"The first day I went into the township, I saw policemen standing on an armored personnel carrier shooting into a crowd. I saw Black vigilantes tearing down squatter shacks," Waldorf says. "All this 20 kilometers from the beautiful white suburbs. It was like a Twilight Zone `Parallel Universe' episode."

Episodes like these inspired Waldorf to quit his classes at the university and work with the welfare group for his last two months in South Africa. In addition to handing out material aid to the refugees, the group negotiated with various political factions in the townships who did not want the squatters in their churches.

"There were Black ministers who did not want squatters dirtying up their churches, and who literally closed the churches' doors," Waldorf says.

The group also received urgent calls from township residents in the middle of the night, saying, "We think the vigilantes are coming here tonight. Please help us." The volunteers then called ministers and liberal parliament members and went with them into the townships to wait for the expected violence.

Waldorf says that Afrikaaner university students accused the group of acting only out of "white liberal guilt," but that he thought they were responding to a more important call.

"The people I worked with were so incredibly brave, going into the townships at night," he says. "I don't think they put their lives on the line because of guilt. It goes much deeper than that."

Salient Politics

Waldorf still finds himself very confused about the violence and injustice he witnessed. He says he is still not sure how much his politics changed in the experience.

When he returned form South Africa, Waldorf says he met with a conservative friend who reminded him of many of his former arguments against sanctions and disinvestment. Waldorf says that he still agrees with a lot of the arguments, but that they seem "a little too pat" to him now.

Students in the Social Studies junior tutorial on nationalism, for which Waldorf is a teaching assistant, say that they expected him to be very conservative because of his past work on the Salient. But he turned out to be less conservative than they had anticipated.

"I remember the thing he wrote for the Salient. He was solidly opposed to disinvestment and sanctions," Dane Smith '88 says. "He seems to have opened his eyes a bit."

Waldorf says he is still opposed to disinvestment, but not for the usual conservative reasons. The people most effected by disinvestment, says Waldorf, are those who are most unionized. "And the unions are the most important force for political change the Blacks have," he says.

"When I was working in Crossroads I could be very supportive of disinvestment because of a moral need to pressure the South African government," Waldorf says. "But when I reflect on it, I realize there's no way to pressure the government."

Waldorf says that the Afrikaaners do not care what the United States or other countries think of their treatment of Blacks. "Their view is that this our business, and we will oppress Blacks as we want," he says. "International pressure has virtually no effect."

One day while sitting in a police station in the townships, Waldorf says he watched policemen beating three Black suspects. "To me this shows an absolute arrogance of power. They are quite pleased for you to see them brutalize the Blacks," he says. "It lets you know who's in charge."