I wrote this for Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Review in 1990. I thought of it when I read Yoel Marcus in Haaretz that if there had been 5 million Afrikaners in the US, there would still be apartheid in South Africa.
If South Africa had a lobby as powerful as the Israeli lobby…
* Nelson Mandela would not be free.
* There would be no sanctions against South Africa.
* South Africa would be the largest recipient of US aid.
* The African National Congress would still be outlawed.
* Congress would have endorsed the idea that apartheid is not racism.
* Pro-apartheid forces cloaked as peace-makers would try to control the anti-apartheid movement.
* Public television would require "balanced" reporting to counteranti-apartheid programs.
* Journalists. academics and others who criticized apartheid would be targets of character assasinations.
* The struggle of the Boers against the British for control of South Africa would be considered a "national liberation struggle."
* South Africa would ultimately be defended as the only "democracy" in Africa.
