Whatever your political persuasion I think you will find this commentary by Dr Kania most provocative and challenging. He's looking at the difficult issue of hypocrisy. At times we have to speak up about injustices in society but it is not always easy to do so without being hypocritical ourselves. There is fuel for a rich discussion flowing out of this commentary. …Ed

He was born of the land — a country boy. From humble beginnings he would rise to be one of the most important figures of the 20th Century. President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) would declare to the United States Senate that this man's political writings had a profound influence on the final design of the League of Nations; Albert Einstein (1879-1955), would make the claim that this man was one of only five people who understood his theory of relativity. On this man's passing Winston Churchill would eulogize that this philosopher and warrior-statesman had no peers as a leader of his generation. He was at one time the Chancellor of Cambridge University, at another time, the first foreign Rector of the University of St. Andrews, he was a Field Marshal, a lauded scientist, a Member of Parliament for 45 years, a Leader of a nation's Opposition for ten years, an architect of the United Nations Organization, and the man who imprisoned Gandhi (1869-1948), and in later years enjoyed the Mahatma's respect. As Prime Minister of South Africa for 14 years — he was also the man who gave his nation, and the world, in 1917, the term -'apartheid'.

Jan Christian Smuts

Jan Christian Smuts (1870-1950) is without question one of the most astonishing figures of modern history; and had he lived abroad and not become involved in South African politics, he may today have been essential reading throughout the modern world, by virtue of his work, "Holism and Evolution" (1926), a text that Einstein claimed was one of the greatest contributions to 20th century thought. Yet Smuts' memory has been indelibly tarnished by a social policy within his young nation that eventually mandated the segregation of all races. An Afrikaner, Smuts had fought against the British during the Boer War, only to become after the defeat of his people, a medium for reconciliation between the two European peoples who had colonized South Africa, and who had become lords over the indigenous peoples.

To Smuts, Europeans were foreign to South Africa, and for their culture and existence to be preserved, rules had to be set in place to ensure their survival. According to Smuts, "If Africa has to be redeemed, if Africa has to make her own contribution to the world, if Africa is to take her rightful place among the continents, we shall have to proceed on different lines and evolve a policy which will not force her institutions into an alien European world, but which will preserve her unity with her own past, conserve what is precious in her past, and build her future progress and civilization on specifically African foundations. That should be the new policy …" (Smuts, 1952, pp. 308-309).

Without doubt Smuts based much of his policy toward the 'native' population on a vision of the inherit superiority of the white race. He rejected the notion of inter-marriage, and saw the introduction of Indian and Chinese labourers as a threat to both the European and 'native' South Africans. Smuts was very much a product of the society in which he had grown up. As he concluded on 'apartheid': "This separation is imperative, not only in the interests of a native culture, and to prevent the native traditions and institutions from being swamped by the more powerful organizations of the whites, but also for other important purposes, such as public health, racial purity and public good order. The mixing up of two such alien elements as white and blacks leads to unhappy social results — racial miscegenation, moral deterioration of both, racial antipathy and clashes, and to many other forms of social evil … It is, however, evident that the proper place of the educated minority of the natives is with the rest of their people, of whom they are natural leaders, and from whom they should not in any way be dissociated". (Smuts, 1952, p. 311)

	Alfred Deakin.

We in Australia were so horrified at these policies of racial injustice, that we were instrumental in the worldwide boycott of South Africa. Yet history teaches us, that in reality, at the near same time Smuts was musing with 'apartheid', Prime Minister Alfred Deakin (1856-1919), was introducing an Immigration Restriction Act, for reasons comparable to those of Smuts' segregation. As Deakin would declare: "It is not the bad qualities, but the good qualities of these alien races that make them dangerous to us. It is their inexhaustible energy, their power of applying themselves to new tasks, their endurance, and low standard of living that make them such competitors … The effect of the contact of two people, such as our own and those constituting the alien races, is not to lift them up to our standard, but to drag our labouring population down to theirs". (La Nauze, 1965, p. 279)

Moreover, decades after Deakin, Prime Minister John Curtin (1885-1945), the Australian wartime leader, never answered the blaring moral and ethical questions behind the sending to their death, of men, who, bled for the Australian nation, and who are now buried in foreign graves, but who all the same, were not considered to be citizens of the nation they were defending — the Australian Aboriginal. It would take until 1967 before the Aboriginal would be considered a citizen of the nation that was built on the land his ancestors had settled thousands of years before.

