An open letter to a South African Churchman1
by
Reverend Dr. Albert H. van den Heuvel Director, Department of Communication, World Council of Churches
[Note: In September 1970, the World Council of Churches announced grants, from the Special Fund established by it to combat racism, to a number of anti-racist organizations, including the African National Congress of South Africa, the Anti-Apartheid Movement of Britain and the International Defence and Aid Fund. The attached open letter was written by Dr. van den Heuvel, in response to doubts and criticisms expressed by some churchmen in South Africa.]
Dear John,
Thanks for your letter. It is a long time since we saw each other. You did not come to Europe and your Government does not want me to come to South Africa, so no wonder we have grown apart a little. But this letter of yours about World Council of Churches (W.C.C.) grants to organizations which combat racism amazes me. Why suddenly this bitter tone and such general judgements?
You write as if our Executive Committee is made up of fools and revolutionaries and as if people who are combatting racism in Africa are bloodthirsty animals, criminals and outlaws. Don't think, by the way, that you are the only one who has written me in such a way, but let me select you as the one to answer. I am making this letter public in order to react to a number of my other positive or negative friends at the same time. I chose to write to you because you have a name for fighting racism in your own country, and as a matter of fact you have taught me and others more about the evils of racial injustice than many books and articles ever could.
Living in a racist state
Five years ago in your home you gave me a picture of South Africa which I have never forgotten and which I have often repeated to other people. You said then that you were living in a racist state and that we, more or less regular visitors, could not begin to understand the demonic nature of such a country with its foundation of fear and its walls of uncertainty and arbitrariness. The apartheid doctrine, which might theoretically be defended as a strategy to preserve the identity of different people, had in fact become a racist practice in which a tiny minority ruled a vast black, coloured and African majority. This can be seen, you told me, in the way in which Africans are treated. In inter-racial relationships, you said, there is not even a veneer of equality. Discrimination can be documented by the unequal opportunity for jobs, in the total inequality of wages, in the way the land is distributed to the different peoples, in the pass laws, in the inequality of justice, in every new law which mocks the Declaration of Human Rights.
It was not me who said this - although I had seen it with my own eyes but you, a white South African. And you went further. You said: nobody in the white community can represent the Africans. We have churches and organizations who oppose apartheid and who work for a real understanding between the races, but they don't represent the Africans. And, you said, the real representatives of the Africans are the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress, but their leaders are in jail or in exile or dead. You were the one that day who was down and I had to comfort you. I preached hope against your despair.
Violence and non-violence
You must remember our conversations on violence, in which you and many others opposed to apartheid were the ones who predicted that only violence would change the situation. It was we who pleaded with you all to set a Gandhian example somewhere, to try the models Martin Luther King had worked out, to show ways which are more excellent, more imaginative and more efficient than violence, which is always like a virtue, spreading disease. We pleaded with you to give the Africans a sign that their costly non-violent protest would be backed by their white brethren, but you didn't believe us. You said it was too late. You said the relation between the races was so damaged that all you could do was to try to engage in personal reconciliation and hope for miracles.
I wrote in my diary something which one of you said that evening when we came back from Pretoria: we have become so defensive that we have no hope left. I protested that evening, but you remained gloomy.
The Africans I met were more hopeful than you and your liberal friends, although only a few still talked to us. From my friends and colleagues I have since heard the same story: the Africans in South Africa do not want to talk. There are too many spies, too many traitors, too many whites who have been careless.
The ones we see, however, all agree: the situation is not just bad, it is getting worse. Did you see your Government's report on prisons, dealing with the year 1968-69? 88,000 people in prison on an average day; 500,000 people sentenced to be imprisoned, which is one in forty of the population; 187 babies born in prison (in which country does that still happen?); 25,933 strokes of corporal punishment; 84 people hanged (putting you on the top of the world's execution table); 7140 deaths in prison. With such staggering figures in mind there are still Africans who hope that they can avoid using violence, an option you don't have any longer. But most talk to us as if that dream - the dream of a non-violent change - has been dismantled by the absence of any sign that a change is even contemplated.
