System in South Africa).

As a matter of fact, the Catalogues of the South African Universities are more and more offering these majors in Biblical Studies. This seems to be rather unique in the world today. Indeed, the Bible is now being taught, for credit, in the Public Schools -- from kindergarten right through to what would be 10th or 12th grade in America, and from thereon out at the Universities at least to the Master's level.

Organisations hold Conventions for Christians regularly, discussing matters of educational importance. A determined effort is now being made to rethink the curriculum even in areas such as history, geography and mathematics at the Public School -- and so to restructure them more and more in terms of the Christian life and world view.

Of course, if people do not like all of this Calvinism being increased in the Public School System, they are perfectly free to leave the Public Schools and to start their own atheistic private schools. There are some, but not many cases, of that taking place in South Africa.

There are powerful Calvinist educational organisations in South Africa working at the national level to infiltrate the whole of culture. Such are COVSA (the Calvinist Teachers' Association of South Africa); VCHO (the Association for Christian Higher Education); and SAVCW (the South Africa Association for the Promotion of Christian Scholarship). I myself have membership in the two latter organisations.

In 1961 the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa was formally adopted after the Republican Referendum. If my memory serves me well, the Preamble runs roughly as follows: "In humble acknowledgment of Almighty God Who has assembled our ancestors from a variety of countries, Who has led us through many perils, Who has maintained us in this land in a remarkable way; we the people hereby establish the Republic of South Africa. The educational system of this country shall be Christian." This gave a tremendous impact to the development of Christian education within South Africa.

One of the most important Calvinist educationalists in South Africa, is the aged Prof. Dr. J. Chris Coetzee. He has written many important books -- First Principles in Our Calvinistic Education and Nourishment; Calvinism and Education and Education and Sex. He was Professor of Education at the University of Potchefstroom.

There is also the Rector of the University of Potchefstroom, Professor Hennie Bingle. His books include: National Culture and the Future; Education and Training in the Kingdom of God on Earth; and The University in the Crucible. (I am giving you the English equivalents of the Afrikaans titles of these never-translated books.)

There is also Professor Dr. M.T. van Loggerenberg, Head of the Department of Education at the Orange Free State University, who has written many manuals in the field of Christian education. My friend Dr. Manie Malan wrote his doctoral dissertation on a critical Calvinistic examination of the existentialistic educational methodology of Professor Oberholzer. Other Afrikaner friends include: Prof. Dr. Henry Stone and Prof. Dr. Piet Heiberg -- the Professors of Education respectively at the Transvaal Teachers' Training College on the Witwatersrand, and at the (Black) University of the North near Pietersberg.

So then, we are seeing the further development of education. In 1975, the University of Potchefstroom for Christian Higher Education convened and hosted the world's first International Conference of Calvinistic Higher Academicians. At their own expense -- the University's expense, not the South African Government's expense -- delegates were flown in from some nineteen countries, including six or seven from the United States (of which I was one). We met there for some two weeks, discussing problems and approaches anent the extension of Calvinism at the university level in our several countries.

We had people there from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, the United States, Canada, Korea, Japan -- and most of the Black countries in Africa south of the Sahara. It was quite a meeting, and it went very well indeed. This led to the Second international Conference, which was held some years after that in Grand Rapids. As a result of that, one would hope that the outreach will continue into all of the areas of the world.

The chief problem that faces South Africa in the calvinisation of the educational institutions of its peoples is, of course, the very large non-Christian element among the population (once you leave the White and the Coloured groups). The Black people of South Africa constitute at least 65% of the total population. Perhaps at least half of them are still unbaptized pagans.

Then you have a very large and influential slab of Whites who are Jews. You also have your Indian population, only 3% of whom have ever been baptized. Most of them are Hindus, and the rest are Moslems. There is also a very strongly Islamic Malay group. You can just imagine the difficulties of trying to expand a National Educational System, utilising the languages of these various different groups rather than utilising Afrikaans. Calvinism too meets with some resistance from these people -- many of whom pay not even lip service to any form of Christianity.

There are also problems of idolatry. Thus, permission was granted to the Hindu population to establish its own Chair of Theology at the Indian University in Durban. This was finally acceded to by the Government, but the Reformed Churches were furious. Some of them accused the Government of compromise, in a Christian Republic, to allow for a training centre for Hindu Theology to be set up in a so-called Christian country -- even only for that portion of the country's inhabitants that are still Hindus.

