CHRISTOPHOR GELL

Mr. Gell and the Liberals

by

Jordan Kush Ngubane

Towards the end of last year Mr. C.W.M. Gell, for whose views I have all the respect, “examined” at length y criticism of the changes going on in the African National Congress and came to the conclusion that by taking up the attitude he attacked I had aligned myself with Sward. He insinuated, also, that, in effect, I had made myself the tool of people he calls the “tory-liberal’s” inside the Liberal Party.

These are serious charges to make against any man. They are grave when made by an observer of Mr. Gell’s standing against a man in my position. Weight is added to them by the fact that they have much in common with the views of a vocal minority in the African National Congress which takes very strong exception to my having joined the Liberal Party and has seen in this action a betrayal of the Congress ideals and accordingly regards me as a sell-out.

It became my duty, right at the time Mr. Gell made his charges against me, to deny and rebut his allegations. But to do this successfully meant that I had to make public information which would have strengthened the enemies of the ANC. I had no desire as I have none at the moment, to make things difficult for the African National Congress which is going through an extremely difficult period in its history. For this reason I decided to wait until after the December national conference of this body when I could be free to defend myself in a manner which could do harm to the smallest number of people possible. I risked being misunderstood in doing this and I was misunderstood. But in my public career I am guided by the ideal that the truth is an end in itself an that if, in its pursuit I have to be misunderstood or have to become unpopular, I will gladly risk being misunderstood or unpopular than do that which I consider in conflict with the truth as I see it. I say this by way of an apology to Mr. Gell for having taken so long to reply to his “examination” of my criticisms.

I have to make one other explanation. In his attacks on me, Mr. Gell couples me with the Liberal Party and by implication holds me responsible for policies and developments in existence long before I joined the Liberal Party. My position becomes particularly difficult when it is remembered that some of these policies were criticized by me at the time they were formulated and placed before the public or are still being criticized by me at present.

Beyond this I can only add that while this coupling might reflect Mr. Gell’s assessment of my influence in the Liberal Party, there is the very real danger that he might be giving me more credit than I deserve. In view of the seriousness of the situation we are all trying to normalize, I think exaggerations which might only confuse an already complicated situation should be avoided.

Mr. Gell ends his first article by accusing me of inconsistency. He bases this on his interpretation of the views he believes I held in 1953-4 and the views which he believes I hold no. In 1953-4 the Liberal Party expressed “its sincere desire to cooperate with the ANC.” Mr. Gell says the “tory-liberals” inside the Party, by backing this decision then, “paid lip service to an alliance they had no real intention of trying to foster.”

In 1953-4, he says, I was not with the “tory-liberals.” In 1955 he finds that I have “come to something very near their position” and have expressed myself “in exactly the sort of terms most likely to confirm these tory-liberals in their paralyzing antipathy to meeting and cooperating with organized African political opinion.”

I am certain that here, either Mr. Gell has got his facts all mixed up or distorts them in a way to serve ends which I hesitate to ascribe to a political commentator of his integrity. This might explain why he has ignored points in my attitude in 1953-4; points which should have enabled him to see my views in “Contact” in wholly different light.

It will be remembered that during the late forties, when I ran a regular feature in the Johannesburg “Forum,” one of my pleas was for what I called “agreement on objectives” between Black and White. I pleaded then for “bridges of accord” to facilitate such agreement: One of such bridges could take the form of a political organization in which Black and White could learn to work together to realize the objectives on which they had agreed.

It must be understood, please, that in referring to the “Forum” I do not in any way whatsoever presume to claim direct or indirect paternity for the Liberal Party. I merely point out that when the Party came into being, I was already committed to the ideal of having a political organization like it. For this reason, when the Liberal Association turned into the Liberal Party, the position I took up was quite different from that taken up by the majority of leading personalities in the African National Congress. I saw in the formation of the Liberal Party a reciprocation by the White South African; a positive extension of the hand of friendship, in response to ours which we had stretched out to White South Africa from 1912.

Dr. Dadoo, presumably speaking for organized non-European political opinion then, publicly condemned and dismissed the Liberal party of virtually having no place in South Africa. I wrote, in this very column, publicly dissociating myself from Dadoo’s stand and pointing out that in any case he had no authority to speak on behalf of all the non-European groups.