The ones who have left the country talk differently. They are no longer caught under the spell of the daily drone of discrimination which robs them of their personhood. They are no longer caught between the endless threats against protest on the one hand and the sermons against violence on the other. They have read how the other coloured peoples of Africa and Asia have liberated themselves from a colonial power or an oppressive white minority and they have become aware that there is hardly a case in which such liberations took place without sacrifice. They find out that the South African Government is more violent than they could ever hope to become and that all the talk of law and order they hear is little else but a defence for the whites and a threat to the Africans. And remember, these men are the ones which you called the real representatives of the Africans in your country.
I know that you dislike the usual story about what South African whites have done for "the Africans". They have preached the Gospel to them, built houses, hospitals, schools. We know that and I have been told the story hundreds of times. I know that Africans from surrounding countries have tried - even illegally - to come and work in the gloomy mines of Johannesburg, but I also remember that you mentioned the price they had to pay for their benefits: the loss of their identity, the feeling of belonging to an inferior race, the promise to remain second-rate citizens for ever, total insecurity and very, very little support.
You and I walked together through the compounds of Johannesburg where these miners live without their families, we drove through these endless townships with their beautiful names and then we said to each other: they look like clean, well-built hospital wards - all the same, bare and impersonal.
I am not picking on you, John, I am simply stating that all my English-speaking and all my African friends in South Africa over the last years have described their own land to me as a racist state and often as a police state. And this was not only done in private. Your church leaders have not been silent either. We outsiders, who were not allowed in any more and could no longer see for ourselves, could hardly get the feeling that the situation was improving. Every time we got a smuggled letter, every time we met Bantus in Europe, or white liberals, or even staunch apartheid defenders they all told us it got worse. In spite of all the courageous words and all the personal good will, nothing changed.
To back the white liberal is not enough
Gradually it became clear to us that the one strategy we always had, to back the white liberal, is not enough. It is an important part of any attempt to contribute to change in South Africa - if it were only because people like me are nothing else but white liberals - but it is not enough.
We have listened to you - and still do - with great attention and deep respect, but there are other voices. You know from the Assembly V of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (W.A.R.C.) that increasingly black Africans are speaking a different language from yours. They have become impatient because in their eyes the white liberals don't deliver the goods. They respect you and love you but they are not impressed by the results of your strategy. And moreover, they feel that not just you alone, but also the black Africans should be heard. A (liberal) minority within a (white) minority should not speak for a silenced majority.
Cottesloe report. 1960
What should the W.C.C. do in such a case? We received yesterday a critical cable from a German Lutheran Church in South West Africa which stated it quite clearly: you should preach the gospel of reconciliation. Well, that is exactly what we believe, and we have tried it for all we are worth. All reconciliation begins by bringing together the conflicting parties, and so the Council did. We met in Cottesloe in 1960. It took some doing but finally representatives of our then member churches and a delegation of W.C.C. people met. The W.C.C. came with its conviction built on the common Christian voice of the Evanston Assembly:
"Its conviction is that any form of segregation based on race, colour or ethnic origin is contrary to the Gospel, and is incompatible with the Christian doctrine of man and with the nature of the Church of Christ. The Assembly urges the churches within its membership to renounce all forms of segregation or discrimination and to work for their abolition within their own life and within society."
The Cottesloe report was rather mild but the result was quite shocking. The Afrikaans-speaking churches left the W.C.C. and put incredible pressure on their own delegates who had signed the Cottesloe report. These churches have since isolated themselves even more: in the W.A.R.C. Assembly in Nairobi this summer they were hard pressed and in the Reformed Ecumenical Synod (R.E.S.) they did not fare much better. In Nairobi the American Reformed Churches called for the action the W.C.C. Executive Committee was going to take hardly a month later: to give immediate material and moral support for the humanitarian programmes of those engaged in the struggle for justice and freedom for the people of southern Africa, including medical services to the liberation movements and support for families of political detainees.
Evanston did not fall out of the air either. The ecumenical movement from its very inception had been thinking about race relations. In 1924 the secretary of the International Missionary Council, J.H. Oldham, wrote a powerful book about racism. Philip Potter quotes a passage of the almost 50-year-old testimony which I want to repeat here:
"Christianity is not primarily a philosophy but a crusade. As Christ was sent by the Father, so He sends His disciples to set up in the world the Kingdom of God. His coming was a declaration of war - a war to the death against the powers of darkness. He was manifested to destroy the works of the devil. Hence when Christians find in the world a state of things that is not in accord with the truth which they have learned from Christ, their concern is not that it should be explained but that it should be ended. In that temper we must approach everything in the relations between races that cannot be reconciled with the Christian ideal."
