Cry the beloved country author5/9/2023 ![]() ![]() Most of all, they opposed violence, which set them at odds with the armed struggle that was ANC policy after 1961. ![]() ![]() Paton and the Liberals were gradualists: they believed in constitutional talks. The Indian National Congress also kept at arm's length. Paton had given defence evidence for Mandela at the 1964 treason trial, but Liberals tended to be antipathetic to ANC communist members. Though the Liberals sought links with it, the African National Congress (ANC) kept its distance. Its members dissolved it in 1968, rather than abandon their principles and comply with a new apartheid law that made it a criminal offence to belong to a non-racial political party. ![]() He was president of the South African Liberal party, which could never win parliamentary seats in Cape Town, and did not expect to. This led to conflict with the Afrikaner state, but also produced uneasy relationships within the anti-apartheid movement - another reason, arguably, why he is less well known today. Paton went where his beliefs led him, whatever the cost to himself. His Christianity was not only why apartheid was so offensive to him its emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation also showed him the only way forward for the new South Africa. It shows his belief that religious faith, personal conduct and social action are inextricable one from the other. His one, short devotional book, An Instrument Of Thy Peace, was a meditation on the prayer of St Francis. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |