Father Huddlestone and South Africa

Extract

Father Huddlestone has become a great centre of controversy, and it is most important to sort matters out carefully when considering his book. It describes his experiences, particularly in the ‘black spots’ of Johannesburg, and gives views in judgment on South Africa and race relations in South Africa.

Most of the book is in the form of incidents showing the effect of discriminating laws on the African. As regards narrative matter, it is factual; although selected, it is not exaggerated. What he says of the African’s hardships under the Pass Laws, the housing shortage and permit restrictions, the summary methods of the police and partial justice in magistrates’ courts, is all a matter of daily experience in South Africa. What he says of the tsotsis, gangsters who terrify the locations, is particularly good. In a system that stifles ambition, and provides no outlet for the animus of young men, they turn sour on society. Their crime list makes terrible reading, and seeing, if you are near it. But it is a social symptom rather than a moral matter. I have even known one who might be a sort of martyr for principle. He made one promise to his mother, never to use a knife. An argument at cards —and he was stabbed and killed outright, and curiously enough on the feast of his patron saint. Had he had a knife and practised with it he might be alive today. The descriptions of the broken careers and mental struggles of the more educated, their despair and frustration, are true. Father Huddlestone has put his finger on the chief problem for a priest: ‘God forgive me. I find myself giving advice that in those circumstances I could not follow ... it needs heroic virtue.’