This is the firmness of Christian belief on which the ecumenical movement is built.
Mindolo Consultation. 1964
Back to the sixties. The Mindolo Consultation of 1964 - which was not a W.C.C. conference but one of a group of Christians in our member churches - acknowledged for the first time that violence might become unavoidable in the southern African situation:
"The urgency of the situation in South Africa is further increased by the conviction of leading Africans that, as all peaceful measures tried by African political organizations over a period of many years to bring about an ordered change have proved abortive, only one avenue remains open - that of violence... For many Christians involved in the struggle for a just solution, the question of possible violence as the only remaining alternative has become an urgent and ever pressing one. Reports indicate that many are convinced that war has already begun. Many African leaders maintain that violence has never been desired or sought if any other mode of effective negotiation could be established or remained open."
Of course, this consultation created a violent reaction in South Africa! Already then indignation sounded like a cover for fear. The white violence in South Africa was regretted but a mention of possible black violence created pandemonium.
W.C.C. aid to victims of discrimination
In 1965 the Central Committee of the W.C.C. supported an appeal "for funds for the legal defence of the victims of unjust accusation and discriminatory laws in South Africa and Rhodesia and aid for them and their dependents". The only difference between this action and the recent action of the Executive Committee is that in 1965 most of the money for legal aid went to white liberal organizations and now it is going to the organizations of the victims themselves. But the last action of the Council has a long tradition.
In 1966 the World Conference on Church and Society stated:
"It is not enough for churches and groups to condemn the sin of racial arrogance and oppression. The struggle for radical change in structures will inevitably bring suffering and will demand costly and bitter engagement. For Christians to stand aloof from this is to be disobedient to the call of God in history."
The words 'costly and bitter engagement' have since acquired a new ring of reality. Soon also the dimensions of these words became clear. The USA churches went through a real crisis of a vehemence hitherto unknown. Although the fate of the USA blacks is infinitely better than that of the African blacks, the race issue put the country on the brink of a civil war. Even the North American churches with their long history of combatting racism were taken by surprise. They were very willing to proclaim what the IV Assembly of the W.C.C. codified for the whole ecumenical community: white racism is a blatant denial of the Christian faith. Yet their struggle continues. If the American blacks react to their discrimination in this fashion, what will happen when the southern Africans begin to find expression for their bitterness?
The Fourth Assembly told the W.C.C. to establish a programme to combat racism. The Assembly chose to concentrate on 'white racism' for the following reasons:
"By focusing on white racism, we are not unaware of other forms of ethnocentrism which produce inter-ethnic and inter-tribal tensions and conflicts throughout the world today. We believe, however, that white racism has special historical significance because its roots lie in powerful, highly developed countries, the stability of which is crucial to any hope for international peace and development. The racial crisis of these countries is to be taken as seriously as the threat of nuclear war. The revolt against racism is one of the most inflammatory elements of the social revolution now sweeping the earth; it is fought at the level of mankind's deepest and most vulnerable emotions - the universal passion for human dignity. The threatened internal chaos of those countries in which racial conflict is most intense has immediate world-wide impact, for racism under attack tends to generate and to spread counter-racism. We submit that this crisis will grow worse unless we understand the historical phenomenon of white racism, what has distinguished it from other forms of intergroup conflict, and what must be done to resolve the crisis on the basis of racial justice."
Of course you have read all this but has it ever registered? That, I submit, is the real problem for all of us white liberals: we read, we hear, we agree - but do we know? And, are w, ready to act according to our conviction?
Notting Hill Consultation. 1969
Those who were present at the next stage, the Notting Hill Consultation, began to know. The Notting Hill Consultation was authorized by the W.C.C.'s Central Committee. Senator McGovern chaired it and the General Secretary of the IT.C.C. was the secretary. Its proceedings, writes Senator McCovern, "were marked by love and anger, hope and despair, bitter realism and sweet pieties, succinct insights and rambling oratory... No one could sit through these experiences without being forced to look anew at his own heart".
Notting Hill was organized by the W.C.C. to speak to and not for the Council. A subtle difference perhaps but an important one. Whatever the Consultation wanted to say, the Central Committee had to put into action.