You see the tension there. It creates a very big problem. The short-term way to resolve it is not immediately apparent. I don't want you to think that there is not a lot of resistance to Christianity even in South Africa -- not a lot of difficult decisions that are being made regarding the further expansion of Christian and Calvinistic education in that land!

I'd now like to say something about some of the products of education -- and particularly about the arts and the sciences. You are all aware, of course, that South Africa was the world's first country to transplant the human heart. One may approve or disapprove of this, depending on one's theological evaluation of it. But in many other areas too, there have been world breakthroughs in the sciences. South Africa is the only country in the world that has mastered the technique of producing uranium very cheaply. Ten years ago there were American spies in South Africa -- trying to learn the secret of this production of enriched uranium in a cheap way.

And of course, South Africa is also the world's leader -- as you know -- in turning coal into gasoline. They have three or four huge plants, each stretching for acres, involved in doing just this. Right now, with the increasing economic crunch in the United States, American specialists are being trained in South Africa by South Africans -- anent the technique of doing this. These Americans then intend coming back to the United States and doing something similar in America -- to alleviate the increasing (contrived or artificial) oil shortage in the U.S.

I would also point out that of all of the Faculties of Atomic Energy in South African Universities, the very best Faculties are chaired not just by Christians but by dedicated Calvinists. Such include the son of Professor Hendrik Stoker, Dr. Louw Alberts, Dr. A.J.A. Roux, and others.

One could well go on to say something about gold-mining technology. South Africa has the deepest and most specialised mines in the world. There are also advanced ventilation techniques and fast-drill techniques -- because the gold in South Africa is very deep and inaccessible. But I would particularly like to say something about the arts, with which you may not be familiar.

A few words about the Afrikaans tongue. It is a very interesting language. I suppose you can say that Afrikaans is based upon seventeenth century Southern Dutch, mixed with Western German -- Dutch as spoken in Belgium, and German as spoken on the western border of Germany. There are also strong admixtures from the French Huguenots, from Scandinavians, and (far more recently) from English -- together with minimal traces of words derived from contacts with non-Whites in Africa (and to a lesser extent from Indonesia). You mix all of that together in a pan, stir it, bake it at 360 degrees -- and three centuries later what comes out in an indigenous form, is Afrikaans!

Afrikaans is a Germanic language -- like German, Dutch, Frisian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and English. Afrikaans is the only Germanic language in the world to have developed outside of Europe. It is the only Germanic language ever to have developed in Africa.

Afrikaans is also the most modern (although I hate to use this word) almost "computerised" language in the world. It has hardly any inflections or strong forms whatsoever. It is a "tailor made" and a specialized language which conveys the maximum of content with the minimum of phraseology. The American Professor Dr. Richard Gaffin of Westminster Theological Seminary, who reads Afrikaans quite well, once told me that it is a very neat language, especially for theological purposes.

I' d like to give you some interesting samples of Afrikaans literature -- trying to render their constructions into English. Of course, it loses a great deal in translation. I have already mentioned the figure of the great Totius and his poem about the ox-wagon -- the White child of South Africa treks further on into the land. He also wrote an excellent essay on the service of mercy of the Deacons -- and another book on a few basic principles of Calvinism. Then there is also Professor Pellissier, who wrote on music and on religious psychology.

The great and well-known writer D.F. Malherbe has written on national relations. He has also written beautiful poems on the history of Deborah and Sisera, on Amos, and on the drama between Black and White. All three of these writers -- Totius (or Du Toit), Pellissier and Malherbe -- are of French Huguenot descent.

Dr. G.M Dekker has written manuals on Afrikaner National Culture and Afrikaner Literature. The great poet who died just a few months ago, W.E.G. Louw, wrote on art and the future. J. Abel Coetzee wrote on the traditional Afrikaner style of life. And of course, N.P van Wyk Louw (the brother of W.E.G. Louw) has written what is regarded by Germanic language specialists everywhere and especially in Europe -- as the greatest saga written in any Germanic language in the 20th century.

