Dr. Malan's Invitation
The.white population of South Africa has voted for the con- tinuing subjugation of the black, and the Nationalists' majority is large. enough to ensure that there will be much talk of the " people's will " when it comes to dealing with a determined if somewhat depleted opposition. Dr. Malan's first act after making sure of his victory was to put out the bland suggestion that any thirteen members of the United Party who had it in them to support the Nationalists' apartheid, as distinct from the United Party's slightly less severe " separation " policy, might care to join him. Thirteen quislings would be of the greatest value to Dr. Malan, for with them he would enjoy the two- thirds majority without which he cannot legally remove or amend the " entrenched " clauses in the Union's constitution. The first desire of the Nationalists is to remove the Cape Coloureds, who number 200,000 and always vote solidly against the Nationalists, from the voters' rolls. The next stage could quite possibly be the dismissal of English from its constitutional position of equal status with Afrikaans as an official language. For it is not the idea of white supremacy which divides the whites of South Africa (in this matter the United Party's policy is distinguished only finely from Dr. Malan's) but that of Afrikaner supremacy. This is the avowed aim of the great majority of Nationalists. Mr. Strauss has returned a rough answer to Dr. Malan's straight-faced call for traitors, but it remains to be seen whether the Nationalists will once again press for the elevation of Parliament, as a " High Court," over the judiciary. Whatever happens, tension will continue to grow—between black and white on the one hand, and on the other between the two divisions of the European population.
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