The Consultation ended up recommending to the W.C.C. that it should support economic sanctions; 'reparations' to exploited peoples to the end of producing a more favourable balance of economic power throughout the world; set up a unit to combat racism; circulate the UNESCO race report; become a coordinating centre for the implementation of 'multiple strategies' for the struggle against racism in southern Africa by the churches; and - here I quote in full the last recommendation - "that all else failing, the Church and churches support resistance movements, including revolutions, which are aimed at the elimination of political or economic tyranny which makes racism possible".
W.C.C. Special Fund to Combat Racism
What did the W.C.C. Central Committee do? As you know, it did not accept the final recommendation of Notting Hill. Violence is not a popular word in Geneva, to use an understatement.
In spite of the fact that European Christians resisted foreign domination with violence, in spite of the fact that most newly independent countries liberated themselves from oppression by violence (and that not without the moral support of the churches!), in spite of the fact that in Latin America some of our best Christian leaders speak openly about revolution, in spite of a growing library of theological books, endorsing or even advocating violent revolution in the name of the Judeo-Christian faith, in spite of the fact that some of our member churches have openly given support to liberation movements, the Central Committee did not accept to even mention violence. The reasons were clear.
You all were one reason. Men like Bishop Burnett, Bishop Zulu, Beyers Naude and others have pleaded again and again that the mere mention of a possibility of violence would make the liberal position in South Africa more difficult. Another was the long history of pleas for non-violence the World Council has. We always urged people to go from the battlefield to the conference table. We have been scolded more often because of our pleas for non-violence than for violence. People now crying 'wolf!' at us cried 'chicken!' at us last year because of our statements about Vietnam. A third reason is that our membership has really little idea about race as yet. All around the world the whites seem to be so safely in control that they do not hear the groundswell of bitterness and despair on which their ship is cruising. Many white Christians would gladly go to war to fight communism, but few whites would ever take up arms to fight against racism.
You remember what happened about Rhodesia. The Archbishop of Canterbury was one of the few leaders in England who asked for use of force against the racist regime of Ian Smith. You remember the reactions of the white Christians in southern Africa.
So, no violence, said the Central Committee, 'but we do take the issue very seriously'. A programme was organized and a special fund set up to combat racism. This fund of half a million dollars was to be given away without control over the way in which it was spent. The W.C.C. put some of its own reserves into it: $200,000. Of this $60,000 came out of the general budget. Prime Minister Vorster said that it was intolerable that money collected in South Africa should be used to combat racism. Tell your friends that it is about one-third of one percent of $60,000 that came from South Africa! The Executive Committee allotted grants from $2,500 - $20,000 to nineteen organizations. All organizations volunteered assurance that they would not use the money for military purposes but for legal aid, and social, educational and medical work.
Nobody pays much attention to the majority of projects that are situated in Japan, Australia, Columbia, The Netherlands and the U.K. The Australian churches were quite delighted with the support their friends combating racism received. But then, they are in a majority position without reason to fear an oppressed majority.
Of course we had expected negative reactions from southern Africa and from parts of Europe where links with the white liberal minority are much stronger than their solidarity with the oppressed majority. And it is this visceral reaction which we have to analyse.
I think most of your churchmen reacted predictably. They had told us before they did not like it. Their support goes to a slow, very slow process of change of mind of the racist society. They are willing to oppose the violence of their governments against African majorities by consistent and courageous statements and they plead with the oppressed not to make things worse by acting to take their rights where they are not given. Don't understand me as being cynical or judgemental here. Many white liberals have been very courageous and outspoken in their support for this policy. They have been harassed, dismissed from their jobs, often put under gruesome pressure; they have lost friends and colleagues. They have paid for their convictions. The world Christian community holds them in high honour.
Listen first to oppressed African brethren
But the Central Committee in Canterbury requested multiple strategies to combat racism. Christians around the world cannot listen to their white liberal fellows only. They must listen also, and I think they must listen first to their oppressed African brethren. And among those there are increasing numbers of people who claim that such organisations as the liberation movements for southern Africa are speaking for the Africans. Should a world Christian organization such as ours ignore such voices?
You who are opposed to apartheid as much as we are, whom do you want us to support? You must answer me on this point. Do you think, no, do you believe that a world Christian organization should concentrate its Programne to Combat Racism solely on supporting white liberal groups? Then, if that is so, how do we express our solidarity with our black brethren? Only through you? As long as all black opposition to the state is forbidden; as long as any African protest is declared terrorist, Communist and outlawed, what shall we do?
