In London last week, politicians, bankers and bureaucrats, answering an insistent jangle of telephones, turned pale at what they heard. South African gold shares broke wide open on the stock exchange, tumbled more than $300 million. Winston Churchill augustly gloomed: "A great world statesman has fallen, and with him his country will undergo a period of anxiety and perhaps a temporary eclipse."
Jan Christian Smuts, the wise, venerable, oak-solid Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, was out of office. South Africa, which had been considered safe in the fold of...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
