StR,-1 congratulate you on your courage in making the ,necessary
disclosures in connection with the brutal treatment of political prisoners in South African gaols. Your article will• almost certainly draw forth violent criticism from misguided people who are sympathetic to the South African, regime; this does not, of course, affect the validity of the facts you discuss, or your attitude to them.
It is probably incorrect, however, to assert that 'this is a matter which the South Africans them- selves can perfectly well put right.' If all adult South Africans could exercise the vote, the situation would probably never have arisen; as it is, with political power concentrated exclusively in the hands of the whites, change is unlikely for the very simple reason' that the vast majority of the whites do not desire it. They are well content with a system of government which yields them immense privilege and a very comfortable life, at the cost of vast suffering amount- ing to widespread starvation among their non-white compatriots; and they regard any whites who identity themselves with the difficulties of the non- whites as traitors. I learn that white public opinion is far from being generally disapproving of the methods of interrogation used by the police an political prisoners. To believe, therefore, that 'the country may at last move one little step back from the brink of violence' as a result of legitimate political protest on the part of the whites is, I am afraid, to be unduly sanguine.
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