page 384 - Long Walk Original Manuscript [LWOM_384.jpg]

Africans without any voice in a parliament that governed them. He attacked the proposed establishment of a Bantustan system of government which was in conflict with western democratic lines and which left out the millions of Africans permanently settled outside the Bantustans without any means of political expression whatsoever. He asked pertinently: "Is it moral, while people are in the process of development from a primitive state of society towards a higher degree of civilisation, to attempt to force them back into the primitive mould from which they are trying to break out? Above all, is it moral to arrogate to oneself the right to attempt to arrest the development of our native people in the tribal stage of human society when similarly placed people throughout the world are reaching out for western civilisation and are pressing irresistibly for the achievment of that civilisation, and to arrogate that right to oneself without consulting the people concerned?"

Finally De Villiers Graaf attacked the grant of 13% of the country's land to 78% of South Africa's population as immoral and discriminatory. Verwoerd in his reply to Graaf pointed out that the new system of government was engraved in the soul of the African people and incorporated their own laws. He argued that urban and professional Africans would have to go back to the Bantustans to promote civilisation and to assist in the building up of the Bantustans. (He insisted that he and his Party stood by what he had said at the beginning of that year, that is, autonomous, politically independent black states would be established. Urban Africans would have the right, while in the white areas, to take part in the Bantustan government. In addition they would enjoy a limited municipal self government in the form of urban Bantu councils.