Let me give you a few more examples. My own favourite Afrikaans poet, is Jan F.E. Celliers. He wrote a poem about 70 years ago on a little bonfire that he had kindled in the veld. Here is my own attempt to translate some lines from this beautiful poem:

"My little fire and I are on watch,
my little fire and I alone.
I know there are parties tonight
in many a bright hall,
but no one misses me
at the dance and the feasts--
banished, forgotten, estranged.
But even so far from the crowds
in my lonely little home,
I feel at one with the Lord alone--
a child, in His bosom, contented!"

Another mighty poem he wrote about the desert scenes of South Africa with the huge rocky mountains sticking up out of the plains, goes as follows:

"Stone cities in the silent night
erect their rockeries of might,
and bitterness melts through the sand.
May neither laugh nor sigh of pain
escape from pillar or from stone.
With all Thy peace around me here,
God whispers with His still small voice
and sparkles from His Southern Cross."

The Southern Cross is a constellation of stars in the shape of a cross, which is seen only in the southern hemisphere. Incidentally, the star in what is the head of that cross was vividly described by Her Majesty's Astronomer Royal, Sir William Herschel, the Christian discoverer of the planet Uranus (and who was stationed in Cape Town for many years). He said this star in the head of the cross in that southern constellation, was the "bloodiest" and reddest star that he had ever seen anywhere in the skies. Of course, God Himself put it there -- right in the "head" of the Southern Cross!

Once again Celliers:

"O land of love,
here taste I peace
where stone towns in the silent night
erect their rockeries of might
and bitterness melts through the sand."

There is also the great poet C. Louis Leipoldt. He was born and raised near the Hantam Mountains in South Africa not far from where my wife herself grew up. As a very famous paediatrician, he returned to that place from Cape Town -- and there picked up a handful of gravel and some shrivelled-up old leaves. As he looked at them, he wrote these words:

"A handful of gravel and dried up leaves
tell me so much of those wonderful years
when the world of the Hantam
was the whole world for me.
I was poor the day before yesterday--
but today, I am rich as a king!"

Then there is the great Eugene M. Marais. He, by the way, according to the American writer Robert Ardrey, author of African Genesis, has written quite the best study in the world about the behaviour of ants. Proverbs 6:6f! Marais also wrote a beautiful poem about the winter nights on the rolling fields and plains of the Transvaal. Just some of those words are to this effect:

"It's cold; the little wind is thin.
The fields stretch out
as wide as the mercy of the Lord!"

It is nice to hear of the wideness of God's mercy being proclaimed by Calvinists -- who are often alleged to be not always appreciative enough of the wideness of that mercy! One could go on. But that is just to give you something of the flavour of some of the more important literature that appeals to me in the Afrikaans language.

Coming now to more plastic and visual arts, the Afrikaners have been rather sternly Calvinistic. For many decades they have gone into "Still Art" -- painting things like fruit in a bowl, and especially the wide open spaces in the rocky mountains of the uninhabited areas of the country. There were great painters like Pierneef, of the more classical modern school.

Then you have poetry such as Gerdener's "Elijah" and the other works I have already referred to. More recently, one encounters the work of the great Preacher-poet Isak de Villiers (an old classmate of mine). He is now regarded as perhaps the finest contemporary poet in South Africa. His works are written not just from a Calvinist perspective, but from a Calvinist Preacher's perspective -- even while he ministers to the needs of his parishioners.

There were three rather amusing incidents in South Africa relating to sculptures and such like. One I have already related -- when some Roman Catholic people tried to erect a crucifix on top of a mountain near Cape Town and were ordered by the South African Government to remove it, as a desecration of public property!

There was also a tremendous furore some decades ago in South Africa. A public building was then being completed. One of the famous South African sculptors was commissioned to try to represent medical welfare. He created a sculpture of a family of people stark naked -- a father, a mother and a little child: in quite robust health, and looking ahead. The idea was to embellish the building with this figure.

However, there was a tremendous grass roots reaction against this -- particularly to the nakedness of the woman in this threesome. The bickering became quite acrimonious. For a while, the statue was amusingly draped with a sheet, to conceal it from the public eye. This kind of thing could only happen in South Africa!

