Ja for Verwoerd

Ever since the Boer-dominated Nationalist government took over in 1948, its unwavering goal has been a republic for South Africa, shorn of the ties to Britain's monarch that recalled the ugly days of the Boer War. Most of the English-speaking whites opposed the idea of a total breakaway from Britain, fearing not only the economic stagnation that might result from loss of Commonwealth trade ties, but also the free hand this would give to Nationalist Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd's white-supremacist apartheid policy.

Last week, the bitter debate reached its climax as the nation prepared to settle the matter once and for all in a national referendum called two months ago by Verwoerd. Only the 3,000,000 whites participated; South Africa's 11,800,000 blacks, coloreds and Asians were not allowed to vote.

Never had a political issue been so passionately disputed. Opposing gangs roamed the city streets, plastering their own placards on lampposts, ripping down the posters of the other side. The English-language papers openly plugged the anti-republican side, just as Afrikaner editors gave the headlines to government workers who were urging the electorate to vote Ja. One excited anti-republic housewife out shopping heaved a custard pie into the face of a jeering Nationalist.

White Message. The anti-republicans were especially angered by a Nationalist official who referred in public to the Queen as "the madam in England," dredged up a 1944 statement of current Foreign Minister Eric Louw: "As long as we remain in the British Commonwealth, we shall continually be hindered by British liberalism in our efforts to solve the color problem and the Jewish question." In reply, Verwoerd sought to mollify South Africans of English background with a mimeographed letter to a million whites: "The struggle between Eastern and Western nations is such that both groups will grant and concede anything, including the white man of Africa, his possessions and rights, to seek the favor and support of the black man . . . We should at least combine and protect ourselves."*

What made the question more important than repudiating fealty to the Crown was that any such change requires all other Commonwealth members to decide whether to accept South Africa as a member under the new terms. The opposition was afraid that such black countries as Ghana and Nigeria would veto Commonwealth membership for South Africa and thus end its valuable Commonwealth tar iff preferences. This, cried Opposition Leader Sir de Villiers Graaff, might be "a final mistake that may well lead to the end of the good life that you and I have known in this country." Added Progressive Party Leader Jan Steytler: "This republic will make us an outcast people." Before the polls opened on election morning, long rows of anxious voters stood impatiently to cast their ballots. At first the overwhelmingly anti-government vote from the big cities indicated that the republic might be defeated. But the tide turned in favor of Verwoerd when the platteland returns began arriving. By nightfall, the Nats had a 74,000 majority, giving them 52% of the votes--even though statistics showed many of Verwoerd's own Afrikaners had voted Nee, not Ja.

"The beginning of a new era," crowed the Prime Minister, who promised that he would go in person to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference in London early next year to plead South Africa's case for staying in the Commonwealth club. Anyway, he announced, he would not abolish formal allegiance to the Queen until a decent period had elapsed, to "let the grass grow over the wound."

* Ironically, one on the mailing list was David Pratt, who last April fired two shots into Verwoerd as the "symbol of apartheid," now is in a mental institution by court order.

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