Smashing Mandate

The Nazi short-wave Zeesen station frenetically begged Afrikaners to repudiate the Smuts Government and the war. Prime Minister Jan Christiaan Smuts told his people the election was a referendum on South Africa's will to fight on with the United Nations to victory (TIME, July 12). The issue clear, South Africans last week stampeded to the polls.

In cities police were called out to control queues. On the platteland (plateau) farmers and their families left by ox and donkey wagons the day before, jolted through the night to the nearest town.

In Capetown a woman who had given birth to a baby two hours before pushed her doctor aside and rode by taxi to vote. In Durban another woman arrived by ambulance, was carried on a stretcher into the polling hall. In Smuts's own constituency, Standerton, a septuagenarian Scot, recovering from a heart attack, insisted on voting for Smuts, collapsed and died before he could make his cross.

Oldsters said they had never seen the like of it. Democracy was functioning in South Africa as never before. South Africans knew that this meant one thing: a smashing mandate for Smuts to go on leading South Africa in the war. Impatiently the electorate awaited announcement of their verdict--it will be two weeks before the election results are known, because 150,000 soldiers' votes must be received from military camps at home and fronts abroad.

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