Wild Boers
Sir: As one who has actually written South African racial propaganda, examined it in depth on the spot, and had the first book on the subject published here kit year (The Seeds of Disaster, Gollancz), might I point to this propaganda as the cause of the some- what sharp disagreement between Sir Robert Birley (whom I admire, and who reviewed The Afrikaners-8 November) and John Fisher (whom I admire, and who wrote it)? For I think it is easy enough to prove that some less than honest foreigners are behind this regrettable disagreement between two reputable British scholars.
Mr Fisher has written a book about the Australians, and one about the Afrikaners. I have lived for long periods in both coun- tries. Although I think some of Mr Fisher's views on Australia are questionable, his facts about that country are correct. But many of his facts about the Afrikaners and their history are incorrect, or so one-sided, or so emasculated by vital omissions, as to be totally misleading.
There can be no argument about this. I can quote Afrikaner sources to prove it. (For instance. Mr Fisher. in his list of Afrikaner youth groups. completely ignored an official junior police force, the Afrikaners- only 'Patrys Speurkluti'. which has grown rapidly in the 1960s and is now a mirror- image of the Hitler Youth. But this, and much other essential information about Afrikaner society, hides behind the com- munications barrier of the Afrikaans langu- age—a barrier which Mr Fisher and certain other writers on South Africa appear not to have penetrated.)
Mr Fisher, then, has been grossly misled by most of his Afikaner hosts to such an extent that The Afrikaners is not only con- siderably inferior to Vatcher's much more trenchant work on the subject, but is in parts insulting to black South Africans. Yet Mr Fisher cannot be blamed. The Afrikaner Nationalists' propaganda machine is subtle and overpowering—even Alan Drury's A Very Strange Society is tainted with its distortions and outright falsehoods. And so I would commend The Afrikaners to your readers—as a prime example of how even an honest and thorough researcher like Mr Fisher can be seriously misled in a country where everything is bent to the evil purposes of apartheid.
John Laurence c/o Victor Gollancz Ltd.. Henrietta Street, London wc2
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