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Despite the hostility directed at the country from abroad—and the anger burning from within—white South Africa remains curiously peaceful. The street tensions and stonings within its removed black townships—even the ongoing massive school boycott by 200,000 students in Soweto—fail to transmit more than a ripple to what Novelist Nadine Gordimer (A World of Strangers) calls the "dreadful calm" of white society. So distant do such events seem, in fact, that most whites only learn of them from their newspapers. Of Johannesburg's white population of 600,000, precious few have ever set foot in Soweto, although it is a scant eight miles away. And to the farmers who live in the flat reaches of the Orange Free State and the lush valleys of the Cape wine country, Soweto rioting seems almost as remote as U.N. oratory.
Yet there is indisputably a malaise in South Africa today that touches even to the heart of Afrikanerdom. For the first time within recent memory, more whites are leaving the country than are entering it (a net loss of 1,329 this year, v. a net gain of 25,190 in 1976). The economy is in deep recession, the worst in 40 years. The result is a mood of doubt and defiance that is as severe as any in South Africa's history. At the seemingly endless stream of seminars on the national destiny, the questions are inevitably asked: What will South Africa be like in a year? In two? In five? And there is an all too familiar answer: Worse.
The English-speaking business community, although it controls an estimated 80% of the country's private sector, complains that its leverage with the government is weaker than ever. "We are subject to an Afrikaans-speaking tribal government," says Harry Oppenheimer, chairman of the Anglo American Corp. of South Africa Ltd., a mining empire. "We have some influence only if they want to remain on good terms with the rest of the world and want foreign investment to flow in." American investment in South Africa amounts to about $1.5 billion. U.S. companies are bound by American law to avoid discrimination—but cannot always do so if they hope to stay in business in South Africa. Last week, under an emergency measure, the government assumed the power, if necessary, to order foreign-owned plants to produce strategic materials that might become unavailable later from overseas suppliers.
Particularly in the cities, whites seem edgy and ill-tempered. To a group of neighbors who were gossiping about the rise in thefts and the burglarizing of homes, a white housewife in an affluent suburb of Johannesburg complained: "They [the blacks] are gathering all the time in small groups around the neighborhood. A few years ago, the police would have stopped them or picked them up. Now they're just everywhere. I never even walk any more." Many feel plagued by uncertainty. "People just don't make plans," says Nadine Gordimer. "They can't make up their minds, whether it's over buying a house or starting a multiracial theater company or sending children away to school."