This week I decided to visit Pretoria. I did so for the purpose of trying to gauge the atmosphere and feel the heartbeat of the capital city.

There were many things which caught my attention immediately, like the benches in the City Hall gardens which are apparently set aside for whites only but which do not have the familiar ‘Whites only’ sign painted on them. Apparently Pretoria takes it for granted that no black man would ever dream of sitting on them.

But it was something else which struck me most forcibly. This was that the Afrikaner people of Pretoria seem to be more at home than anywhere else in the country. They seem to walk with a particular kind of dignity, confidence and sense of pride on the pavements of Pretoria.

The non-whites on the other hand are different. There is a shuffle in their walk and they carry about with them an air of uncertainty, even apprehensiveness, as though they are wondering what the next day has in store for them. After a while I began to learn something about this feeling of uncertainty. For the more I tried to make some kind of contact with the city, the more I found it to be utterly impenetrable for me.

This really began before I left Johannesburg. I telephoned the Pretoria Municipality and spoke to an official. I told him I would be visiting Pretoria for two days and asked which hotel I could stay at.

After asking me to hold the line for some time, the official explained that, unfortunately, no hotel could take me. There was, however, a hostel for Bantu men somewhere out of town. I was later told by the hostel manager that my accommodation would cost ten cents for the night, and that I would have to bring my own blankets and make my own arrangements for meals.

This was clearly unacceptable. And so, short of turning a friend’s home into a boarding house, there was nowhere for me to stay in this city. On that level alone, Pretoria was impenetrable. Then I telephoned the Mayor’s secretary and asked if I could have an interview with the Mayor. All seemed to be well until I gave my name: then I was promptly asked what my nationality was, and informed that I could only see the Mayor in three months’ time.

After this I tried to get an appointment with the chairman of the Students’ Representative Council of Pretoria University. He came to the ‘phone and I gave my name. Switching from English to Zulu he asked: ‘Ufunani wena?’ (What do you want?) I had scarcely answered him when he went off the line.

I telephoned him again immediately, only to be told that he had left the office and would be out for the day. There was nobody else I could speak to, I was told.

It seemed all of Pretoria wanted to keep me at arm’s length. All these wonderfully confident people were refusing to let me come near them. Surely they couldn’t be afraid, I kept saying to myself.

Yet even the fine buildings seemed to have no place for me. Take the new, blue-faced Provincial Administration building. It is the pride of Pretoria. To look at it must raise an Afrikaner’s spirits to great heights. Yet my heart sank when I saw it. Out of all the offices on its 13 floors none could ever be a black man’s office – no matter how qualified he may be.

I nevertheless walked into the place. The middle-aged white man on the ground floor looked at me oddly.

‘May I have a look at this building inside, please?’ I asked.

‘What?’

‘I just want to have a look at this nice building inside.’
‘Well, you can go and see,’ he said, ‘but if they catch you, I didn’t see you’.

‘If who catches me?’

‘If the other bosses catch you.’

And then at last I was able to break through and come closer to the spirit of the volk. This was when I found myself talking to a young Pretoria University lecturer. For me it was a thrill to hear this honest man state his beliefs honestly, in spite of world-wide opposition to what he stands for.

‘Even if we want to shoot each other,’ I started, ‘surely we can talk about it first.’ His head nodded and I knew we had found common ground.

‘You see,’ he said, ‘I just want a place where my people – waar die Boere – will be left alone by themselves, with their own Government, their own schools, their culture and their own ways.’

‘But where will you find a place like that?’ I asked.

‘That’s another matter,’ he said. ‘The point is that that’s what we want.’

He later told me that he hoped to enter politics one day and contribute what he could to the achievement of his people’s aspirations.

‘Which party will you support?’ I asked.

‘The National Party, of course. There are only two parties which matter. The Liberal Party and the National Party. Integration, which the Liberal Party wants, and Apartheid as put forward by the National Party.

‘The United Party has no policy. Progressives want snob Apartheid. They want the intellectuals and the rich among the Jews, the Afrikaners, the English-speaking, and the Xhosas to be grouped together and given the vote. But not the poor and the less educated of these groups. That is why the Progressives are strongest in Houghton and Hillbrow, where the rich and the idle are.’

After this, he told me that the Afrikaners did not trek from the Cape to look for gold and diamonds in the Transvaal and the Free State. They were in pursuit of freedom from the English. But the English wanted gold and diamonds; it was they who didn’t care about the land.

Quoting figures to show that the Afrikaner families were larger than those of English-speaking whites, he assured me that there would come a time when the English would ‘grow into the Afrikaner community.’ He clearly did not want the two groups to exist side by side. There would never be enough understanding on that basis.

‘If ever there were two different groups of people who could get on together,’ he said, ‘it is the Afrikaners and the Bantu.’ But even that had too many complications and was, therefore, undesirable.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen hatred against me in the eyes of a Bantu,’ he said, ‘but I have seen it in the Jews, American Negroes, English South Africans, Englishmen, the people of the Netherlands, Germans and others. Not in the eyes of the Bantu – perhaps I have been lucky, but then I have never met Mandela.’

‘You’ll be surprised,’ I said. ‘I know Mandela. He used to give me lifts in his car when he lived near my place. And I know that he has no hatred in his eyes. He has friends who are Afrikaners.’

‘Those Afrikaners probably think like him,’ he said. ‘You do find Afrikaners like that.’

I don’t remember how we switched from this to Robben Island. But I remember my friend saying: ‘This is life. Today you are sitting there and I am sitting here. In ten or 30 years’ time I may be on Robben Island and someone else will be ruling this country.’