Then there was a Jewish painter, who publicly exhibited a very objectionable oil canvas of a figure nailed to a cross with a donkey's head on it and a Christmas cap on top of the donkey's head. Underneath it were the words: "I forgive You, Father; you didn't know what You were doing!"

It was, of course, a blasphemous attempt to ridicule our Lord Jesus. It led to a famous Court Case anent the removal of this work of art (if such it can be called). There were allegedly even threats against the artist -- who then fled to Israel. I am not defending these ways of handling the matter. I am just giving you some idea of the flavour of the country and its tastes, at least up to the time when I left it.

I suppose I need to say something about race relations. This seems to be the most interesting aspect (to the non-South African) of what is going on there. I have said something already, so now I will be brief.

In Genesis 1:28, South Africans understand the Bible to be teaching that God told Adam, the forefather of the human race, to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill the earth. If he had done this without sinning, some of Adam's descendants would have gone and settled in Europe; others in Africa; others in Asia; others in North and South America; and finally, yet others in Australia. The various different races of man would then have come into being -- harmoniously.

Race is not regarded in South Africa by Calvinists as being a consequence of sin nor of the curse. It is regarded as being an intensification of the genes and the genetic possibilities and combinations which would have arisen even had man never fallen into sin. By means of selective breeding, as people of certain genetic compositions would have gone and lived in different parts of the world in isolation from one another, they would have bred only with their own kind.

So a White South African Calvinist would certainly agree that Black is beautiful -- and that White is beautiful too. For all colours are made by God!

Unfortunately, however, man did fall into sin. This led to an intensification of the genes -- and perhaps too of the differences which have now developed between man and man. Thus God Himself at the tower of Babel (in Genesis eleven) split the human race that wanted to hang together and to build the first "United Nations Organisation" skyscraper while denying that God was relevant.

As the text tells us: "Let us build a tower and a city, lest we be scattered over the face of the earth!" But God had purposed to scatter them. So He came down and twisted their tongues, accelerating the process of the development of languages which I think would have developed in any case. Then He drove them apart from one another, into the various different areas of the world.

In Deut. 32:8, Afrikaner Calvinists will tell you, it specifically states that when God divided the nations He did so according to the number of the tribes of Israel. In other words, the segregation of the nations by God into the different tribes and nations, took place so as to promote the expansion of the covenant people.

They, of course -- since the "Great Commission" of our Lord Jesus -- are now an international covenant people. Yet even on the Day of Pentecost, this process of multiculturalism was not reversed. For Pentecost is not the opposite of the tower of Babel -- as the liberals allege.

If it were, what would have happened at Pentecost is that every one would have spoken in the same language -- possibly in Hebrew. There would then have been a return to the monolingual situation which existed in the world before Babel. But instead, we find at Pentecost a sanctification of the cultural differences -- and a maintenance and a further development and a christianisation and an enrichment of them! Compare too Jeremiah 13:23 with Acts 8:27f.

So Pentecost, far from being a return to Babel, is a mighty push forward of the cultures of the world -- toward their ultimate goal prior to the second coming and especially on the new earth thereafter. Revelation 21:24-26. Then the nations of them that are saved, shall bring the honour and the glory of the nations into the city of God on the new earth -- in terms of Christ's "Great Commission", which was linked to the cultural mandate, to go forth into all the world.

Nations as nations are thus to be turned into Christ's disciples -- and to be taught to become Christian nations. They are thus to maintain their God-given nationhood -- and in that way to observe all things whatsoever Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, had ever commanded.

Well, so much for the theology of the basically Calvinistic Afrikaner approach to race relations. Of course, this does not imply that Whites are superior to Blacks -- nor vice-versa. They are all formally equal -- the one and the many! -- equal, but different. In spite of their many to-be-sanctified differences, they all descend from Adam -- and all are being saved only by the one blood of the Second Adam.

Of course at this particular time in history, by no means anything like most and still less all nations in the world have yet become christianised to the extent that other nations have so far been christianised. The Afrikaner has been much more christianised at this stage of his development than have, for example, the Zulus (a Black nation in Africa). Indeed, even the Afrikaner nation needs to be much more greatly christianised in the future than it has been up to this stage.

It is the disparities at the various stages of christianisation of the nations which, of course, create some of the tensions. This is so not only in South Africa, but throughout the world. Indeed, this is seen especially in those countries where disparate cultural groups of people coexist alongside of one another.

