Alan Paton was a prominent South African author and social reformer, best known for his novel “Cry, the Beloved Country,” which highlights the injustices of apartheid. A few weeks before Alan Paton’s 85th birthday he was interviewed by Humphrey Tyler for America’s Monitor Radio, the radio service of the Christian Science Monitor. Alan Paton died in April 1988. Here is a transcript of what he said during his last radio interview, and what he predicted for South Africa.
TYLER: May we go back to that extraordinary, that astonishing book, Cry, The Beloved Country. Why do you think it has been such an enormous success and why, not only commercially, but it had enormous human impact round the world.
PATON: Well, I think that the conscience of the white world on black problems is very tender, and this book spoke to them and it’s
not a kind of a book that antagonises, although there were some people in South Africa who were antagonised by it. I remember one Zululand farmer wrote to me, said the book’s full of lies and gross exaggeration and I should be ashamed of myself. Not a true lover of my country and all that sort of
thing.
TYLER: That’s a point I’d like to raise with you. As a South African, I can’t conceive of you as being or belonging anywhere else. Could you see yourself preferring to have
lived or to be living anywhere else?
PATON: Well, now my father came out from Scotland — 1900 — and I’ve often thought, well why didn’t he go to Canada, and then realised if he’d gone to Canada I wouldn’t
even exist (chuckle). So I’m quite glad that he came here. But when you develop a love of country, and so many South Africans have a tremendous love of their country, then, for example, the fact that we are the polecat of the world, well, when I was in politics I would have said, well, we ought to be, we deserve it, and I used to blame it all on the Nats, but now I find myself, uh, resisting these attacks,
especially by the sanctioneers. Because I just don’t think they know what they’re doing.
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TYLER: They’re trying to provide a kind of quick fix for South Africa. Is there a possible quick fix?
PATON: No. If you read the history (of South Africa), if you don’t understand that, then you just don’t realise how complicated the problems are.
TYLER: The convenient thing for many English-speaking South Africans is to blame the Afrikaner for our predicament.
PATON: That’s true. Let’s not blind ourselves to the fact that he must carry the great part of the blame; Afrikaner Nationalist. Because I do think that when he came to
power in 1948 then he really messed us up. Largely under the influence of Verwoerd, whose influence on the Afrikaner was incredible.
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TYLER: In our terribly mixed up political scene, and with your extraordinarily long experience of it as an observer, as a teacher, as a politician yourself, you’ve met some striking and interesting people. Who comes to mind?
PATON: You mean, in South Africa?
TYLER: South Africans. Prominent South Africans, and what would distinguish them as being forceful and, what . . . creative?
PATON: Well, those white South Africans who attracted me most are the ones who knew there was something wrong with our society and who more or less devoted their lives to improving it and I’m thinking of people like Edgar Brookes, JH Hofmeyr, Alfred Hoernle, Mrs Hoernle, the Rheynold Jones, all those people who founded the Institute of Race Relations in 1930.1929,’30. And, then, in 1953, when we founded the Liberal Party, then many of my old friends looked very askance. But I made a whole lot of new ones. And the ones today again for whom I have the greatest respect were members of the Liberal Party. I would include one who wasn’t and that would be Helen Suzman.
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TYLER: What about Black South Africans?
PATON: Well, when the party was finally disbanded in 1968, we were about two-thirds black, and these, many of these people were just ordinary black people. They were usually people who had smallholdings, the what you call the black spots, and the Liberal Party
came to their defence. And, er, we had very strong branches in Ladysmith, Bergville, all up the northern part of Natal.
TYLER: What about leaders like Chief Albert Lutuli?
PATON: Yes well I knew him very well, and he was the leader of the ANC when I was the president of the Liberal Party and we got on very well. But I mean we also had (pause) differences. For one thing, he was very closely allied to the Congress of Democrats, and the Liberal Party had a sort of a (sniff) natural aversion (chuckle) to the Congress of Democrats.
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TYLER: What about leading South Africans today? Who would come to mind as people who are playing a creative role in our society?
PATON: (Pause). The people who are best placed to play the creative role are all members of the National Party. You can’t get away from that. Helen Suzman has acknowledged this more than once. The real power in the country still lies there. But I can think of lots of people outside the National Party, like Beyers Naude, for example, um, Helen
Suzman.
TYLER: What about people like Bishop Tutu?
PATON: (Pause; slight sniff). You’re asking me a very difficult question. I’m not a whole-hearted admirer of Bishop Tutu because .. . I was, you know I wrote the life of Archbishop Clayton and he was a great archbishop, and I can’t help comparing the others with him. And Tutu certainly isn’t in the same class. He’s very . . . He’s charismatic. He’s, I think he said once that white people thought he was the devil incarnate. Well, he’s much more like an imp than he is like a devil, I think. He’s got very impish qualities, and… But that’s his, that’s his temperament, that’s his nature, that’s the way he’s made. And I wish him luck. He’s my archbishop, anyhow.
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TYLER: Christianity has always played a very important role in your life and it has many manifestations in this country, some of them not very Christian, apparently, in the result. But, how important is Christianity, is the fact that this country at least says it is a
Christian country, how important is that to its finding an honourable solution?