In subsequent writings in the public Press, which I have reason to believe Mr. Gell saw, I condemned the hostility of the African National Congress towards the Liberal Party. I pleaded, in article after article, with the African National Congress to evince a sense of realistic statesmanship and grasp the stretched hand of the Liberal Party because it meant that the solidly White front was cracking; intelligent people on the Whiteside were realizing that race, colour and blood were worthless bonds for uniting the people of the Union. All this is history.

These pleas did not make me notably popular. But they were respected as they have since being respected by a powerful wing of the African National Congress. I do not remember being publicly attached—except by the Left---for these pleas. Nobody called me a sell-out for my criticisms of ANC policy; not even Mr. Gell saw anything wrong with them then.

II

Although I had been committed beforehand to the ideal of equal partnership and an organization based on this principle, I did not join the Liberal Party for three main reasons which I considered good. The Liberal Party had pledged itself to a franchise policy which would have had the effect of relegating the African to the position of a second-class citizen. Secondly, I disliked the Liberal Party’s insistence on “constitutional methods” in its declaration of principles. To me this was a condemnation in advance of the resistance movement, which I had supported. I could not understand what “constitutional methods” meant in a situation where the African had no constitutional means of ensuring respect for his wishes.

There was another reason why I did not rush to join the Liberal Party. I did not regard this reason as decisive then. To me membership of both the African National Congress and the Liberal party at one and the same time was not compatible. On the one hand, although the ANC was committed to the ideal of equal partnership, the impression I got was on “the will of the majority.” The majority was obviously African. I got the impression from long association with the movement, that there were two interpretations of the word majority in our ranks in the ANC. One meant the majority of the like-minded and the other meant the majority of the like coloured. With Apartheid laying so much stress on race, I could feel that the “Africa for Africans” lobby was gaining ground.

I saw, in the development of the type of Pan Africanism to which the African National Congress was committing itself, a gradual rejection of the equal type of equal partnership for which I had worked inside the movement. All these, I must say, were minority voices in the movement. But they were representative. I believed then, as I believe now, that if the movement remained in the hands of men like Albert Luthuli, it would be attracted more and more to the liberal democratic interpretation of equal partnership. I had known Albert Luthuli for a long period. My wife and I had been very intimately associated with some of the most dramatic climaxes in his political career. I knew him for a sound democrat; a good South African and a dependable servant of his fellow men. I was impressed with the quality of his ideals and I knew he was the sort of fighter for liberty by whose side I could die happily. I accordingly gave him all possible support—barring accepting office in the movement. Except for very brief periods when there was no alternative, I declined to accept office. I pointed out to my friends and the fact is well-known in the movement that I was hostile to the gradual process of infiltration by the Left. I did not think this could be fought on the public platform. And yet I was satisfied that if this process went on too far, Congress would not only be lost to equal partnership; it would turn in directions which were certainly not for me. To do my bit behind Luthuli to stop events drifting in this direction I remained inside the African National Congress in spite of my conviction. Inconsistency could be here, if Mr. Gell based his attacks on the facts. But his charges are not based on this.

There was a second, very personal reason why I stayed inside the movement. I had played decisive role in persuading Mr. Luthuli to accept, first the presidency of the Natal Congress and then the National Presidency-general. He was not the type of man who joined a movement for gain. I had always known that to ask him to accept office would be one of the most difficult jobs Congressmen could ask me to do. And when I met him to present the Congress case, I found the greatest difficulty trying to get him to accept nomination. Albert Luthuli is that type of man. When he accepted on each occasion, I felt that, among other things, I had been personally complimented.

Now, having gone so far with him, I felt I know he is not the type who could feel towards me—that I would be leaving him in midstream if I left the ANC and joined the Liberal Party. I certainly believed it was in the public interest to stand by him. I believed my remaining in the movement was my own humble vote of confidence in him.

As Mr. Gell points out, somewhat doubtfully, I remain a member of the African National Congress—also for this reason, I still think membership of this body and the Liberal Party incompatible. But I still am of the opinion that I am wise to remain in the movement.

The point I have developed so far is why I remained in Congress.

While I pleaded with the ANC to see the Liberals in better light, and attacked anti-Liberal trends, I criticized publicly these policies in the Liberal Party which were stumbling bloc to cooperation between the ANC and the Liberal Party: the short-sighted franchise policy; the commitment to “constitutional methods,” the emphasis on getting to Parliament, etc.

