God's Will

Prime Minister Johannes Strijdom, the bull-necked zealot who is the leader of South Africa's Nationalist Party, cried that it was "God's will" that the Nationalists get five more years of control over the destinies of the Union of South Africa's 14 million people. The devil was obviously working with the opposition United Party, for, said Strijdom, they wanted to give votes to nonwhites, and had devised a "devilish, satanic" plan to reorganize the South African Senate.

Such oratory and such thinking were enough last week to win a smashing electoral victory at the polls for Strijdom: his Nationalists increased their control of the House of Assembly to 103 of the 163 seats though their popular victory was by no means so decisive since they benefit from 50-year-old electoral laws which favor the hinterland. The United Party, which is as segregationist as Strijdom but talks of "white leadership with justice," increased its representation by one, to 53, but its party leader, Sir De Villiers Graaff, lost his gerrymandered seat to a Nationalist candidate. Minor political groupings, such as Novelist Alan (Cry, the Beloved Country) Paton's Liberal Party, won no seats at all.

The African National Congress, political arm of the voteless 9,000,000 blacks, called for a three-day protest strike during election week. Strijdom's Nationalists reacted by outlawing the congress in four native reserves, forbidding Africans to assemble in groups of more than ten in urban centers, sending squads of club-swinging police on raids in native shantytowns. They need not have bothered: few Africans seemed disposed to give up three days' pay for a bootless protest.

Since the defeated United Party largely appeals to the 1,200,000 English-speaking South Africans, while the Nationalists concentrate on the 1,650,000 Boer descendants who speak Afrikaans, the London Economist was moved to wonder whether the Afrikaners had emerged as the master race, "with the English, the Coloureds, the Indians and the Natives as a descending order of inferior castes." Premier Strijdom, in his victory speech, announced his conviction that South Africa as a "republic is coming sooner than the United Party expects."

Financial and political advantages of the sterling bloc have kept Strijdom in the Commonwealth until now. But in their hour of triumph. Nationalists tried to placate the English-speaking South Africans. Advised the Nationalist Transvaler: "Don't feel bad about the election . . . Leave your valley of mistrust and suspicion. The Nationalist Party has shown that language and culture rights--and money--of both sections are safe in its care." Added Strijdom: "Formidable and manifold problems are facing South Africa, and some of them can only be solved if cooperation between the two main language groups is strengthened."

The Nationalist victory meant that South Africa's only prescription for black and white relationship is as master and servant--and this indeed was bound to bring a "formidable" future.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.