PATON: I think it’s very important and I think the awakening of the Afrikaner Christianity has been very much delayed, but at least in the past year or two the big NGK (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk) has come out saying it had made a mistake in supporting apartheid and thinking that apartheid was the will of God for this country and all
that sort of thing. And another thing you must remember, white South Africans can be . . . (can) go down on their knees and give thanks for the fact that there are so many
black Christians. Jolly good ones, too, because I know many of them.
TYLER: What, on a different tack, writers you admire yourself? Is that an invidious question? If so, then don’t answer it if you don’t wish to.
PATON: Well the only thing is that you have to .. . If you give the names of those whom you admire, then obviously the names you
don’t give are the ones you don’t admire. And as a rule, I avoid that question.
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TYLER: The excitement of your writing career, um, you say that, you’re, if not abandoning it, you’re slowing up on your writing now. What is, what does the future hold for you? You’re off to China on a trip next year . . .
PATON: This year.
TYLER: This year, of course.
PATON: I don’t think I’ll write another book. At the moment I can’t see any chance of it.
TYLER: You were in fact set on a trilogy?
PATON: Oh, I gave that up because I realised I couldn’t complete the autobiography and complete the trilogy because they covered the same ground. And I thought much better to cover it, um, factually than fictionally.
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TYLER: You have close ties and friendship with Chief Buthelezi. The culture of our black people, how significant is this in our future? So many blacks seem to be hurrying to abandon much of their cultural heritage and leaping on to some sort of Coca-Cola culture, or something convenient that passes
by at the moment that lets them drive trucks, and abandoning something that is very valuable. How do you see, how important,
how valuable is black culture in this country?
PATON: Oh I think it’s very important. But you must remember that the pressures to adapt yourself to an industrial society are enormous, and this must affect black culture. Well, in any case it’s affected Afrikaner culture. The Afrikaner never thought that he’d become a part of the industrial empire, and he never thought he was going to produce millionaires, which he has done. So the
importance of a modern industrial society is almost irresistible. I wouldn’t like to say that black people are abandoning their culture. ZK Matthews, he was a member of the Native Representative Council, and it was
addressed by Hofmeyr, and Hofmeyr took up this same line, don’t desert your own culture, because that was a kind of liberal cry in those days, that you must help Africans to preserve their own culture, and ZK said don’t worry about our culture, we’ll look after it. And I think that this is quite the right view to take.
TYLER: What about the future of South Africa. Everybody worries, and so on. Are you a long-term optimist or a pessimist?
PATON: I’m neither. I don’t.. . I think that optimism and pessimism are, ah, rather characteristic of your temperament, your nature. I think that the difference between optimism and hope is very great, but we can’t go into that (laughs) now. But I’m certainly a man of hope. And, when I realise that the Afrikaner, because I know the history of the Afrikaner, I was going to say almost backwards, but .. . I can’t see that he’s going to allow himself to be destroyed. Which Treurnicht would do.
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TYLER: You said that the power for good and evil — or evil — lies mainly with the ruling National Party. Would you like to point to people in the National Party in government who give you some room for hope.
PATON: (Sniff) Well, PW is so unpredictable. He’s got a very short temper, and when he loses it as he did with Hendrickse (over the
issue of swimming in the then “white” sea), um, he doesn’t show up very well. Magnus Malan, is a soldier. And I’m sure he believes
that you can do things with a gun that you can’t do with politics. I think Pik Botha’s quite a decent chap. But I don’t think he’s
very high in the hierarchy, myself. I would say that the three highest in the hierarchy are PW and FW de Klerk and Magnus Malan.
TYLER: And a person like Gerrit Viljoen? Does he . . .
PATON: Too brainy. Too clever!
TYLER: Too clever?
PATON: Afrikaners, they admire brains, they admire cleverness, they admire learning, but they don’t choose learned men to rule them. It’s very interesting. They like men of action.
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TYLER: Dr Paton, thank you very much . . .
PATON: I’ll close by saying that when you’re on the point of turning 85 and you realise that your active life is more or less finished, and it’s a great comfort to have the fact that so many people still want to come and see you and they want to know what you think, and they want to write this, to write that, and I’ve
no ways been put on the shelf. And I’m very thankful for that. But my great pleasure is now becoming more and more literature, the field of literature. I’ve even started reading Dante, not in the original, I’m afraid, but I’ve got the English and the original on opposite sides of the page.
TYLER: Voltaire suggested that the most sensible thing one can turn to in later years is to garden. Do you have hobbies?
PATON: Well, I do a lot of supervising in the garden. I don’t actually garden with my hands any more. For one thing, you know, you can’t bend over. And if you do, then you can hardly stand up again. Things like that. Those are the penalties of old age. But I’m very lucky that my mind is still.clear. And I get great pleasure out of .. . I think I could recite (Blake’s poem) “Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright” every day, and “Fiddler of Dooney”, verses from the Rubaiyat, verses from the Bible, too, of course .. . I get a very great pleasure out of words.
