Winds Of Change

To the Editors:

Despite an obvious need for accommodation in South Africa, the answer to its problems is not an overnight turnabout ((WORLD, May 4)). Political parties can rewrite the old laws and even reconsider their right to African land, but no good will come from any of these reforms if Afrikaner children are still brought up with a conviction that the black man is inferior. Tomorrow's ideals depend on the young, who must be educated to be unbiased. Otherwise, the concessions of today's Afrikaners will have been in vain.

Anuradha Rao

Sacramento

The Afrikaner farmer you quote suggests that whites and blacks should recognize their individual failings (the whites are avaricious, the blacks overbreed) and reconcile their differences. He claims, "There is no reason we can't somehow get together. We do the planning, they do the work." To me, that program sounds like a very good description of what might be considered slavery.

Adrienne B. Ziehlke

Glenford, Ohio

Your article reports the increasing disunity among white South Africans in their attitudes toward apartheid but fails to suggest that black Africans too are far from monolithic. Cleavages exist between the urban and rural blacks, between those in South Africa proper and those in the tribal homelands. It would be impossible to derive majority rule out of South Africa's racial, religious and political melange. The only satisfactory solution would be a confederation system, with several tiers of government. Continuation of the present system or the replacement proposed by the African National Congress would breed chaos and disunity and, eventually, lead to interracial and intertribal warfare.

Bernard P. Toner

Scottsdale, Ariz.