Absently fingering the scars on his face left by an assassin's bullets, silver-haired Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd overrode opposition shouts of protest as his Afrikaner steamroller rumbled relentlessly on toward its cherished goal of a republic. When the new era began on May 31, there would be no bill of rights in the constitution, no provision for a share in government for the nation's 12 million nonwhites. "We have made our concessions," he cried to the angry English-speaking deputies across the floor. The concessions: a small Union Jack would remain at the center of South Africa's new republican flag, and...
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