(Sec Cover)
On one toe of Cape Town's Table Mountain, that looks toward the point where the royal blue waters of the Indian Ocean merge into the Atlantic, a huge and stately house rears its white bulk among acres of hydrangeas. The house is Groote Schuur (Great Barn); once it belonged to famed Empire Builder Cecil Rhodes; Rudyard Kipling used to winter there. Past its well-stocked deer park one morning last week sped a shiny. Packard sedan, followed by a Ford. Shortly after 11 a.m., the Packard drew up outside South Africa's Parliament House in Cape Town six miles away. The Ford parked behind, and its driver, a burly, red-faced cop, ran to the Packard. He leaned inside and slowly, very slowly, helped out the most powerful man in Africa: Prime Minister Daniel François Malan. Half supported by his bodyguard, 78-year-old Daniel Malan mounted the steps and disappeared inside. A watching Negro spat. That afternoon, Malan (pronounced m' lawn) squatted on the front bench of the House of Assembly and heard the opposition call him a "Hitlerite," a charge which he has certainly invited but not yet fully earned. His government had just introduced a bill designed to destroy the independence of South Africa's highest court; if passed, it would give absolute power to the majority Nationalist Party. As explained to Parliament by Nationalist Minister of the Interior Dr. Theophilus
Dönges, the "High Court" bill would make a joint parliamentary session (controlled by Nationalists) the supreme arbiter of whether the laws passed by Parliament are or are not constitutional. Malan called the bill a democratic measure to establish the supremacy of Parliament. But its real purpose was more sinister. Six weeks ago, South Africa's Supreme Court declared unconstitutional one of Malan's Jim Crow laws which disfranchised 50,000 half-caste voters. (It had been passed without the necessary two-thirds majority.) Instead of obeying the court, Malan decided to change the rules.
In the House of Assembly, United Party Leader Jacobus Gideon Strauss rose in deadly earnest to denounce the new bill as "bogus" and "a fraud." All week long the House hotly debated the bill. In all the hue & cry, the hurling of insults and shaking of fists, Malan was the calmest man there. He had the votes.
Rumors of Rebellion. The Strauss party carried the fight to the country. Strongarm squads of both sides brawled in the streets and there were rumors that would not be downed of rebellion and civil war. "The time has come," wrote an Orange Free State Boer to his local newspaper, "when all burghers should be armed . . . with a rifle and a thousand rounds of ammunition. Who knows what lies ahead?" A German South African who had fled from Hitler thought he knew.
"I've seen it all before. You've got Naziism in the first degree: crowds of students breaking up opposition meetings, the highest court being overruled, huge 'strength through joy' festivals, frenzied resentment of criticism from abroad. I'm leaving."