The Broederbond wanted to put it all down on paper. A Provisional Committee of National Unity (Voorlopige Volkseenheidskomitee), which had existed since 1939 under the chairmanship of Prof. L.J. du Plessis and with representatives from the F.A.K. (the Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Associations), the R.D.B. (Reddingsdaadbond), the O.B., and the three Dutch Reformed Churches, came forward at this stage with a plan designed to create a united all-embracing 'Afrikaner Front'. After preparing a draft constitution and programme based exclusively on Christian-National principles, they issued a 'Declaration on behalf of People's Organizations' (Verklaring namens Volksorganisasies) in which the common objective was stated to be ' a free, independent, republican, Christian-National state, based upon the word of God, eschewing all foreign models . . . with a Christian-National educational system . . . and the strongest emphasis upon the effective disciplining of the people . . .' .
This declaration was signed by I. M. Lombard, as Chairman of the F.A.K.; J.F.J. van Rensburg, as Kommandant-Generaal of the O.B.; L.J. du Plessis as Chairman of the Economic Institute of the F.A.K.; N. Diederichs, as organizational leader of the R.D.B.; Rev. J.P. van der Spuy, Chairman of the Church Council; Rev. I.D. Kruger, Chairman of the Inter-Church Commission of the Dutch Reformed Churches; and Rev. D.F. Erasmus, Vice-Chairman of the Calvinist Association. The three D.R.C. ministers signed in their personal capacities.
The declaration was accepted by the Nationalist Party at its Union Congress which opened on 3 June 1941, and Die Transvaler of 13 June reported that it had been received by Dr Malan with enthusiasm. The Provisional Committee (which later became the Afrikaner Unity Committee) including this time, in addition to representatives of the above organizations, representatives of the Nationalist Party as well, met again on 9 June and decided to take steps to promote both the declaration and the draft constitution. The time had come to announce the basis on which the future South African Republic was to be established.
As it happened, the manner in which the announcement was made served to bring about the first serious rift between the O.B. and the Nationalist Party. The Ossewa Brandwag, regarding the decision of the Provisional Committee (at which Dr Malan had been present) as a mandate for publication, on 3 July issued a circular containing the principles together with certain details of the constitution and showered 100,000 copies on the country. Dr Malan was furious, regarding the act as a clear invasion of Nationalist Party territory and a violation of the 'Cradock Agreement. Constitutions belonged to the party political field and were to be handled by the Nationalist Party alone. By issuing its circular, the O.B. was trying to steal a march on the Nationalist Party and oust it in the eyes of the people as the main architect of the new constitution. The Nationalist Party itself did not issue the constitution until 1942, when it was published simultaneously in Die Transvaler and Die Burger on 22 and 23 January.
After referring disparagingly to 'the unauthorized use which has formerly been made of portions of it', the Nationalist Press declared:
It will be understood that the acceptance of this Draft Constitution as a guide still leaves an opening for amendments on certain special points. On the other hand, a thorough comparison of this article and the Party's Programme and Principles of Action, as well as between this article and Dr Malan's republican motion (in Parliament), will show very plainly that the Party and its chief leader have accepted the scheme in its principles and its broad outline. This explanation is most interesting in the light of attempts which Nationalist leaders have since made to insist that this draft constitution was never officially Nationalist Party policy.
The Constitution for the Republic of South Africa is an out-and-out fascist and out-and-out racist document. Article 1 reads:
In obedience to God Almighty and His Holy Word, the Afrikaans people acknowledge their national destination, as embodied in their Voortrekker past, for the Christian development of South Africa, and for that reason accept the Republican Constitution which follows, to take the place of all the existing regulations in law which are in conflict with it, and especially with the total abolition of the British Kingship over the British subjects within the Republic. As will be seen, the constitution is only intended for the Afrikaners; the English are to play a subordinate role.
Article 2 (ii) reads:
The Republic is grounded on a Christian-National foundation and therefore acknowledges, as the standard of the government of the State, in the first place the principles of justice of the Holy Scriptures; secondly, the clearest direction of the development of the national history; and thirdly, the necessary reformation of the modern government of states, especially with an eye to the circumstance of South Africa. Article 2 (iv) states that the national flag shall be the Vierkleur of the old South African Republic and the national anthem Die Stem van Suid-Afrika.
Article 2 (v) reads:
Afrikaans, as the language of the original white inhabitants of the country, will be the first official language, English will be regarded as a second or supplementary official language which will be treated on an equal footing and will enjoy equal rights, freedom, and privileges with the first official language, everywhere and whenever such treatment is judged by the State authority to be in the best interests of the State and its inhabitants. In other words, both languages will be equal, but Afrikaans will be more equal than English.
Citizenship will be accorded to those subjects 'of whom it can be expected that they will act as builders up of the nation', and they will be called 'burgers'.
The State will have the power to make sure that 'individual citizens as well as the organs of public opinion, such as the existence of parties, the radio, the Press, and the cinema, whilst their rightful freedom of expression, including criticism of government policy, will be protected, shall not be allowed, by their actions to undermine the public order or good morale of the Republic internally or externally.'
At the head of the State will be the State President, who will be elected by the registered burgers. 'The State President is further directly and only responsible to God and over against the people for his deeds in fulfilment of his duties . . . he is altogether independent of any vote in Parliament.... The State President decides on all laws, which can only become valid by his personal signature.'
The Prime Minister is appointed by the State President, who may also summon or prorogue or dismiss Parliament.
The people will be represented in (a) a Parliament of not more than 150 members, and (b) a Community Council, in which the spiritual, cultural, economic, and social interests of the community and of groups within the community will be represented in an advisory capacity. The members of the Community Council shall consist of
fifteen persons appointed by the President-in-Council, on account of their knowledge and experience in connexion with the treatment of important problems of the country, such as the poor White (White poverty) question, the interests of the Coloured people, the government of the natives, the Indian penetration, and the surplus Jewish population with excessive economic powers; and thirty-five members chosen by suitable organizations....
Every coloured group of races, Coloured, natives, Asiatics, Indians, etc. will be segregated, not only as regards the place of dwelling or the neighbourhoods dwelt in by them, but also with regard to the spheres of work. The members of such groups can, however, be allowed to enter White territories under proper lawful control for the increase of working power and also for the necessary increase of their own incomes.
To each of such segregated race groups of coloured subjects of the Republic, self-government will be granted within their own territory under the central management of the general government of the country, in accordance with the fitness of the group for the carrying out of such self-government for which they will have to be systematically trained.
Mixing of the blood between Whites and non-Whites is forbidden.
Non-Europeans educated for any of the professional callings, and non-European trades, are shut out from practice or trade among White people.... White employees may not be employed by non-European employers.
The public tone of life of the Republic is Christian-National.... The propagation of any State policy and the existence of any political organisation which is in strife with the fulfilling of this Christian National vocation of the life of the people is forbidden.
The constitution envisages strict State control over the economy of the country and also over employers' and employees' organizations and trade unions.
It is the right and also the duty of the State government to take the control and coordination of the economic and social life under its supervision, beginning with the agricultural basis of the national life, with the object of keeping the balance between the different population groups in the different callings and trades, and between capital and labour, and to protect against agricultural, industrial and commercial undertakings of a parasitic nature or undertakings which come into conflict with the interests of the community as a whole.
Country-wide group organizations for employers and employees in the various trades and callings must receive the recognition of the State, which can also call them into being or reform them, in accordance with the object of organizing them for self-government, by the official licensing of suitable persons for undertaking the work and by linking them up with the say of such groups in the governing of the State by means of the Community Council. The currency of the country must bear a purely indigenous character....
While some of the cruder provisions in this constitution have had to be dropped in the course of time, it is nevertheless astonishing to see how much of subsequent Nationalist government policy derives from the draft prepared during the war on the expectation of a Nazi victory over the forces of democracy. The Immorality and Mixed Marriages Acts, the establishment of Bantustans and the Coloured and Indian Councils, job reservation, decimal coinage, Press control and censorship, the Suppression of Communism Act, bannings, Group Areas, control of trade unions - all these and more are foreshadowed in the draft constitution. Moreover, the direction of present government policy in many spheres can be gauged by reference to this draft. For the government is still actively engaged in trying to put the principles of this constitution into effect, despite all disclaimers that it was ever official Nationalist Party policy. There is no doubt whatsoever that the draft constitution embodied the quintessence of Nationalist Party thinking during the war period, and subsequent events have shown that thinking has not undergone any basic change in the intervening period. Tactics have altered from time to time, but the grand strategy has remained the same.
The constitution was prepared because Nationalist Afrikanerdom believed that the moment was at hand when it could be put into force. But almost as soon as the Provisional Committee agreed on its terms, a split developed within the leadership which was to become more and more pronounced as time passed.
In part this was due to a clash of personalities, in part to disagreement over the methods by which the republic was to be attained. Van Rensburg, at the head of what Die Vaderland had called ' the greatest Afrikaans organization outside of the Church' (1 January 1941), was not inclined to play second fiddle to Malan, whom he despised as a hide-bound constitutionalist. Malan, in turn, was having trouble inside the Nationalist Party with Pirow, who had established a separate apparatus of his own for disseminating the principles of the 'New Order'. There was more than one claimant to the role of Quisling in South Africa. If Hitler should win, who would negotiate with him in the name of Afrikanerdom? Whose principles would prevail in the establishment of the South African Republic? Malan decided to put his own house in order first, and a campaign was mounted in the Nationalist Party to bring the New Order group to heel. Pirow responded by placing a motion on the order paper for the Transvaal Congress of the Nationalist Party in August 1941, upholding the right of the New Order to continue propagandizing within the Party.
Then, on the eve of the congress, van Rensburg, in a major policy speech, declared that, no matter what the policies of other organizations might be, in the Ossewa Brandwag there was room for all Afrikaners, irrespective of their political beliefs. 'As far as we in the Ossewa Brandwag are concerned, National Socialists are also welcome,' he proclaimed. This was another direct slap in the face for the Nationalist Party, and relations between Malan and van Rensburg deteriorated still further.
At the Transvaal congress of the Nationalist Party on 12 and 13 August 1941, Dr Malan opposed the motion to allow continuation of New Order propaganda. Eighty-five percent of the New Order programme was already incorporated in the principles of the Nationalist Party, and he did not consider a separate propaganda apparatus to be necessary. In any event, the Nationalist Party could not approve the one-party system, he said. Pirow's motion was defeated.
An interesting sidelight of the congress was the discussion on certain resolutions in favour of only one language for South Africa. The leader of the party in the Transvaal, J.G. Strijdom, said that he agreed with the purpose of the resolutions, but that for tactical reasons it should not be laid down in black and white. The resolutions were shelved.
The Transvaal Congress effectively put paid to the account of Pirow. On 16 August he and seventeen other M.P.s formally constituted themselves as a New Order group and announced their intention of defying the ban on their propaganda. But while they were able to retain their seats in Parliament, they were driven out of the counsels of the party. At last, on 14 January 1942, Pirow was forced to bow to reality by announcing that those in the New Order group would no longer attend Nationalist Party caucus meetings, though they still considered themselves members of the party. For all practical purposes, however, the two groups operated as separate entities from that time onwards, while the breach between Malan and Pirow was never healed.
Emboldened by his success in dealing with the Pirowites, Dr Malan next turned his attention to the Ossewa Brandwag and demanded that the O.B. cease to interfere in the party-political sphere which had been clearly demarcated for the Nationalist Party by the 'Cradock Agreement'. The Afrikaner Unity Committee rushed in to try and patch up a compromise, but the two leaders bickered and bargained without reaching agreement. Malan refused to withdraw his ultimatum, and in face of the conflict, the Chairman of the O.B. Groot Raad, the Rev. Kotze, resigned his position on 4 September. Other Nationalist leaders like Strijdom, Kemp, and Sauer withdrew from the O.B. altogether, while the O.B. itself expelled Eric Louw. In October the Nationalist Party called on its members to resign from the Ossewa Brandwag, while all Nationalist Party office-holders were forbidden to belong to it. By a curious coincidence, it was in October as well that the government prohibited certain classes of civil servants from belonging to the O.B.
Thus from the position of complete accord which had been reached in June, the two leading organizations of Afrikanerdom had drifted apart to the point where they were open enemies. Where but a few months before Dr Malan had promised to stand by the O.B. if it were attacked by the government, by December 1941 he was reported in the Press to have declared at a meeting in Paarl: ' The O.B. leaders were openly talking about attaining a republic by rebellion, and storm troopers had been told to be prepared for it. There were whisperings throughout the country that the storm troopers had rifles, cannons, and even aeroplanes. The O.B. was responsible for Afrikaners being interned.'
Then suddenly Zeesen radio took a hand in the dispute. From 5 September onwards it backed van Rensburg's stand, doubtless feeling that it could place greater reliance on the Stormjaers than on Malan's parliamentary cohorts. It hinted that Malan was playing the game of General Smuts and presented van Rensburg to its listeners as the saviour of oppressed Afrikanerdom.
The curious case of the Ossewa Brandwag general and wrestler-hero Johannes van der Walt illustrates the depths of real hatred to which this dispute, and the divisions caused by the war, moved the participants. Arrested on 17 December 1941 on the comparatively trivial charge of being in possession of an unlicensed pistol and bullets, van der Walt managed to escape from the cells at Marshall Square, Johannesburg, only a few days later, on 23 December. While he was on the run, on 2 February 1942, Dr Malan dropped a bombshell in the House of Assembly. He read an affidavit by Johannes van der Walt alleging that the Kommandant-Generaal of the O.B., Dr van Rensburg, and one of his leading lieutenants, Advocate Jerling, had taken an oath, sealed with fingerprints in blood, that they would not surrender an Afrikaner to the enemy (i.e. the government), even if he were not a member of the Ossewa Brandwag. Nevertheless, stated van der Walt, he believed that Jerling and other Ossewa Brandwag leaders had given to the government the names of people whom they wanted to have interned, while Jerling himself had instructed a subordinate that Leibbrandt should be surrendered to the police. Van der Walt also alleged in his affidavit that he had been ordered by Jerling to murder a certain advocate and that Jerling had embezzled O.B. funds.
Whether there was any truth in those allegations there is no means of knowing, as they were never investigated. They were, of course, emphatically denied by Jerling himself. But the whole episode casts a lurid light, not only on the activities of the O.B. during the war period, but also on the enmity which now existed between the O.B. and the Nationalist Party. A few months before it would have been inconceivable that Dr Malan should produce such a document in the House. Now he exhibited an overmastering desire to destroy van Rensburg and the organization which he headed.
Van der Walt's own position was never cleared up either. Had he turned traitor to the O.B.? And for what motive had he signed such a damning affidavit against his former comrades? The whole episode remains shrouded in mystery. A bare three weeks later van der Walt himself was given away. On 23 February 1942, a police cordon was thrown round the farmhouse in the Krugersdorp district where he was in hiding, and he was shot while trying to make his escape through a window. Partially paralysed, he lingered for over a year before eventually succumbing to his injuries; he was buried on 28 March 1943.
Part of the reason for the discord between the Nationalist Party and the Ossewa Brandwag was a difference of opinion over the methods to be used in achieving the republic. Part was due to a clash of personalities between van Rensburg and Malan. But the main reason was undoubtedly the determination of Dr Malan himself not to yield the pre-eminence of the Nationalist Party in the political field because he believed a German victory to be imminent. When the war was over, there was to be only one candidate for the job of negotiating with Hitler, and that man was to be Dr Malan.
This idea had been in Dr Malan's mind ever since the outbreak of the war. As early as the Transvaal congress of the Nationalist Party in September 1939, he had said that, if the war ended in Germany's favour, ' we would have to have an understanding with her over the future of South-West Africa, and it would have to be timely by means of negotiation'. The Nazi plunge through Europe in 1940, the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, and the swift penetration of the German forces to the neighbourhood of Moscow made it seem as though the war was all over bar the shouting. Dr Malan wanted to be in unquestioned command of Afrikanerdom when the time came for talking. Van Rensburgs's challenge to his leadership had to be faced full on and defeated. In this grim struggle for internal power and influence, Dr Malan drew on every resource available to the Nationalist Party.
Already at the 1941 congress of the Nationalist Party in Bloemfontein Dr Malan had been given extraordinary, even dictatorial powers to handle the party's affairs. He could act on his own without reference to any of the leading committees of the party if he thought fit, and was accountable only to the party congress for anything he might do in the party's name. J.A. Smith, then a deputy leader of the Ossewa Brandwag, gave Dr Malan a sjambok as a symbol of his power to keep his followers under control.
Commenting on Malan's assumption of the new title of Volksleier (People's Leader), Die Transvaler declared that it was necessary for him to occupy the same position in South Africa as Hitler occupied in Germany.
The United Party newspaper The Friend described the congress somewhat less enthusiastically as 'a realistic rehearsal of Reichstag procedure in which only the leaders had the say. All resolutions were proposed and seconded from the platform, and according to the programme no debates ensued. Dr Malan spoke for two hours at the opening of the proceedings giving a consummate exposition of how it was proposed to adapt a democratic republic to National Socialism (Nazism)'.
As the quarrel with van Rensburg sharpened, so Dr Malan took the initiative in attempts to create a new Volksfront under his leadership. In the last quarter of 1941 he busied himself in negotiating for the establishment of a National Committee, a sort of shadow cabinet which would be able to take over power at once if necessary.
Hitler's victory, however, was unaccountably delayed, and these attempts came to nothing. Party politics had to continue. Shortly before the 1942 congress of the Nationalist Party a campaign was launched in which party members were urged to contribute half-crowns ('silver bullets') to the fight against British-Jewish imperialism. At the congress, 'rejecting equally dictatorship on the one hand and British Imperialism on the other, Malan pointed the way to a Christian-National Republic in which the English might have a part, but in which the Afrikaner would enjoy a position of ascendancy' (The South African Opposition, by Michael Roberts and A.E.G. Trollip).
With the battle of Stalingrad approaching, Malan's plenary powers were renewed.
Meanwhile Dr Malan made an attempt to elicit from the Germans a more definite indication of their intentions towards South Africa. On 2 June 1942, in Johannesburg, he declared:
If the people will clearly take up the attitude that we refuse co-operation of any kind in the war, then we may expect at a suitable time an authoritative statement from Germany and Italy as to what they intend to do with South Africa. We expect a declaration whether the plan is that we stand under German or Italian authority. We want very much to know where we stand.
Whether any direct approach was made to the Axis powers we do not know. But a few months later Dr Malan appeared to have obtained some sort of answer to his query. On 17 August 1942, Die Burger reported a speech given by Dr Malan at Burgersdorp:
The German radio had given a clear and indubitable answer to his request for a declaration as to what Germany intended to do with us. This was the answer: 'Germany wants to see South Africa free and independent, but then it must be a really, truly free South Africa, which is not being ruled in the interests of foreigners. Just for that reason Germany takes no interest in the form of government which the people will choose for themselves. Provided the form of government represents the will of the South African people, Germany will not be offended or hurt by it.'
Despite the number of German pledges which had been dishonoured in the preceding years, Dr Malan was highly elated at the response.
If this could be said more authoritatively, for instance by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, it would be good enough for the speaker, although for the present he was accepting the above mentioned declaration.
This was as far as Dr Malan ever got to negotiation with the Germans - negotiation by radio. Zeesen promised South Africa independence and Malan declared himself satisfied.
Then came the battle of Stalingrad, and Malan's dreams rapidly faded.
The identification of the Nationalist Party with the cause of the Nazis was well illustrated by a court case involving Dr H.F. Verwoerd, who was Editor-in-Chief of the Nationalist Party newspaper Die Transvaler throughout the war period.
In consequence of the manner in which he conducted the affairs of his paper, the Johannesburg evening newspaper, The Star published in October 1941 an article entitled ' Speaking up for Hitler', which accused Die Transvaler of falsifying news in support of Nazi propaganda and generally acting as a tool of the enemy.
Dr Verwoerd decided to sue the editor, proprietors, and publishers of The Star for damages, and the case came before Justice Millin, husband of the well-known novelist Sarah Gertrude Millin.
The Star claimed that what it had said about Die Transvaler was true and that publication had been in the public interest the standard legal defence against an accusation of libel. It supported its argument by producing numerous examples from Dr Verwoerd's paper to show how closely Die Transvaler had followed the Nazi propaganda line.
Verwoerd lost the case, which dragged on for a considerable time before Justice Millin gave judgement on 13 July 1943, to find not the slightest doubt that Verwoerd had in fact furthered Nazi propaganda in his paper. The 25,000 word judgement concluded:
It is not necessary for the defendants [The Star] to establish that Die Transvaler propaganda agreed in every respect with that of Zeesen. What they have proved is that the plaintiff [Dr Verwoerd] caused to be published a large body of matter which was on the same general lines as matter coming to the Union in the Afrikaans transmissions from Zeesen and which was calculated to make the Germans look upon Die Transvaler as a most useful adjunct to this propaganda service.
The plaintiff cannot really deny this.
He says it is not his fault. He appeals to the principles of free speech and a free Press in a democratic country.... He argues that if he had to consider whether what he said would be useful to the Germans the effect would be to silence him; and the law does not compel him to be silent.
But the question in this case is not whether the plaintiff should be silenced. His legal right to publish what he did is not in question. The question is whether . . . he is entitled to complain if it is said of him that what he writes supports Nazi propaganda and makes his paper a tool of the Nazis.
On the evidence he is not entitled to complain. He did support Nazi propaganda, he did make his paper a tool of the Nazis in South Africa, and he knew it.
The result is that there must be judgement for the defendants, with the general costs of the three actions.
The immediate cause of The Star article had been Die Transvaler's handling of a statement issued by the government's Bureau of Information. This government statement had given the text of a Zeesen broadcast declaring that the Nazis ' did not want to force their state form on other countries'. The government Bureau of Information had then pointed out that this Nazi claim was 'belied by what is happening in Europe'. Verwoerd had printed the statement, but had deliberately excluded the Bureau's comment.
About this Justice Millin said:
The plaintiff is a very intelligent person. He must know as well as anyone else that no government carrying on a war can be expected to authorize the publication of enemy propaganda addressed to its own people without seeking to refute the propaganda.... The whole object of the introduction (by the Bureau) was to make an opportunity for warning the public not to believe the enemy statement. In suppressing this warning statement by the Bureau I think he [Verwoerd] can properly be said to have falsified current news. He presented what was said by the Bureau as news and he presented it falsely.... The effect was to support, or help on, German propaganda. Certainly the Germans could have found nothing more convenient for their purpose than what the plaintiff did.
Justice Millin went on to deal with a number of instances given by The Star of false reports by Die Transvaler which were pro-Nazi in their effect. The judge said:
The conclusion is inevitable, that the plaintiff [Dr Verwoerd] when he published these false statements as current news was quite reckless whether they were true or false. He thus exposed himself to the imputation that he falsified current news. The result, as he admitted, might have been most harmful to recruiting for the armed forces.... It cannot be questioned that the publication . . . was in fact, if not in clear intention, valuable support to the enemy in the propaganda he was then making (as appeared from the evidence) to weaken the war effort of the Union. Die Transvaler had suggested, in July 1940, that South African forces had suffered a serious military defeat against the Italians, and that the government had deliberately suppressed information of this and the accompanying heavy casualties. Justice Millin found the suggestion to have been completely false.
It has been shown to be false and the plaintiff, who was willing to adopt it when he saw it in the paper, does not pretend that he thought it was true. It is therefore correct to say that this is a falsification of current news which was approved by the plaintiff. It was calculated to cause alarm and despondency and it is not open to doubt that it was of great service to the enemy in the way of supporting his propaganda for the damaging of the war effort of the Union.
Verwoerd was sufficiently impressed by the judgement not to take it on appeal. Years later, taunted with this in Parliament, he was to say that a Nationalist could not have expected impartiality from the courts as they had then been constituted. And he was even to hint that the judgement in this particular instance had gone against him because the judge had been a Jew! It would be wrong to create the impression that the whole of Afrikanerdom followed the leadership of Malan and Verwoerd during the war period. The majority of those serving in the South African armed forces were Afrikaners, and they played their part in the defence of their country as loyally as any other section of the population. The Afrikaner in uniform, moreover, had no easy time in his own country. He was regarded by the hard-core Nationalist as a renegade, and was often ostracized by his own community. There were even instances where Dutch Reformed Church ministers refused to allow soldiers in uniform to attend services in their churches.
When the soldier went north, cut off from the pressures of Church, Press, and party, he became subject to liberalizing influences and frequently changed his outlook. A survey conducted by the Army Education Service revealed that thinking on political and social problems amongst the soldiers - Afrikaner and English alike - was considerably in advance of the civilian community back home.
In South Africa, however, the Nationalist Party steadily strengthened its grip on the key institutions of the Afrikaner community, with Dr Malan's own leadership during this turbulent period revealing him to be a master of tactical manoeuvre. Not only was he able to stave off the challenge of rival organizations like the O.B. and the New Order, but he was even able, in the teeth of pro-war sentiment and the overwhelming propaganda of the government, to strengthen his political position. The grand strategy of White apartheid worked out by the Broederbond during the twenties and thirties was beginning to pay dividends. Sealed off from all external contacts in the various volksorganisasies, the civilian Afrikaner, unlike his military counterpart, was insulated from the liberalizing currents prevalent during the war period. Ideas of reform, of new deals, of making the world safe for democracy, the genuine idealism which enabled the Allies to mobilize millions of people the whole world over and lead them in the great crusade which defeated the Axis powers - all this passed the Afrikaner by. Instead, he was subjected to a concentrated indoctrination designed to lead him in the opposite direction. His leaders made the enemy's cause their own. With some, of course, this was merely opportunism, a belief that the Germans would win the war and give the Afrikaner the chance to establish his republic. The innermost Nationalist cadres, however, drank deep at the fountain of Nazism and found in the Nuremberg laws confirmation and rationalization of the racist doctrines which they had traditionally espoused in South Africa.
The O.B. staked all on a German victory, and lost. After the battle of Stalingrad and the entry of the United States into the war, when it became clear that Hitler could no longer win, its influence gradually waned, though it remained a powerful force for many years. Malan himself was more astute. He also entertained the prospect of coming to power as the result of a German victory, but he had the foresight to keep his escape lines open and never loosened his grip on the Nationalist forces in the parliamentary field. Van Rensburg, contemptuous of democracy and convinced that he would be able to seize power by unconstitutional means, refused to accept nomination for parliament throughout the war period and after. At first this had greatly enhanced his reputation in the eyes of a people daily expecting a Nazi victory. But in the later years it was the solid weight of Malan's parliamentary support which proved more substantial. The membership of the O.B. might wax and wane, but the ranks of the Nationalist opposition in Parliament never wavered.
As the prospect of an Axis victory faded, so too did the O.B. leadership's hopes of ever attaining power. But with Malan it became just a question of fighting on another front, that was all. The fight might take a little longer, but the end result would be the same.
In this conviction, the Nationalists threw themselves into the preparations for the 1943 general elections with as much vigour and enthusiasm as ever. Basically their policy was the same as it had been before - the demand for a republic separated from the British Crown, independent of any foreign power, based on no foreign model but built in accordance with the Afrikaner people's nature and traditions and on the principles of people's government as embodied in the two former South African republics. While Christian-National in spirit and character, it would be based on true consideration of the equal political, language, and cultural rights of both sections of the White population. The White race and 'civilization' as a whole were to be safeguarded by means of the trusteeship principle.
The Nationalist election manifesto, however, was much milder than it would have been, say, two years earlier. The approach to the English-speaking voter was cautious and correct, while the more extreme objectives embodied in the 'draft constitution' for the future republic were carefully concealed.
Malan knew that he had no hope of winning the election, and he therefore carefully avoided entering into any election alliances with either the O.B. or the New Order group which might have bolstered his parliamentary strength but would at the same time have weakened his control of political Afrikanerdom and forced him to share the leadership with his rivals. The election results proved his strategy correct.
On the surface, the election results appeared to be a tremendous triumph for the Smuts government. The strength of the United Party was increased from seventy to eighty-five and the total strength of the coalition government from eighty-seven to 105 (Labour Party nine and Dominion Party seven). Including the native representatives and two Independents, the government could accordingly rely on 110 votes in the Assembly. On the other hand, the parliamentary opposition had been reduced to forty-three (compared with the sixty-seven who had voted against war in the 1939 debate and subsequently opposed the new Smuts government). The government's war policy had received the overwhelming endorsement of the electorate.
A closer analysis of the results, however, revealed a consolidation of the Afrikaner vote under Nationalist Party leadership. As compared with the twenty-seven seats it had won in the 1938 elections, the Nationalist tally was now forty-three - a substantial increase by any standards. Moreover, the Nationalist Party was now the sole representative of the opposition in Parliament. True to its beliefs, the O.B. had scorned the elections and made no effort to win any seats. The Afrikaner Party, however, had put up twenty-four candidates, every one of whom had been defeated. Moreover, the Afrikaner Party candidates had pooled only 14,759 votes, revealing that by and large they had negligible support in the community. The New Order had nominated no official candidates, but several members had stood as Volkseenheidskandidate or Independents and got nowhere.
The government parties had polled 640,000 votes or sixty four percent of the total; the opposition parties, 362,000 or thirty-six percent. According to calculations made by Roberts and Trollip in their book The South African Opposition, the U.P. had increased its vote by 82,000, but the Nationalist Party's increase had been 71,111, so that the ratio between the two parties had dropped from 184:100 in 1938 to 160:100 in 1943. In 1938, moreover, the Hertzogites had still been members of the United Party. The percentage of Afrikaners voting for the government had thus dropped from forty to thirty-two.
Malan could sit back quietly confident of the future. He was in sole political charge of Nationalist-minded Afrikanerdom. His rivals were scattered to the wind. His strength was steadily increasing. Despite the unfavourable turn of the war, he had every reason to be satisfied. In the Provincial elections which followed in October, the Nationalist Party forged still further ahead, gaining forty-eight seats. The Afrikaner Party, chastened by its showing in the general elections, had put up no candidates at all.
During the five years before the next general election, the Nationalist Party, while retaining its basic policies, changed its approach to the electorate with a view especially to winning support from the English-speaking voters. Even before the end of the war, democracy became fashionable once more, and nothing was heard of the need to establish a new State form which would inspire confidence in the enemy when the time came to negotiate. For of course by 1944 it had become clear that the Allies were fast headed for victory.
Malan outlined the 'new look' programme of his party in a speech at Stellenbosch on 9 November 1943, when he promised equal rights for English and Afrikaans and declared that the Nationalist Party aimed at a republic inside the Commonwealth. But it took some time to get the whole party lined up on this issue. At more or less the same time the irrepressible Eric Louw in a speech inveighed against a 'Smuts Republic' and pointed out that if South Africa remained inside the Commonwealth she would be 'hindered by British Liberalism in our efforts to solve the colour problem and the Jewish question'. Old habits die hard !
In a bid to break out of its self-imposed isolation and carry its policy to the English-speaking section, the Nationalist Party established in February 1945 an English weekly newspaper called The New Era, edited by Dr E.G. Jansen, who was later to become Minister of Native Affairs and then governor-general. What impact this paper made on the English-speaking voters it is difficult to say, but it was probably very little. Certainly the paper did not survive for long, and since coming to power the Nationalists have made no effort to resuscitate it.
Later in 1945, after the war was over, the Nationalist Party decided to make an assault on the English-speaking citadel of Johannesburg and staged its congress in the City Hall. This proved to be more than Johannesburg would stomach at that early stage. An ex-serviceman's organization, the Springbok Legion, called a mass meeting of protest on the City Hall steps to coincide with the opening of the congress. When the meeting ended, the crowd surged round the corner in a fury and attempted to break into the Nationalist congress. A strong force of police held the crowd at bay by means of repeated baton charges, but the battle raged fiercely throughout the night. Next day, as the ex-soldiers rallied their forces, the police advised the Nationalist Party to abandon its conference, since they could not guarantee the safety of participants. Malan and other top leaders were hustled out of the City Hall through a side-door, and the congress came to an end.
