The inclusion of novels on contemporary South Africa in this study comes near to disregarding the limits set up by our definition of the political novel, for certainly there is as much of the sociological and economic in these novels as there is in _The Jungle_ or _The Grapes of Wrath_. They are included, however, because politics plays as vital a part in the South African problems portrayed in these novels as do the other two factors. While the Blacks in the Union of South Africa are not slaves, their treatment is an inflammatory subject, and the repressive measures taken against them are political by their very nature. The Nationalist Party of Prime Minister Malan owes its tenure in no small measure to its policy of _apartheid_, strict segregation of Blacks from Whites. =Alan Paton: The Race Question= One of the most eloquent opponents of _apartheid_ is Alan Paton, a member of the Liberal Party and author of two fine novels dealing with the general problem of race relations in South Africa: _Cry, The Beloved Country_ (1948) and _Too Late the Phalarope_ (1953). Although both books focus primarily upon interpersonal relationships, the tragedies which they involve have their bases in the relations of the two races from which the interacting characters are drawn. _Cry, The Beloved Country_ tells a moving and deeply pathetic story of the loss of two sons. The son of the Zulu Stephen Kumalo, an Episcopal clergyman, murders the son of James Jarvis, benefactor of old Kumalo’s church. Ironically, in Arthur Jarvis Absalom Kumalo had killed a man who wanted to better the lot of Kumalo’s people. In 1953 the equally moving _Too Late the Phalarope_ set forth the tragic story of Pieter Van Vlaanderen, police lieutenant of Venterspan and hero to Black and White alike. Convicted of sexual relations with the unfortunate Negress Stephanie, he is sentenced to prison and disgrace under Act 5 of 1927, the Immorality Act. The immediate causes of Pieter’s tragedy are his wife’s inability to give him complete understanding and fulfillment, and the vindictive enemy he has created in Sergeant Steyn. But the underlying causes are those which infect the Union of South Africa with the virulent disease of racial hate and bigotry. Paton’s books are not only compelling human documents, they are also pleas for the eradication of the disease.