God's Man

In roaring chorus, the 173 Afrikaner Nationalists gathered in the shuttered caucus room broke into the old Dutch hymn, Let God's Blessings on Him Fall. Then the paneled teakwood doors swung open, and out into the early spring sunshine of Cape Town strode the man they had just elected Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa to succeed the late Johannes Strijdom. White-haired, pink-cheeked Dr. Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd (pronounced Fair Voort) looked more like an off-duty Santa Claus than a hard-fisted authoritarian. Yet in his eight years as Minister of Native Affairs, he had proved himself pre-eminent among all the racists crowding the South African stage.

In a nationwide radio address, Verwoerd pulled no punches, promising 1) an eventual South African republic and 2) the achievement of strict racial apartheid. An active member of the Dutch Reformed Church, he identified his selection as Prime Minister with the dictates of God: "In accordance with His will, it was decided who should assume the leadership of the government in this new period of the life of the people of South Africa."

The Servant Problem. The nation's 10 million nonwhites and many of its 3,000,000 whites were not so sure about all this. "A disaster," said an opposition newspaper, the Cape Times, of Verwoerd's appointment, and in the black slum townships ringing the South African cities, the reaction ranged from explosive resentment to dismay. Yet Hendrik Verwoerd is no simple, Kaffir-bashing white supremacist. Born in The Netherlands, he was brought to South Africa as an infant by his grocer father. A fiery Nationalist from the start, he graduated from the Afrikaans-speaking Stellenbosch University, continued his studies in Germany. Returning to South Africa as a professor in 1927, he married lively Betsy Schoombee, who boasts that none of their seven children was ever bathed or put to bed by a native servant.

Verwoerd's newspaper, Die Transvaler, triumphantly headlined every Nazi victory in World War II, railed against "British Jewish liberalism." When he was accused of being a Nazi sympathizer, Verwoerd sued for libel. But the judge ruled that Editor Verwoerd "did support Nazi propaganda; he did make his newspaper a tool of the Nazis in South Africa, and he knew it."

The Lion & the Elephant. As Minister of Native Affairs, Verwoerd palavered endlessly with tribal chiefs, endlessly exhorted the Africans: "We should live apart, as the lion and the elephant live apart." But for all his determination to drive the blacks into "native reserves," Verwoerd spent more money on them than had any other Minister of Native Affairs. The number of native children in school has almost doubled since 1953. Verwoerd boasts that South Africa spends $8.61 yearly per capita on native health and education, compared with $1.30 in the Belgian Congo and 3-c- in India. He was quick to add, however, that he was not a Kaffirboetie ("nigger lover") because he spent money on African welfare. In fact, he declared, he was building much cheaper houses than preceding administrations.

Under Verwoerd, South Africa will continue to stand alone on its continent as the only nation or colony that does not offer even a pretense of democratic rights to its black citizens. But Verwoerd remains supremely confident that his is the only way to keep whites in Africa from drowning in a black sea. "In South Africa," he proclaimed last week, "we are being carried forward as never before by the overwhelming current of inspired nationalism which has taken hold of our people. There are forces that are unconquerable. This is one of them."

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