The Afrikaners' Two-Front War:
HATCH, JOHN
White supremacy and a republic are objectives of The Afrikaner's Two-Front War By John Hatch LONDON ON SUNDAY, December 16, 1838, the Umslatos River in Natal ran red with the blood of 3,000...
...The non-Europeans are being taught that they must live where the Government decrees and act only as the Government wishes or face drastic penalties...
...Republicanism is a religion...
...They saw that, in spite of segregation, a steady stream of Africans entered the towns to serve the needs of industry and domestic service...
...Even the acquisition of the Naval Base at Simonstown, now under discussion with the British Government, will be of scant value to a South African Navy composed of one or two obsolete vessels, without the support of the British Fleet...
...It will also open the way again to further pressure by the Union on Britain for the transfer of the unwilling million Africans in Basutoland, Swaziland and Bechuanaland...
...Strijdom and his friends would like to return to the rural background of Kruger's Boer Republic, but the economic foundations of the country are built today on British-dominated industry...
...Malan's racialism and to establish an Afrikaner Republic which will abolish British influence...
...Daniel Malan, has already taken South Africa a long way toward a completely caste state...
...Every pretension of the 10 million Africans, Coloreds and Indians to claim the right of democratic citizens has been ruthlessly crushed...
...They see traces of liberalism still entrenched, particularly in the Cape...
...He crushed the African movement of passive resistance in 1953 by taking extreme powers to flog and imprison resisters...
...The most important of these measures is undoubtedly the packing of the Appeal Court...
...If the split in the white community becomes deep, the non-Europeans will find an opportunity to assert their rights...
...The new Deputy Prime Minister, Charles (Blackie) Swart, once waved a cat-o'-nine-tails in Parliament to indicate his attitude to non-Europeans...
...These are the dilemmas which face Strijdom and his new Government...
...They had died in a three-hour battle against the guns of 460 Afrikaner Voortrekkers...
...The ultimate test of Strijdom's political career may well center on his relations with English-speaking South Africa...
...This Republic, according to a draft published during the war, is to have only the Boer National Anthem, Afrikaans as its first official language, burghers selected by the state as its only citizens, and a State President "directly and only responsible to God altogether independent of any thought of Parliament...
...Malan, South Africa had become a state in which 2.5 million whites ruled and administered for their own comfort and 11 million non-whites were given the choice of either primitive tribalism or becoming the servants of their white masters...
...Verwoerd, began a policy of confining Africans to their tribal reserves, forcibly removing 70,000 of them from their homes, and now taking complete control of their education so as to condition them for their position of inferiority...
...He will complete that shift of power from the old British Cape to the Boer Transvaal which has been continuing ever since 1909, and which will be completed if he moves Parliament from Cape Town to Pretoria...
...Yet, even after the independent South African State was established, many of the Boers maintained their bitterness...
...All previous Prime Ministers recognized that white supremacy could only be maintained if unity between the two sections of the European community was preserved...
...The failure of the African Congress to raise any serious opposition to the removal of the non-Europeans in Western Johannesburg leaves the non-European majority of the population comparatively leaderless and unorganized...
...He distrusts the English-speaking South African who can always return to Britain in time of trouble...
...Under Dr...
...It was in order to defeat this dual menace that Strijdom was selected as the new Prime Minister...
...White supremacy and a republic are objectives of The Afrikaner's Two-Front War By John Hatch LONDON ON SUNDAY, December 16, 1838, the Umslatos River in Natal ran red with the blood of 3,000 white-plumed Zulu warriors...
...Strijdom will continue this policy, but he and his friends were impatient with Dr...
...They can thus alter the Constitution at will, freed from the danger of interference by the Courts...
...It is these two memories that today color every thought of the Nationalist Afrikaner...
...This may lead to much more immediate danger for the Government than can be presented at present by the non-Europeans—though one should always bear in mind that the white opposition is extremely weak, very divided and basically accepts the racial principles of the Nationalists...
...And he has started on the process of removing non-Europeans from their Western township in Johannesburg...
...He has already greatly strengthened the power of the state by making it a criminal offense to leave the country without a passport (which his Government frequently refuses to issue to its opponents), by giving powers to all policemen in the Union to enter any premises and search them without a warrant, and now by packing the Appeal Court bench...
...Slrijdom's predecessor...
...On May 31, 1902, at Vereeniging in the Transvaal, it was the turn of the Afrikaners to suffer defeat at the end of the Boer War with the British...
...They are frightened of the power of British industrialists in the expansion of gold, uranium and secondary industries...
...Each time, the Appeal Court has declared the measure unconstitutional because it has not secured the two-thirds majority necessitated by the South Africa Act...
...He fears the Africans and believes that they will turn him out of his country at the first opportunity...
...This political interference in judicial affairs, which will enable the Government to remove the Cape Coloreds from the common electoral roll in the Cape, in effect gives the Nationalists absolute power...
...For four years, they have been trying every possible method to remove the Cape Coloreds, not only because of their apartheid policy but also because this alone can assert the sovereignty of Parliament over the judiciary...
...Strijdom declares that he has two ambitions: to establish a permanent supremacy of the while man over the black, and then to found an Afrikaner Republic in South Africa...
...In 1909, the Boer Republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State were linked with the Cape and Natal, and self-government was restored to them in the new Union of South Africa...
...Malan's pace...
...It is here that their two fears join together...
...It could even lead to the loss by the British of the equality of their language...
...The Afrikaners have celebrated December 16 ever since as a national festival on which they thank God for their victory...
...Strijdom personifies these fears and the determination to preserve the Afrikaner stake...
...He and his Minister of Native Affairs, Dr...
...The Afrikaner has only South Africa to look to and no other homeland or loyalty...
...The two bitter memories against African and Briton are linked in the personal outlook of the new Prime Minister, Johannes Strijdom...
...This means, in effect, that the Nationalists can now set up a Republic by a simple majority and alter the whole constitutional basis of the state without interference...
...If the Nationalists break with the English-speaking section, alienating Britain and the Commonwealth, they will also stand isolated before their other great fear, the forces of Communism...
...Fanatical and ideological policies can never solve them, but the attempt by these means may well stir profound trouble, not only for South Africa but for the whole Dark Continent...
...He is to accelerate the pace of Dr...
...The Nationalists have now taken the extreme step of appointing five additional judges to the Appeal Court favorable to their cause...
...Now, however, the white population is beginning to be taught the same lesson...
...British influence is entrenched in industry, and industrial needs bring white and black together in the life of the new towns...
...Verwoerd, have already begun to implement the Bantu Education Act, which will enable them to indoctrinate all African children with their racial ideas...
...Then another close associate of Strijdom, Dr...
...We have to understand the genuine Afrikaner fears...
...They had seen their farms burnt, their women and children herded into concentration camps, and on that day thousands of bitter Afrikaner Commandos swore revenge against Britain...
Vol. 38 • April 1955 • No. 17