We decided for once to listen also to a growing number of our African brethren and to encourage them by supporting the non-violent parts of their work.
Reactions to the W.C.C. grants
Your politicians have, of course, immediately seized the opportunity to distort the action of the Executive Committee. The first thing they have done is to make sure that nobody would speak about liberation movements or resistance movements but of terrorists. They speak of murder and mutilation of innocent people; they paint a picture of the liberation movements which looks exactly like the picture those movements paint of the regimes now in power in southern Africa, which disrupt families, keep people under arrest without trial, have put to death hundreds of black Africans, tortured and murdered them. But about these allegations no word' The violence is all on the other side. On our white side it is called law and order, on their side it is called terrorism.
The nomenclature is not unimportant; it plays on the white people's fear and it discredits all who still have hope that southern Africans can be liberated without violence. I do not think that the politicians have much success with this line of attack. When Mr. D. Fawcett Phillips, a member of the Rhodesian Government, says that the World Council should be renamed "Murder Incorporated", when the Minister of Foreign Affairs of South Africa speaks about a blessing to those whose actions consist of crimes of violence such as murder, arson and armed robbery; when a Prime Minister of South Africa puts pressure on the churches to withdraw from the ecumenical fellowship, then it is clear that their fear is such that they can only take refuge in gross distortions of the truth. This kind of language says less about the W.C.C. than about the regimes in southern Africa, it seems to me.
The second distortion they use is to call the W.C.C. a Communist-inspired organization. Dr. Vorster, the brother of the Prime Minister, has used that accusation for years. Of course he knows well that this accusation is nonsensical. The W.C.C. is under constant attack from the Communists themselves and is repeatedly called an instrument of imperialism by Marxist ideologists. But it is also true that the accusation of communism does work with people who live in perpetual fear and who need to have an over-simplified identification of their enemy. One of my South African friends once said: communism in South Africa is a simple word for opposition; it has neither content nor substance.
In a radio conversation in which the Canadian Broadcasting Company arranged a discussion between Dr. J.S. Gericke and myself, Dr. Gericke repeated again and again that the W.C.C. is not consistent: we help terrorists (his words) in South Africa but we don't help people to fight communism. I replied that we were debating racism and not communism, and added that the two are not comparable. Communism grows anywhere while other forms of the organization of society fail.
In Europe communism rose to power because the workers recognized Marx's analysis of society as being largely true. The churches by allying themselves with the bourgeoisie and its exploitation of the preletariat aided the growth of communism substantially. And if in South Africa communism spreads, who is to blame? Is it not those who in the name of an attack on Marxism create the circumstances and continue the exploitation from which communism promises liberation? How ironical!
Those who see a Communist enemy behind every door, open the door widely to let it in.
In the same interview Gericke stated that Dr. Blake during his last visit to South Africa admitted that the IJ.C.C. acted under pressure. The interviewer asked: pressure by whom? Gericke answered: I don't know (but he meant: from communism). I then butted in: Dr. Gericke is right! The W.C.C. acts under pressure from the great majority of African Christians, from people who are combatting racism in six continents, from the whole history of the ecumenical movement, and, we have to add finally, from the Gospel itself.
The third argument of attack is to ignore the assurances of the liberation movements and anti-apartheid organizations that the money will be used for legal aid, social, educational and medical work. If you give them money at all, you pay for their whole programme. How silly! As if money given for Arab refugees would automatically go to the Palestinian freedom fighters, or as if money given for medical work in North Vietnam would be used to blow up South Vietnamese villages.
The W.C.C. handles more than $12,000,000 per year which go to hundreds of projects around the world. One could make a case for almost all church-giving having indirect political consequences! Schools in Africa may well produce future freedom fighters; a hospital in Indonesia may well heal the man who heads up an anti-Christian group five years later. Voter registration in the USA may produce new recruits for the Black Panthers. A little cool thinking shows up this argument for what it is: fear mongery!
