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Hard Solution. Jan Christian Smuts used to say, "If we see any wrong, let's put it right without bothering about possible repercussions on our grandchildren." But Daniel Malan, stiff-necked in his self-righteousness, has chosen to force a hard solution. The heirs of Smuts in Parliament are ineffectually led by boyish-faced Jacobus Gideon Strauss, an anglicized Boer who apes Smuts's mannerisms but lacks his master's voice. Outside Parliament they have found an idealistic but impulsive leader in Adolf ("Sailor") Malan, a cousin of the Prime Minister's and an ex-R.A.F. group captain in the Battle of Britain. Sailor Malan has organized 175,000 World War II veterans in his Torch Commando, which is pledged to defend the constitution—if necessary, by force. Said he last week: "I make this last-minute appeal to Prime Minister Malan to turn away from this dangerous path before it is too late."
The moneyman behind the opposition is South Africa's wealthiest man: fabulous Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, the diamond king, who owns gold and uranium mines, railways and newspapers as well. The industrialists want cheap Negro labor. Neither industrialists nor liberals want to abolish South Africa's color bar, but both are willing to give the blacks more education and opportunity. In the heightened emotions of the present crisis, they find it necessary to show that they are not "nigger lovers." Arguing in Parliament for technical training for black workers, Jacobus Strauss declared, "Higher skills are in any case beyond the capacity of Negroes." Oddly enough, it was an ardent Malanite who set him straight. "Negroes can do skilled work if trained for it," replied Malan's Labor Minister Barend
("Ben") Schoeman. "That's just why we must not let them, for it would imperil white civilization."
Slow Awakening. Confused though they might be by the problem of a white minority in a black man's continent, the heirs of Jan Christian Smuts yet saw very clearly last week the dangers of dictatorship in the swaggering advance of Boer nationalism. British South Africans, for so long politically apathetic, had at last bestirred themselves. A moral awakening was taking place in South Africa. There were signs of new alliances to meet the common threat to constitutional liberties. Even many law-abiding Boers were distressed by Premier Malan's extra-legal methods, and some of his own party thought he was going too far. They found ominous the sights & sounds of Boer chauvinism: the way Malanite musclemen break up opposition meetings with eggs, tomatoes and stones; the budding of a private Nationalist army (Skietkommando) along the lines of Hitler's SS; the uniformed children chanting "Hou Koers" (Hold steadfast).
Fervent Daniel Malan's divided nation has become a tense and uneasy place. His attempt to put his regime above the courts seemed certain of passage in Parliament, and is plainly a big step to committing South Africa to a one-party totalitarian state. It is no better for being done in God's name.
* The white man is economically well protected by such legislation as the 1926 "Color Bar" Act, which forbids black laborers to perform "white," i.e., skilled, jobs.