I remember I became something of a hero when I did this. But my intention is not to be a hero. I had never aspired to be a hero anywhere. I emphasized, in my writings, that while I was critical of certain Liberal policies I did not want reforms made merely to dance to the ANC tune. The Liberals, I pointed out, had the duty to strike out on their own because they had a role uniquely their own in the life of the nation. Nobody quarreled with this view. Mr. Gell did not say I was reinforcing the “tory-liberals” then. So well endorsed were these views, in fact, that when the Natal executive arranged for a meeting between the representatives of the Liberal Party and Mr. Luthuli at Groutville, they asked me to come and participate in the talks, which I did. In the discussions, I outlined my views in the clearest manner possible. Nobody raised any objection in the presence of the President-General. I held no official position in the ANC.

At the same time the process of infiltration was going on in the African National Congress from the Left. The head office was dominated completely by the Left and Mr. Luthuli was becoming a mere figure-head. I pointed out to Chief Luthuli when he spent an evening in my house that I saw in the weak line taken by the ANC towards the Communists. A notice to me that I was no longer wanted in the movement. I pointed out also, in a way which could not be embarrassing to both of us, the reasons why I stayed in the movement. I wrote publicly in the Press, pointing to the danger of having the head office dominated by the Left.

The process did not stop. It has not stopped even now. In the face of these developments I felt I should do the thing in accord with my long-held convictions. I joined the Liberal Party. There were other, very important reasons why I joined the Liberal Party. But they are irrelevant for purposes of this discussion.

I had confidence in Mr. Luthuli and the quality of his ideals. I still have that confidence. I regarded him as a valued personal friend—as I still regard him. Consequently, I felt obliged to tell him of my decision to join the Liberal Party. He raised no objection whatsoever. On the contrary, his attitude was one of encouragement; an attitude he subsequently confirmed in the presence of others on more than one occasion.

But my decision raised a storm in the movement. Smaller minds started a whispering campaign which suggested that by criticizing the drift to the Left (which incidentally Mr. Gell had also criticized) I was doing what Swart was doing. In Johannesburg and elsewhere, I was branded as a “sell-out.” It was said I had stabbed Congress in the back. But the final act of joining the Liberal Party was the logical culmination of a process of political evolution which had been going on for a long time within me. In that process, as every informed South African knows and as Mr. Gell should at least know, I had gone about with so far as is humanly possible, an objective mind, ready to see virtue and point out vice in both the ANC and the Liberals and being ready to say this publicly.

When Mr. Gell implies that I was for cooperation in the 1953-4 and am not for it now, I am certain he is in error. I am certain also that he confuses his facts very badly and as a result come to conclusions which are as wrong and unfair to me as they come ill from a student of affairs of his standing.

I have always been for cooperation between the Liberals and the ANC but not at any price; I am for cooperation now, but not at any price. If that helps the “tory-liberals” now it must have helped them when I first enunciated it; when I have reason to believe he agreed with me. But I think Mr. Gell is wrong to say it reinforces them because since I took up a position on the question of the Liberals and the ANC, there have been noteworthy Liberal moves in the direction of narrowing the gap between Congress and the Liberals, notably on the franchise question itself. If my views have had any effect on the “tory-liberals” as Mr. Gell suggests, it certainly has been in the direction of a more progressive policy. If the Congress Left wing, whose view tally closely with Mr. Gell’s in this respect, wanted real cooperation between the ANC and the Liberal Party, we should be seeing note being taken of the charges going on in the Liberal Party’s franchise policy, for example. That this is not the case might suggest that while there might be Liberals reluctant to cooperate with the ANC, there are also Congressmen who just have no desire to cooperate with anybody to the right of the Congress of Democrats.

I happen to know that this is the case. I have reason to know also, that Mr. Gell knows this too. For him to put the blame on me and the “tory-liberal” and partially blind himself to what is going on on the other side is as factitious as it comes ill of a mediator whose authority to comment on this matter rests on this objectivity.

In conclusion, I must point out that I have had to give the long historical background because Mr. Gel seems to have cared little for the salient facts behind my attitude to the ANC. I do not think this was his intention, but to ignore these facts reduces his otherwise noteworthy comments to a little more than a smearing tirade.

III

In 1953-4 readers of this column will remember that I was critical of the hold the Left was gaining on the ANC. It will be remembered also, that at that time Mr. Gell was critical of this development. In 1955 I am critical of the hold the Left has on the ANC. But because the Left controls the head office and therefore dominates the movement Mr. Gell finds that the ANC has the exclusive monopoly of virtue in this regard.

