ARGUMENT

On double standards

ARTHUR SHENFIELD

We are all familiar with the use of double standards by the apologists for the com- munist countries. It has two aspects, each of which reflects the other so as to produce a doubled effect.

First, the Soviet Union and the rest are praised either directly or, which is more effective, with faint damns; while an attack is mounted against the misdeeds, actual or imaginary, of the minor rulers of the West of authoritarian stamp, Franco, Salazar or Caetano, and now the Greek Colonels. By extension the process leads to the alleged defects of the major libeeal-democratic coun- tries, especially now the United States, about which men are persuaded to beat themselves into such a fury that they are emotionally too exhausted to pay due attention to the evils to the east.

Secondly, the process has been brilliantly successful in persuading the majority of peo- ple in the West to turn away in boredom from accounts of communist misdeeds, but not from accounts of the alleged failings of the West. Nothing is regarded as more tiresome in the West than to harp constantly on the brutality and mendacity of the Soviet system. An occasional reference is ac- ceptable enough, especially when the more impudent claims are made for the virtues of Soviet communism; but to keep drawing at- tention to them and to their menace to the West is to ask to be labelled a professional anti-communist, than which nothing else is more certain to cause one to lose the public's ear. On the other hand to harp on the alleged misdeeds of Wekern countries, from torture in Greece to the resistance to educational integration in Alabama, is to achieve instant recognition as a guardian of humane and liberal principles.

The use of double standards is perhaps even more effective in the case of Africa. There are forty-two independent states in Africa. Two of them. South Africa and Rhodesia. and the dependent Portuguese ter- ritories, are selected for an attack so en- venomed that the issues involved, genuine or factitious, have clothed these minor coun- tries with a remarkable, almost world-shat- tering. importance. The other forty are en- couraged by the rest of the world in the attack, lead it in rhetoric at the United Nations, and in some cases pursue it with • freedom fighters'. It must follow, therefore: I. that South Africa. Rhodesia and Portugal are guilty of offences of extreme heinousness.

2. that there are no mitigating circumstances sufficient to cause a wise world to turn away from its wrath.

3. that the forty are not guilty of these offences. or if they are, present such mitigating circumstances as to merit an absolute discharge.

4. that the forty are not guilty of other offences meriting equal sentence with the Bad Three.

Consider these propositions. South Africa may be indicted on three counts. First, the denial of self-determination to non-whites. which in this case is effected by the limita- tion of the franchise to whites. Second. apartheid, though if this were successful it would give. non-whites a limited self- determination. Third, the embellishment of apartheid by an odious fanaticism producing abominations such as the cat-and-mouse house confinement of victims arbitrarily de- nounced and race classification by inspec- tion. In qualified form Rhodesia may be in- dicted on the first count. So too may Portugal, though self-determination is denied equally to whites and blacks. Except to a degree which in African circumstances is almost de ntininns, Rhodesia cannot yet be indicted on the second count (there is less apartheid in Rhodesia even in prospect than there would be in South Africa under the Progressive party); and Portugal not at all. On the third count Rhodesia and Portugal are obviously not guilty.

Now South Africa's guilt on the third count is clear, and- its offence is indeed heinous. But in the eyes of its sharpest critics this is not the gravamen of the indictment at all It is the first and second counts that mat- ter. The high crimes of our times are the restriction of the franchise to whites, and the ' separation of races by whites. That this is so is shown by the rough parity in the measure of venom now directed at Rhodesia and South Africa. The abominations of the third count are useful to South Africa's enemies to show what ogres the Nationalists are, but the assault would hardly be-abated an iota if they were abandoned. Smuts is described in retrospect as an odious racist hypo- crite—shades of Abraham Lincoln whose racial attitude was not very different from Smuts's!—and the United party, when not sneered at for ineffectiveness, is abused for its adherence to 'humane' apartheid. The degree of inhumanity in the practice of apartheid is regarded as much less important than its inherent evil.

The limitation of the franchise in South African circumstances is not only not wrong; it is positively desirable in the interests of all races. Only fools and fanatics now fail to see the dangers of totalitarian democracy, long foreseen by the best liberals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The dangers are especially obvious in Africa. where totalitarian democracy passes almost im- mediately to the next stage, tyranny, so that 'one man one vote' becomes 'one man one vote once'. But limitation to whites only? Of course not. On a modified count South Africa may be convicted of folly in ex- -eluding the Cape Coloured and the Indians. More to the point the count might charge a failure to limit the franchise non-racially by property and educational tests. But this would not satisfy the critics, for it is precisely the Rhodesian model, and Mr Wilson could have had copper-bottomed guarantees of no change in that at any time.

What about the second count? Is apartheid, when honest and practicable. an offence? Soyons serieux. With all human ex-

perience of group conflict before us. the righteousness of the champions of 'No apartheid anywhere any time' is as odious as it is vicarious. For the American negro, at least the Black Panthers choose apartheid. Of course South African apartheid is mainly. though not wholly, dishonest and im- practicable. Amend the count then, if you will. It still will fall short of a charge justi- fying the extreme obloquy with which South Africa is visited.

Thus even South Africa. the ring-leader. turns out to be much less than an abandoned criminal, and the other two almost innocent. What about mitigation before sentence? Is it nothing that South Africa offers blacks the best material standard of living, the best educational opportunities, and with Rhodesia and Portugal the best security, in the whole of Africa? This you will say is ac- cidental and no credit to the Nationalists. Is it then nothing that, finding that their own appointees seek to maintain the rule of law. they have not subverted the bench or muzzled the Bar; that they have not destroyed the newspapers that they have partially muzzled: that they have not fully gleichgeschahen the universities that have opposed their racial tests?

Consider also the following minor but illuminating illustration of the absence of the characteristics of a truly evil regime. When Dr Verwoerd was assassinated, his assailant was quietly arrested, brought to trial under due process, found unlit to plead for unsoundness of mind, and dealt with in civilised manner as befits such a person. In most parts of Africa the assassin of a ruler would be horribly torn to pieces by a bloodthirsty mob, and his family would be lucky to escape savage indignities, if not death.

Turn now to the forty. Where is the franchise worth anything? The Gambia. Ghana. and Malagasy, perhaps yes. Perhaps also the Ivory Coast. Where else? Chief Jonathan has shown how queckly it becomes meaningless even where a regime is tolerably decent.

As for racism, first the Asian non-citizens in East Africa are expropriated; then will come the turn of the Asian citizens as Africanisation, a racist process par ex- cellence, progresses. Arabs are slaughtered by Negroes in Zanzibar. and Negroes by Arabs in the Sudan. And why is race only a matter of Negroes and the rest? Plenty of

tribal divisions are as racial as linguistic. If tribes are races. Africa is steeped in racism from the Mediterranean to the Zambezi.

What else is typical in the broken-backed successor state? In varying degrees ever-

present danger to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It was in Zambia. ruled by Kenneth Kaunda. the darling of the western liberals, that the chief justice and puisne judge had to flee for their lives from a howl- ing mob because they sought to prevent a

flagrant act of injustice; and it is in Tanzania, ruled by Julius Nyerere, the other darling of the western liberals, that the courts are now administering People's Justice.

Double standards indeed! Those who ap- ply them have no more respect for the Africans whom they champion than Hitler had for his Germans. Tyranny is good enough for any man of colour as long as the heel he is under is also coloured. I suggest that we now start a Liberation Movement for all Africans. Naturally we will pay more attention to the 250-odd million north of the Zambezi than to the 30-odd million south of it.