Yet where Smuts has had his name stripped from public edifices in the modern South Africa, both Curtin and Deakin have had universities and suburbs named after them; where Smuts, a man of greater international standing than any Australian in history, is now a pariah in his homeland; governors and explorers of Australia who massacred the indigenous populace, as well as fathered and abandoned children, have their names on the honour role of thoroughfares and streets.

At the time Smuts was deliberately seeking to ensure the black populace live as they always had, Australians were steadily evolving their racial policy from 'soothing a dying pillow' to 'stealing generations'. Need we also list, famous Australians such as: Menzies (1894-1978), and Chifley (1885-1951), 'heroes', who despite political divides, kept Australia white, even if they overlooked the 'Mediterranean types', by admitting into Australia the darker shades of pale? Or dare we mention that Deakin's Immigration Act still enjoyed residual political and social force, all the while Australians vehemently and indignantly protested the Springbok Rugby Union Tour of Australia in 1971? Or can we today afford to look smugly at the poverty of Soweto, when our own indigenous Australians live so far below the general high standard of living enjoyed in Australia?

Jesus — cautioned us all to be wary of being hypocritical

The problem we face is that when we take the moral high-ground, we must be careful that our feet are first and foremost on solid foundations, and not on a footing comparable or worse to those individuals or nations we are seeking to correct. As the world becomes smaller due to faster modes of transportation and communication, what was once the distant injustices of a foreign nation, now takes on the immediacy of our neighbour's backyard. With such knowledge in mind, we have every right to be aware of correcting an injustice, but similarly we must avoid the zealous righteousness of hypocrites and Pharisees. For as Jesus Christ once taught: "Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the great log in your own? And how dare you say to your brother, "Let me take that splinter out of your eye," when, look, there is a great log in your own? Hypocrite! Take the log out your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother's eye". (Matthew 7: 3-5, The New Jerusalem Bible)

In historical hindsight, even the greatest of men can do evil things in good conscience. Clear conscience does not ensure the end-justice of an action. At the United Nations Smuts declared: "We are honestly trying to find a human way of life for a racially, socially and culturally mixed community such as South Africa, where different sections may dwell alongside each other in peace and with comparative goodwill …" (Smuts, 1952, p. 497). Smuts' positive contribution to the world is enormous, despite his destructive role in helping create apartheid in South Africa. The man who assisted in the design of the hallowed preamble of the United Nations, who in fact sat at the San Francisco Conference, attempting to seek a lasting world-peace, the man who sketched out a statement of equal rights for all, most likely could not see the true colour of the political nature of his homeland, due to the culturally forged, shaded glasses he had worn ever since birth. By being thus disabled, both he, and the people, he segregated, were to become victims; Smuts of historical assessment, the 'native' population, of inalienable rights denied them. In sum, Smuts had the ability and authority to speak for the marginalised — but tragically, for these people, he could not fully envisage their being any need to do so; Smuts recognized the right of black nations to exist — but South Africa, was not, according to Smuts, a black nation.

For Australia, however, the time may come, perhaps soon, when we become a little more reticent to take up stones, for having come to realize that many of the walls in our own house, which today bare the portraits of our heroes and legends, are indeed supported by the very thinnest slivers of glass.

IMAGE SOURCES: Click on the other images for the original source.

©2007 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

[Andrew Kania's Archive]