Confrontation: The Approaching Crisis Between the United States and South Africa; South Africa: Sharp Dissection

These two books represent the most notable examples of South Africa's continuing effort to explain itself to the West. In his short book, South African journalist Martin Spring tries to convince "my American friends" that America needs South Africa, that significant changes in Pretoria's racial order might be made with suitable inducements, that outside pressure will only strengthen white South Africa's will to resist, and that South Africa really has several ways of being beastly to the United States if the Carter "ultra-liberals and ideologues" persist in confrontation. Valuable mostly as an illustration of one of the more liberal lines of South African official thinking. In Barnard's apologia, South Africa's star surgeon attempts to prescribe for an illness that seems beyond his powers even to diagnose: the antidote for South Africa's sickness, in his view, is a one-party state and "a society based on merit."