Well now, in 1658 -- just six years after the arrival of the first White colonists -- a fence was erected between where the Whites were staying and the yellow-skinned Hottentot tribes were staying (on the other side of the fence). From 1660 through 1760, Indonesian slaves were imported by the Dutch. No African Blacks were ever enslaved by African Whites. Indeed, no Blacks were ever encountered by the Whites in South Africa, until 1780.

From 1780 to 1850, there were frontier clashes in the eastern part of South Africa -- also between the Afrikaner Calvinists and the various Black tribes. These clashes were notably with the Xhosas, and later also with the fierce Zulu nation.

In 1852, the Christian Coloured Members themselves requested to be allowed to secede from the White General Assembly of the South African Reformed Church. Thus, they then created their own Coloured General Assembly.

In 1930, political legislation was launched to increase the separation of the cultures. The aim was to promote the advance of each culture in its own area toward political maturity and -- as far as possible -- toward calvinisation.

In 1961, the Republic of South Africa was re-established. The Black-governed areas of the country -- the "Bantustans" as they are called -- were developed towards complete political autonomy from the White Government of South Africa. At the moment, the following Black areas of different Black tribes have that political independence (which is recognised by White South Africa), viz.: the Transkei, the Ciskei, Zululand, Bophutatswana, Qwa-Qwa, Lobowa, Gazankulu and Vendaland.

From 1975 onward, consultation has been increasing at a tremendous pace between the White South African Government and these now autonomous Black States. The latter have advanced quite a distance toward Christian maturity -- though not yet far enough. The prognosis for the future would seem to be the confederation of South Africa, ultimately, as a loosely associated system of Black and White States on the basis of formal equality and reflecting the Ontological Trinity ( alias the "one" and the "many").

Perhaps there can even be an ultimate establishment of a "Confederate States of Christian Southern Africa" (The U.S.C.S.A.). At least, I would hope so. I would see this as the fulfilment of Isaiah chapter two. Indeed, I think that will come to pass -- if the outside world (and notably Russia, China, the United States, Britain, France and Germany) would just adopt a more patient attitude to what the South Africans of all colours are trying to achieve in working out their own common destiny.

A last word or two about the economic situation in South Africa. From 1658 onward, the Dutch East India Company started to make a profit from its enterprise in the Cape. It was, however, chiefly an agricultural economy. This was because the really basic impetus toward the establishment of a colony in South Africa, was to grow raw green vegetables and fresh fruit -- for the Dutch merchant ships on their long journey from Holland to Indonesia, to combat the scurvy to which they were then subject on account of the lack of fresh fruit and vegetables on board by the time they reached where Cape Town is. So the wealth they developed at that time was chiefly agricultural wealth. There was, to some extent, therefore a rise of landed gentry. Yet they never had political control of the Cape.

From 1700 to 1800 we find the development -- on a small scale -- of local commerce in South Africa. From 1800 through 1860 -- with a dislocation involved through the arrival of the British -- we find many Afrikaners trekking away and pioneering the areas to the east and to the north -- as hunters and ranchers, and constantly keeping their livestock on the move.

But especially from 1860 onward, with the discovery of first diamonds and then gold, huge wealth began to develop in South Africa. So today, some of the wealthiest multi-millionaires in the world are found in that country.

From 1900 to 1935, after the Anglo-Boer War, the White South Africans were defeated and economically ruined. A very massive amount of them became impoverished "Poor Whites" - with very little to lose but their chains (as Karl Marx might have said about them, had he lived at that time). But then, there was the establishment of the economic rehabilitation schemes such as Dr. John Kestell's Reddingsdaadbond.

Yet later, the Broederbond was established by Afrikaners particularly to bring about the economic resurrection of the Afrikaner. So we find the development of large Afrikaner commercial enterprises such as Volkskas (the banking system) and Federale Mynbou (or Federal Mines) -- until the Afrikaner had more and more begun to achieve economic clout in his own land.

One of the previous State Presidents, Dr. Diedrichs, taught Economics at the Orange Free State University and was also an authority against communism. He and Senator Horwood, the present Minister of Finance and previously Rector of the University of Natal, have more and more been steering South Africa away from the remnants of a certain amount of economic state socialism -- and toward private enterprise. Today it may possibly be that South Africa is one of the freest countries in the world as far as private enterprise is concerned -- and, in some areas at least, even ahead of the United States. For there has been a continuing socialisation of the American economy, particularly over the last seventy years, after a strong position of free enterprise previously.

At any rate, there are only a handful of countries in the whole world that produce enough food to feed themselves and to export to others. One, of course, is the United States; the second is Canada; and then (fascinatingly) the two desert countries, Australia and South Africa. After that, you have to scratch your head to find countries that can feed themselves -- quite apart from those that have massive agricultural exports!

I think there is a direct relationship between historic Calvinism's influence on a nation's origin and its continued on one hand -- and its ability to produce and to keep on producing especially in the area of agriculture on the other hand. Here Max Weber was right, and Karl Marx was wrong!

But last, I must disclose that South Africa is also a mineralogical power -- perhaps the most supreme mineralogical power in the world. I am not here referring so much to South Africa's production of gold (some 75% of the free world's supply); nor to her diamonds (90% of the free world's supply); nor to her platinum as a necessary ingredient of silencers on motor cars (some 95% of the world's supply); nor to her copper (a huge slice of the world's supply). But here I am referring to far more crucial minerals than these!

I am referring to those rare metals which are absolutely essential for the manufacture of steel. I am referring to South Africa's chrome (up to 90% of the world's supply); to her cobalt (77% of the world's supply); to antimony, to vanadium, to molybdenum, to manganese, and to other vital ingredients needed to manufacture steel.

In addition to all of those, with South Africa controlling the vast majority of the percentages of world supplies, you also need iron to manufacture steel. And some of the biggest deposits of iron in the whole world are in South Africa too.

Japan, almost devoid of iron and certainly devoid of these other rare metals that you need to manufacture steel, imports vast quantities of iron and these other metals from South Africa. Japan is now vastly ahead of the United States, western Germany, the Soviet Union and Britain -- in the manufacture of huge steel items such as ships. More ships are being made by Japan than by any other nation -- and most of them are being made with South African iron and steel.

Now the United States does not need South African iron. For the U.S.A has sufficient. But the United States -- as the producer of 45% of all of the wealth in the world -- desperately needs South African cobalt, chrome, vanadium, molybdenum, manganese and these other ingredients of steel. The situation is so crucial that American steel kings in Pittsburgh and elsewhere have said that South Africa can survive without the United States but that the U.S. will self-destruct without South Africa. That seems hard to believe, yet I am assured by American steel producers that this is indeed the case.

So very frankly, the choice that confronts the United States on the world scene today is threefold. It can either stand by and do nothing -- and watch South Africa slug it out alone against the whole world in general and the Soviet Union in particular -- and face the possible ultimate loss of all of that cobalt and manganese and steel to the Soviet Union (or at any rate no longer to be supplied to America). If that happens, America will die -- after South Africa has died. That's the first choice that confronts the United States. The death of America through American inaction to protect and to ensure the flow to America of South African minerals!

The second thing that can happen, is for the United States to aid and abet a possible Soviet takeover of Southern Africa -- with the same result. There would then be a permanent shift of economic and industrial might, permanently and irrecoverably, away from the U.S. to the Soviet Union -- with South Africa finally becoming a Soviet satellite. All of these valuable raw materials would then fall into the hands of the Soviets.

A third possibility that would occur to an intelligent American President, would be immediate American war against South Africa -- annexation of South Africa, and forcible incorporation of South Africa into the United States as a fifty-first State. In that way, control of these vital metals would be ensured to the United States. But, however effective that might seem pragmatically, I think it would lead to the universal condemnation of America by the rest of the world and thus be counter-productive.

This leaves one with the only other alternative. That is to start reconstructing the excellent relationship that used to exist between the United States and South Africa -- before Lyndon Johnson and more recently, Jimmy Carter and his satellites rocked the boat. They have brought about a very tense situation of international relations between the two countries. What is needed is to recognise the sphere-sovereignty of the United States and of South Africa -- and to work toward a policy of good neighbourliness and of borrowing and sharing with one another and promoting international trade. For both lands need to work toward an increased Christian presence throughout the world.

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