The Top Dogs

Now that apartheid-minded Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd has walked out of the British Commonwealth, many South Africans of British descent find themselves in an awkward position. Though they recoil from the vulgar "master-race" trumpetings of the regime, they are uncomfortably aware that most did not fight it much, all accepted the comfortable benefits. Wrote one such South African to the Johannesburg Star, in a letter that was part taunt and part self-mockery:

"After two days of soul searching, I have decided to back Dr. Verwoerd and the Nationalist government. I shall do so for the same reason that cinema audiences cheered the Prime Minister when he appeared on newsreels, for the same reason that kept hundreds of English-speaking South Africans from raising a public outcry at their loss of Commonwealth status.

"I want to preserve the easy life.

"I want to preserve my top-dog status in a land where cheap labor is really cheap.

"I want to ensure that for the rest of my life at least my family and I shall always have somebody about to do the menial jobs around my home--jobs like digging holes for trees, looking after the younger children, fetching and carrying, serving drinks to my guests and waiting at my table.

"I want to be sure too that my sons will have no serious competition in their careers, and that the jobs they eventually choose will be the soft jobs with 'master' status.

"To hell with the rest of the world. I want to be boss."

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