If the most important thing was to merely detect inconsistencies, I would be quite justified in saying to Mr. Gell that he has shifted ground considerably from the days when he accused the Left of trying to get the Government to prohibit the national gathering which was to formulate the Freedom Charter. But that is not my point.

The important thing is the long and well-formulated indictment Mr. Gell makes against the Liberal Party in his second article. I agree with him that the atmosphere inside the Liberal Party as a whole is still largely of a movement dominated by the White people. But this trend is being vigorously fought within the Party itself; by White members of the Party to whom “common society” is meaningless if it does not entail the conscious abdication of power enjoyed by the mere accident of race. From what I see, the attackers inside the Party are gaining ground. Changes going on I the Liberal Party which have been made public indicate to me that the Party is certainly drifting away from what Mr. Gell calls “tory-liberalism” to a genuine and convincing acceptance of the man of colour as an equal partner both in theory and in practice. It is most distressing to me that Mr. Gell ignores this very important change in the movement and elects to concentrate on what can at best be only the activities of a section of the movement. To attack the “tory-liberals” (whatever that means) might have its uses, but it seems to me that these attacks would be immensely useful if they were coupled with a fair statement of the position regarding the attacks on “tory-liberalism” within the Party. The omission gives a dangerously partisan colour to Mr. Gell’s criticisms.

Mr. Gell suggests that my criticisms of ANC bungling over the Western Areas removals were not wholly fair as he real test for the ANC will come only when the better-housed or land-owning classes are attacked. He misses my point here. In my article I did not say when the ANC should have accepted the Government’s challenge. I criticized this very failure to know when to accept it. I agree with Mr. Gell that the real test will come when the landowners are attacked. But I charge that the ANC should not have declared war before it was certain about where, when or how to give battle. Certain people were attracted by the possibility of scoring propaganda against the government and consequently rushed to commit themselves to policies which could only make the movement ridiculous.

I am satisfied that the ANC was not merely being irresponsible when it made up its mind on what to do in Sophiatown. I pointed out at the time that the whole campaign was  cynical move to make. Mr. Luthuli’s leadership of the ANC looks ridiculous in the eyes of the world. I still think it was that. The Liberal Party had nothing to do with that. I am not free to make public information which confirms my view that the whole thing was a Leftist trick to undermine Mr. Luthuli’s hold on the movement.

On Bantu Education, again the same sinister trend to destroy the influence of the so-called “moderates” can be seen. There certainly is a difference of opinion in the ANC on the boycott. From my own knowledge of the position the difference is not on whether or not to boycott; rather, it is on when and how to boycott Bantu Education schools. I sat right through the sessions of the conferences where the boycott decision was taken and this is the impression I got. This interpretation of events was confirmed by the conversations I had with very many leading Congressmen from all parts of the Union then.

There is something very peculiar about the Transvaal wing of the ANC. Congress in the Transvaal is confined only to a small portion of the province. The Transvaal wing of the ANC is one of the weakest—numerically and financially. Thirdly, it is in the Transvaal that the Leftists are most powerful. At every ANC annual conference the Transvaal almost invariably sends overwhelmingly large delegations. If my memory serves me well, at the Durban conference where the Sophiatown and boycott decisions were taken were at least two huge buses chartered especially to bring down the Transvaal delegation.

I had said, years before the Durban conference, that the Leftists had declared war on President-General Luthuli. People inside and outside Congress did not believe me. Very many might not believe this even now. But the truth is that the Left does not want Luthuli—not because they dislike him; you could not come in contact with Albert Luthuli without liking him. Even his totalitarian persecutors confess that he is a gentleman and a great South African. The Leftists do not like the things he believes in; the things he stands for; they say he prays too much. I know some people get very angry when I say this. I have said it before, I say it now and I will say it until people see the truth as it is. The crux of my quarrel with the ANC at the moment is that the ideals for which Luthuli and I believe in are being slowly and very craftily rejected.

Chief Luthuli was not in conference when the decision to boycott was taken. If he had been present he certainly would have pressed for a different course of action. Professor Matthews, his Deputy, was himself not for the boycott decision in the form it took. High-pressure methods were used to stampede the conference into taking one of the most stupid decisions in my opinion.