The approach to the English-speaking section had not got off to a very promising start, and in fact it is doubtful if many English votes were cast for the Nationalists in the 1948 election. Where Malan did make progress, however, was in winning ever greater support from the Afrikaners. The Afrikaans-speaking ex-serviceman, who probably voted for Smuts during the war, was soon brought back into the fold after demobilization, when he was once more subjected to pressure from Church, party, Press, and the hundred and one volksorganisasies with which he came into contact.
Malan also took steps to regularize his relations with the other Afrikaans political organizations. With the Ossewa Brandwag he still refused to have any truck, and in September 1944 the Transvaal Nationalist congress declared that membership of the O.B. was incompatible with membership of the Nationalist Party. But he entered into negotiations with the Afrikaner Party, led by N. C. Havenga, and by March 1947 the two parties had reached agreement to fight the 1948 elections as a united team. Malan thus abandoned the isolated stand he had adopted in 1943, no doubt considering that the moderation of the Afrikaner Party would help to win over a considerable proportion of those Afrikaners still supporting the United Party, while conceivably appealing as well to some English-speaking voters.
Meanwhile, the character of the Afrikaner Party had itself undergone a great change since the war. Members of the Ossewa Brandwag, barred from the Nationalist Party, had been advised to make the Afrikaner Party their home in the territory of party politics, and by 1948 it was estimated that some eighty percent of Afrikaner Party members were also members of the Ossewa Brandwag, while van Rensburg himself was on the party's Executive Committee. The 'moderate' Afrikaner Party was thus little more than a parliamentary front for the Ossewa Brandwag. Malan appeared to be driving the devil out of one side of his house and admitting him through the other.
Further to the right the discredited remnants of the New Order, the Greyshirts, and the Boerenasie in 1944 attempted to form a National Socialist Front. With the defeat of Hitler, however, their appeal had vanished and they gained no ground, though they threw their weight behind the Nationalist-Afrikaner Party alliance in the 1948 elections.
The main gimmick produced by the Nationalist Party for the general elections of 1948 was a new colour policy - the doctrine of apartheid. This was the work of a special commission which had been appointed by the party and was proclaimed in a pamphlet issued by the Head Office of the Nationalist Party shortly before the end of 1947. It said:
The policy of our country should encourage total apartheid as the ultimate goal of a natural process of separate development.
It is the primary task and calling of the State to seek the welfare of South Africa, and to promote the happiness and well-being of its citizens, non-White as well as White. Realizing that such a task can best be accomplished by preserving and safeguarding the White race, the Nationalist Party professes this as the fundamental guiding principle of its policy.
The pamphlet further declared that:
the Bantu in the urban areas should be regarded as migratory citizens not entitled to political or social rights equal to those of the Whites. The process of detribalization should be arrested.
The party proposed that apartheid should also be applied to the Coloureds, while the Indians were offered only the prospect of repatriation to India. The party regarded the Indians as an unassimilable element in South Africa.
There is no doubt that in its policy of apartheid the Nationalist Party had hit upon an election winner. To understand why, one has to consider what had been happening in the sphere of race relations under the Smuts Government.
The war had brought about a tremendous increase in industrialization and consequently in the demand for African labour. In the ten years up to 1943-4 the volume of output of manufacturing industry increased by 127.6 percent, while industrial employment increased by 96.6 percent, with particular expansion of the non-White labour force. For every 1,000 non Whites employed in secondary industry in 1935, some 2,100 were employed in 1946, while the comparable figure for Whites was only 1,350.
The bulk of the increase in the non-White labour force was provided by African workers, and the consequent growth in the number of urban Africans created a variety of social problems, not the least of which was provided by the increased competition between them and the poor Whites, the bulk of whom were Afrikaners.
The more progressive-minded elements in the United Party attempted to make an adjustment, mental as well as physical, to cope with these problems. Speaking at a meeting of the Institute of Race Relations in the Cape Town City Hall in January 1942, General Smuts made the weighty pronouncement that the traditional segregation policy had been a failure. To segregation he opposed the idea of trusteeship, not for the benefit of the trustee but for the benefit of the ward.
There is a death-rate among the children, a sickness rate among the adults, which we cannot tolerate....
When people ask what is the population of South Africa, I never say 2,000,000 (then the total White population). I think it is an outrage to say 2,000,000. This country has a population of over 10,000,000, and that outlook which regards the natives as not worth counting is the ghastliest mistake possible.... The native is carrying this country on his back.
In the same year Colonel Denys Reitz, Minister of Native Affairs, proposed the recognition of African trade unions, while Minister of Finance J. H. Hofmeyr proclaimed that henceforth White and Black should learn to live 'as common citizens of a common country '.
The government made some timid efforts to give effect to this new outlook, and a few social security measures for Africans, such as unemployment insurance and school-feeding allowances, were introduced. It also appointed the Fagan Commission to inquire into the situation arising from the increased African migration to the towns, and the Commission reported: that more than half the African population lived outside the Re serves in the European areas, on the farms and in the towns: that the Reserves were incapable of supporting the whole African population; that the urbanization of the Africans in the European areas was an irreversible trend which had to be accepted; and that it was impossible to confine the Africans to migratory labour.