Yes but, as I was asked in another recent interview, do you have proof that this money won't be misused? My counter question: why do you ask that now? Do you want proof that no money is ever misused, or do you want it especially in this case? The question presupposes that anti-apartheid organizations and freedom movements are less responsible and less trustworthy than other project sponsors. The question is therefore by implication racist. It presupposes that there is a hierarchy of races in which white people can be trusted implicitly while black people can't. The W.C.C. is not known to go and investigate its project sponsors in different categories. We trust people until they show themselves not to be trustworthy. If that is naive, then naive is what we want to be.
On the whole I am not very much impressed by the reactions of your leading politicians and I would be very amazed if their reactions would really influence the Church more than usual. Of course their aim is to isolate your part of the Church even further from the Christian family because the Church will always be a weak spot in the defence of injustice and oppression. Even if for a time the churches are numbed into silence or inaction, even if the majority of church members out of fear or out of real misunderstanding go along with a regime which oppresses people, sooner or later the Gospel will explode the unacceptable structures of such a society. It will produce its prophets and its martyrs. And so it will be till the end of time.
I am more worried about two other kinds of people. Firstly about the reaction of white people outside southern Africa who borrow the arguments of your politicians. There exists a small number of Europeans and Americans who say that the W.C.C. is aiding 'terrorists' or is backing up violence. Such reactions indicate to me that such whites have no perception of the race problem as yet. Perhaps I had better say: we white people have no real perception of the race problem. We all seem to choose immediately for our own kind and therefore again4t the black race.
This is even true for all those who criticise the Executive Committee of the W.C.C. because they feel that this decision will make the life of you liberal whites in southern Africa so much more difficult. Prof. Ben Marais, a man of courage and moderation, said that this decision was a catastrophe for the South African churches and for the W.C.C. Many of my compatriots in The Netherlands have asked whether this decision was wise in view of the fact that it would make life more difficult for the English-speaking churches and the Christian Institute. Few people have asked about the feeling of the rank-and-file among Bantus, and all these questions seem to be based on the certainty that the white liberals are the only real hope for South Africa.
To this the W.C.C. can only say that they certainly did not want to make life more difficult for you whom we greatly respect, but that the fight against racism cannot be fought in one way only and with one group of friends only. And since the South Africans can at all times dissociate themselves from action of the W.C.C. there is not much reason to believe that this action makes your life more difficult. One might even say that this action may help the South African churches in their task to explain once more to their members how serious the racial situation is and where the alliances in the world and in the church lie.
I hope that this long letter will help you to at least understand my amazement about your reaction. Contrary to what you say I am convinced that the W.C.C. has reacted with great moderation in a very explosive situation. Don't think for a moment that I am making triumphalist noises. I know well that this action can be questioned! I am also sure that we need you more in the ecumenical movement now than ever before. The W.C.C. is a place where we meet to discuss what makes us disagree. The fact that we represent the quasi-unanimity of Christianity while you are in a tiny minority position does not change this at all If all member churches which disagree with a part of the W.C.C.'s programme would leave us we would have few churches left. Part of the ecumenical adventure is to live together with those with whom we disagree.
When I met Albert Lutuli for the last time he said: "This country will go through a very difficult time. I pray to God that the churches will play their role." What more is there to say? Part of that role undoubtedly is not to let ourselves be cut off from each other. So, write me again. As for you, we think about you with great affection.
Yours ever,
A.H. van den Heuvel
P.S. This whole long letter can be summed up by quoting from a letter which Pauline Webb, Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee of the W.C.C., and Dr. Ernest Payne, a President of the W.C.C., sent to The Times:
"Clearly there may be differences of opinion as to whether this or that grant is wise. There are two kinds of violence in the world: violence exercised from above by those in power, and violence resorted to from below by those who see no other way of securing the redress of their grievances. Regis Debray distinguishes them as ‘the violence that represses’ and ‘the violence that liberates’. It is unlikely that those exercising repression from above will favour any kind of help being given to their opponents.
"The W.C.C., like mankind at large, has still not solved the issue of how much force is justifiable in any particular situation. Those who approved or shared in resistance movements in Europe thirty years ago must clearly be careful in their reactions to the present decisions.
"Meantime for the churches of the world, piety is not enough. The programme to combat racism aims at helping forward efforts to secure basic human rights and to do so within certain agreed and well defined guide lines. It is those who do nothing or are content with words only who can rightly be described as 'pessimistic'."
Footnote
1. Source: United Nations. Unit on Apartheid. Notes and Documents, No. 25/70, November 1970