Again, the underlying motive was to destroy the Luthuli-Matthews leadership by committing it to ridiculous courses of conduct. There certainly was a lot of bungling over Sophiatown and Bantu Education. But there was, as an English sage says, also method in that madness. I am not in the position to say whether or not the Liberal Party was influenced, directly or indirectly in its attitude by what was going on in the ANC at that time. But for my part I find nothing to exonerate the ANC from blame for the two decisions taken.

IV

On the other hand I agree entirely with Mr. Gell when he attacks the attitude of the Liberal Party towards the member who advocated the deportation of fellow citizens from New Brighton. He should have been expelled from the Party without any waste of time. The Party allowed itself to be misunderstood here just to shield an individual who, in any case, should have no place whatsoever in any democratic organization.

But I don’t share Mr. Gell’s view that the Liberal Party has not made efforts to ascertain who the leaders of the African people are. It is quite possible that this is the position in the Cape, as he says. But if there are “tory liberals” in Natal, and he suggests there are, they are of quite a different kind from their like in the Cape. They do not only go out of their way to find out who is who in their areas—they overwork themselves to keep in the closest touch possible with the leaders of the African people, both collectively and individually in private and publicly. If the overall impression one gets of the Party in the Union as a whole is that it is dominated by the White people, quite  different atmosphere prevails in Natal—where I live and work. Here the Party belongs to us all. If Mr. Gell is critical of what goes on in the Cape, I am sure he would wish the Party well in Natal.

Which brings me to my real point about the “tory liberals.” Right through his comments he speaks of them as constituting the leadership or as wielding considerable influence in the leadership of the Party. He creates the impression, furthermore, that they are of one mind. If in the Cape they want to exploit ANC difficulties for their own ends, in Natal they do the exact opposite. But people of one mind do not contradict themselves. This makes the epithet “tory liberals” meaningless. Calling names is part of the technique of smearing. It has no place in an objective stuffy of the complex problems which face us; it certainly sheds no light and only confuses where the need is for clarification.

Mr. Gell’s remarks on the Freedom Charter surprise me. He seems to have taken the position that the paper declarations of a political movement are the only factor to take into consideration when trying to ascertain its attitudes and aims—both real and declared. If this were the only yardstick to use, his case would be impressive. But there are other factors to bear in mind: the motivating urges of the people who give direction to a movement; the interests represented; the preferences of the movement. For my part I do not ignore these factors when evaluating a political organization. I think any political observer who ignores them runs the risk of misleading his readers—not consciously, but as a result either of inadequate equipment or seeing events from too narrow a perspective.

The African National Congress is not, in the first place, a political party in the sense that its members are united in both sentiment and purpose. Congress is a national liberation movement. Its goal is to free the African, whom it represents, from race oppression. All the Africans who support the movement are agreed that the attainment of the goal of national liberation is priority Number One. What will be done when freedom has been won is an issue on which Congressmen are as divided as any community can ever be. There are some who would become African fascists or Nazis; others who would be socialists, liberals, social democrats, communists, etc. They have all agreed, however, that while fighting for their main priority they will not allow their private belief to intrude into the bigger fight against race oppression. At least for very many years they agreed on this.

But as the movement gained momentum and as it made its impression on the rest of the country and the world, the inevitable struggle for power started among the groups and interests in the ANC. There were the African nationalists, whose orientation was, in actual fact, in the liberal democratic direction. Most of them organized themselves into the Congress Youth League stood for ideals based on equal partnership, rejected Communism and advocated “irresistible pressures” to bring White domination toppling to the ground.

In the meantime the Communists had remained inside the movement keeping a watchful eye. When the ANC fell for the leadership of the League, which made Mr. Luthuli president of Natal and President-General of the ANC and raised Professor Matthews to the presidency of the Cape, the Communists joined actively in the stampede for power.

They had very many advantages over the Youth League. They had the experience; they had the funds; they had a very effective Press and were trained in the technique of infiltration and disruption. In the long duel with the League they succeeded in crushing it. When the Communist Party was dissolved the people who had belonged to it continued to see virtue from the direction of Moscow and vice from every other side.

They steadily strengthened their hold on the ANC. Even a man like Sisulu, who had never been a Communist and who, to the best of my knowledge, had never revealed Communist sympathies could accept an invitation to Bucharest, Moscow and Peking and actually go there without ever telling his President-General of this beforehand. I still do not think Sisulu is a Communist. For him, in these circumstance to go behind Mr. Luthuli’s back to meet the Kremlin men and Mao Tse Tung makes me ask why he did that. To this day nobody knows who paid Sisulu’s expenses in the whole journey. I do not think Congress could ever have been in the position to do that because in Bloemfontain Dr. Molems, then Treasurer-General, complained bitterly that the movement was in dire financial straits. What Sisulu said to the Kremlin leaders or to Mao Tse Tung and Chou En Lai or they to him I do not profess to know. I mention this trip to show that Congress was going in the direction I did not approve of.

