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Severe Repression. In South Africa proper, of course, the nonwhites are still severely repressed. For all the billikheid, in fact, Vorster's regime is pressing for early passage of two new bills aimed at the so-called "Colored" (mulatto) population, which once enjoyed almost equal privileges with the whites. The bill would empower the government to draft Colored youths into a labor corps in which they could be subjected to "the performance of any kind of work." The bill would also automatically deny white status to anyone, even blue-eyed blondes, unable to prove that both parents were bona fide whites.
Although Vorster obviously has no intention of scuttling apartheid overnight, the few changes he has made so far have given moderate South African whites the first hint of encouragement in nearly two decades of Nationalist Party rule. "The best that can be hoped for," notes Johannesburg's influential Financial Mail, "is that sufficient non-whites will respond to any relaxation of apartheid that is forthcoming to make the Nationalist Party feel it was worth making. The worst that can be feared is that the government's good intentions will be snubbed, encouraging South Africa to retreat into even lonelier isolation."