• Afrikanerdom bids for power
RHODESIA FRANK CLEMENTS
Frank Clements, a former mayor of Salisbury (1963-64), was suggested by Mr Wilson to Mr Smith as a suitable cabinet minister in the putative interim government during last year's abortive talks on board HMS Tiger.
When the Rhodesian Front holds its annual congress in Salisbury next month Mr Ian Smith will face a challenge from Captain Louis Boshoff, who is seeking election to the chair- manship of the party in opposition to the present incumbent, a strong supporter of Mr Smith. Captain Boshoff, a substantial farmer and postwar immigrant from South Africa, is the most striking example to date of the way in which the Afrikaners are rapidly emerging from the shadows of Rhodesian politics. His bid for the chairman's gavel may on this occa- sion be repulsed. But what is significant is that it should be made at all.
From the establishment of white Rhodesia in September 1890 until 1964 when Mr. Win- ston Field resigned the premiership, the Afrikaner was one of Rhodesia's underdogs. He never suffered any legal disabilities, but the Rhodesian establishment, which soon asserted itself, was very much British orien- tated. Social prejudice against the 'Dutchmen,' as they were called, was overwhelming and kept them out of all positions of influence, even in the farming community where their numbers were strongest.
Although it was a narrower thing than the vote (8,774 to 5,989) suggests, the referendum held in 1922, calling for self-gowernment rather than absorption in South Africa, more or less destroyed for a whole generation Afri- kaner political influence. As late as 1948, Sir Godfrey Huggins, as he then was, could panic the English-speaking electorate by raising the suggestion that his right-wing opponents were in favour of official bilingualism.
The postwar immigration did little to modify these attitudes. Indeed, many of the new settlers were English-speaking 'refugees' from the victory of the Nationalist party in South Africa. Before and during the Federation, the number of Afrikaners who held important office in politics, administration, commerce, finance and even farming was small in rela-
tion to the size of their group. It is true that Sir Roy Welensky has an Afrikaans mother, but his route to power was through Northern rather than Southern Rhodesia, and to the very _ end he made a great play of being more British than Britain.
Until the 1962 elections which brought the Rhodesia Front into power, even the right- wing group, which could safely rely on them for support, took the Afrikaners for granted. But the Rhodesian Front party differed from its predecessors in that it had a much stronger and continuously active 'grass-roots' organi- sation. It was the first Rhodesian party in which policy came up from the members, regularly consulting at house meetings, and at branch and divisional level besides national congresses. This gave greatly increased in- fluence to the Afrikaner, an intensely political person prepared to work steadily and at all times within a movement, not just reserving his energies and enthusiasm for the occasional crisis.
The Afrikaners also work hard outside the party, for example in local government, the Rhodesian Tobacco Association and the Rho- desian National Farmers' Union, to get their men into key positions and their policies accepted. They still prefer to work through intermediaries. For example, the prolonged campaign to get Rhodesian Front control on the key Salisbury City Council, which, after three years, at last achieved success in the 1967 municipal elections, was organised by a Mr Idensohn, himself an employee of the municipality but also chairman of the Salis- bury East division of the party. There are no Afrikaners on the Salisbury Council, but Mr Idensohn and his lieutenants are known to be consulted with much deference before any Rhodesian Front caucus council decisions are made.
Mr Carol Heurtley, a courageous man with a mind of his own, remains president of the Rhodesian Tobacco Association. But his coun- cil is Afrikaner-dominated, and Mr Heurtley has negligible executive powers and must follow the council's line. In a similar way, the Afrikaners in the Rhodesian National Farmers' Union are now very strongly entrenched at branch level, and although there has been fric- tion between the ruling council, overwhelmingly English-speaking, and the association, Captain Louis Boshoff has openly boasted that the president, Mr Tim Mitchell, is his man.
Both before and, more intensively, after um a bitter campaign of hatred for and denigra- tion of all things British, from the Queen to the BBC, has developed. Once again, the spokes- men have been English-speaking, from Harvey Ward, the de facto controller of all news and comment on Rhodesian radio and television, to the artisans screaming abuse of Britain at public meetings in broad provincial English and Scots accents. But this denial of their own culture has made it difficult for the Rhodesians of British stock to resist, were they inclined to do so, the latest moves from extremist groups of Afrikaners to dominate Rhodesian life, either directly or through- their puppets. These extremists largely came to Rhodesia after the war, and probably make up the majority of white immigrants since urn. Their overriding loyalty is to their native country, to the politics of the South African Nationalist party and to the religious and social teachings of the Dutch Reformed Church. They see themselves as a striking force for Afrikanerdom, deter- mined to establish economic and political paramountcy, if not complete hegemony, throughout Southern Africa.
They are unlikely to be seriously resisted by their more moderate (though still right- orientated) fellow Afrikaners, whose loyalty to their culture and to their own institutions is not so easily eroded as has been that of the English-speaking group. And they can expect support from many other minorities, from the Greek and Cypriot to the Southern Irish, with either hostility towards Britain or at best little attachment to it.
A minority within a minority is now making a bid for power in Rhodesia. The politically astute Afrikaners have seen from their own history how determined minorities can prevail, quite apart from how often they have done
so in Africa and, indeed, the world at large in the last generation. The movement is now gaining momentum to turn Rhodesia into a client state not only of South Africa but of Afrikanerdom.
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