Matters did not end there. When the Bandung conference came, the ANC sent an observer. The choice of Moses Kotane was most unfortunate because n spite of his magnificent contribution to the struggle of the African people he had a political past which was not the best equipment for a representative of the ANC at Bandung at that time.

In the meantime the ANC was beginning to say violent things against America, Britain and the Western democracies generally condemning them roundly as capitalist imperialists. To me that was part of an established tendency. I must not be understood to say the West has the monopoly of virtue. My point is: These attacks, linked with the visits to Moscow and Peking; the unexplained funds to finance costly trips overseas; the fat that in most of these things Mr. Luthuli was kept in the dark; the draft constitution brought to the Durban conference; the expulsion of critics of the head office; all confirmed in me the impression that Congress was not going in the way I was going. When Congressmen who did not see virtue only from the Moscow side were gradually shunted out of the limelight in the movement, I asked myself seriously why Congress was so partial to the so-called people’s democracies. To me the partiality was extremely unhealthy.

When the Freedom Charter was adopted in the form made public, I did not, in my assessment of it, confine myself merely to the words it contained. To me the charter was, in fact, the culmination of a specific process which had been going on inside the African National Congress for years. Its adoption meant that this process had gone so far inside the movement that the public could then be softened by producing a document which good men like Mr. Gell would readily accept as innocently and mildly socialistic. The motivating influences behind the Charter knew that good men in South Africa were like good men everywhere: they had short memories. Good men would not see in the Charter one more climacteric in a movement of specific ideas. And so the process would go on unchecked.

My point in all this is that as the African asserts his political strength, the temptation becomes irresistible among many to get him on their side. This is a natural development. If the Liberals want African converts, I have always said that they should say this publicly and go all out to win African members, even to the point of proselytizing them. In like manner the African National Congress, if it thinks African Nationalism is a good thing, should go out of its way to preach its doctrines openly with apologies to nobody. But neither Congress nor the Liberal Party should be used as fronts for ideologies to which they are not committed. That confuses the real issues at stake and leads to a bad waste of our energies. It delays the hour of our emancipation.

On the other hand, I agree with Mr. Gell that the Liberal Party has little reason to be satisfied that it has done its best to convince the African that it is serious about creating a common society. Quite a lot has been done to establish jumping-boards for the erection of bridges of accord between White and non-White members of the Party. I think, also, that people are beginning to see better light on the franchise question. But the African has been crushed so ruthlessly that the most convincing argument to him in the circumstances is the establishment of the tradition of martyrdom within the Party.

The moment we stand for a common society we make ourselves a revolutionary party. History divides revolutions into two major classes: the violent and the bloodless. In either case the revolutionary wants to change the order of society. To do that he should know that he will be opposed by those with a vested interest in the status quo. But his faith in his ideal must be so great that he should never be bothered about winning the goodwill of the people who will tolerate human suffering so long as they are not the victims. The Liberal who will make an impression on the African masses will be the man or woman—Black or White—who will be ready to go to gaol and, in given circumstance, die there for ideal of a common society.

To me, then, the most important duty of the Liberal Party is to awaken South Africa to a maturer sense of nationhood; to create an atmosphere within its ranks and in the country generally where Black and White shall, as Professor Thompson put it in his admirable phrase, “learn the habit of collaboration” and dedicate themselves to the ideal of a South Africa whose various peoples shall be bound together by the security they would derive from the common society.

Those of us who write in the Press can best help the Party in its task by avoiding hasty and often injurious generalizations against it or its opponents or those who merely misunderstand it. We are called upon, perhaps more than the average citizen who does not have the time to make detailed studies of these things, to make calm and judicious evaluations of situations in which those who oppose totalitarianism find themselves from time to time. In doing that we must avoid the temper of the violent partisan or the doctrinaire. We must have open minds, ready to see virtue and vice in the Liberal Party and the ANC and equally ready to apportion blame or praise where either is due.

From: Indian Opinion, January 20, 27, February 3, 10 (1956).