Smuts had also set up a Social and Economic Planning Council to map out a programme for the future development of the country, and its Report No. 13, on the 'Economic and Social Conditions of the Racial Groups in South Africa', published in 1948, noted:
The townward movement which has characterized all the racial groups, but which is now becoming particularly marked among the natives, is therefore a natural response to economic pressure. From an economic point of view it is generally to be welcomed, since it usually implies a movement of labour to much more productive employment and hence to an increase in the national income. The movement must, of course, give rise to severe social stresses. But in the Council's view it would be wrong to try to eliminate these stresses by a futile attempt to stem the townward drift, since this would mean retarding economic development. Rather should the adjustment to the urban environment be assisted by positive measures such as the provision of adequate housing facilities and social services.
As we have seen, this ran directly counter to the apartheid policy of the Nationalist Party enunciated in 1947, which demanded that the townward drift of the Africans should be halted and labour maintained on a migratory basis. Fundamentally the differences between the two parties was due to the difference in their class basis. The United Party was the mouthpiece of the mining, financial, and industrial interests, mainly English and Jewish in composition, who stood to benefit from the industrial revolution through which the country was passing and were prepared to accept some of its social consequences. The Nationalist Party, on the other hand, was deeply rooted in the countryside, and while its advance guard was beginning to make incursions into the realms of finance and industry, it was still largely dominated by the outlook and needs of the farmer.
But it was not only the Nationalists who were alarmed by the urbanization of the African. A considerable portion of the United Party, especially that group with rural roots, was not prepared to take the road mapped out by the Fagan Commission and the Social and Economic Planning Council, and this division within the government was undoubtedly one of the factors responsible for the paucity of progressive legislation during the war and immediate post-war periods.
The result was that the problems accumulated - and nothing was done about them. Africans swarmed into the towns, many of them living in slums cheek by jowl with the poor Whites. In the African townships themselves overcrowding was intense, and the overflow spilled out into the surrounding areas where families squatted in conditions of indescribable squalor.
Pressing for improvements, the non-White organizations, trade unions, and the Communist Party launched militant campaigns of protest. In 1946, a total of 75,000 African miners came out on strike demanding a wage of 10s a day. Smuts sent his police and troops to quell the strike, and thirteen Africans were shot dead and a large number injured in clashes on the Reef. Afterwards two trials were staged: one against members of the Johannesburg District Committee of the Communist Party and a number of other people who were eventually found guilty of assisting the continuation of a strike; the second, a charge of sedition against the members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which dragged on for two years before being quashed in the Supreme Court.
The year 1946 also saw a great passive resistance campaign by South African Indians against the provisions of a law enacted by the Smuts government to peg property deals with Asians, who in return were given the right to elect three Whites to represent them in Parliament. The Indians rejected both portions of the Act and carried their fight right to the United Nations, where they succeeded in laying the basis for the mounting international condemnation of South Africa's apartheid policies.
Capitalizing on the troubles through which the country was passing and blaming them all on the integration policy of the United Party, the Nationalists warned that white civilization was in danger and fought to retain South Africa's traditional policy of baasskap (mastership).
The Transvaal leader of the Nationalist Party, J. G. Strijdom had said at an earlier period:
Our policy is that the Europeans must stand their ground and must remain baas in South Africa. If we reject the herrenvolk idea and the principle that the white man cannot remain baas, if the franchise is to be extended to the non-Europeans, and if the non-Europeans are given representation and the vote and the non-Europeans are developed on the same basis as the Europeans, how can the European remain baas . . . Our view is that in every sphere the Europeans must retain the right to rule the country and to keep it a white man's country.
The official apartheid policy was couched in more polite language. The only alternatives before the country, the special commission of the Nationalist Party had reported, were apartheid or complete equality. The United Party was following the latter course. Only apartheid could save the country from the ultimate disaster of miscegenation.
It [apartheid] envisages the maintenance and protection of the indigenous racial groups as separate ethnological groups with possibilities to develop in their own territories into self-reliant national units.... National policy must be framed in such a way that it promotes the ideal of eventual total apartheid in a natural way.
On 14 July 1947, Strijdom told the Nasionale Jeugbond (Nationalist Youth Association) at Bloemfontein:
The only alternative is the policy of the Nationalist Party of separation and apartheid in the sense that the natives must stay in their own territories and should come to the cities only temporarily as workers.
Integration or apartheid - that was the issue put to the voters in the 1948 elections. Nobody could be quite sure as yet what apartheid meant, but at least everybody was quite clear what it did not mean. It did not mean equality; it did not mean race mixing; it did not mean integration and the extension of rights to the non-Whites. Fundamentally the Nationalist Party stood for baasskap, and everybody knew what baasskap meant.
The results of the 1948 general elections were: the Nationalist Party - seventy seats; the United Party - sixty-five seats; the Afrikaner Party - nine seats; the Labour Party - six seats; Native Representatives - three seats.
The Nationalist-Afrikaner Party coalition accordingly had seventy-nine seats to a total of seventy-four for their opponents. The Smuts government had been defeated, with General Smuts even losing his own seat of Standerton.
Though they had polled 140,000 votes fewer than their opponents, the Nationalist-Afrikaner Party combination was now in power. A stunned country listened to the results as they were broadcast over the radio throughout the night. Not even the Nationalists had expected such a landslide - a gain of thirty-six seats as compared with the 1943 elections. Many an ex-serviceman thought to himself: Was this the fruit of victory, that the admirers of Hitler should come to power? As for Dr Malan, he was naturally triumphant.
'Today,' he said, ' South Africa belongs to us once more. For the first time since Union, South Africa is our own. May God grant that it will always remain our own.'