Blitz Election

The Paper Controller issued candidates 125 pounds of paper and the Petrol Controller gave them extra gasoline. For the quick eight-week campaign, that was plenty. South Africans dubbed it the "blitz election": most of the electorate had not expected it until late summer; some had not believed there would be an election until after the war. As they voted this week, South Africans knew that Prime Minister Jan Christiaan Smuts had set the election date early because victory in North Africa had come so soon. They also knew that canny Field Marshal Smuts would not have called the election until he was certain that his United Party and its coalition would crush anti-war opponents at the polls.

The vote will divide as South Africa has long been divided: General Smuts, his Government and the firm majority of the people want their country to continue its full participation in the United Nations' war effort. The opposition to the Government has been fascistic, antiwar, pro-Axis.

The Opposition. Chief parties who have opposed the Smuts coalition are the Herenigde, New Order and Afrikaner. They do nothing better than bite at each other. Strongest of the three is Dr. Daniel Franc,ois Malan's Herenigde Party. His candidates are antiwar, antiCommunist, anti-Negro. When Hitler and the Axis were riding high, Malanites cheered for Axis victory; now they say they only want the Union of South Africa to be neutral. But in this campaign Dr. Malan ranted: "It is a hundred times better that England and America should lose and not win the war, because their victory will mean that Communism is forced on the world."

Dr. Malan is not so foolish as he sounds. He knows he cannot win this year, and his strategy in this election has been to kill off the rival New Order and Afrikaner Parties, absorb all anti-British South Africans into the Herenigde Party. His long-run aim is victory in the next (1948) election. His platform then will consist of one big plank: to take South Africa out of the British Empire and establish it as an independent republic. And he will dearly hope that popular strong-man Smuts, 73, will have passed from the political scene by 1948.

By election day, Smuts's supporters were highly optimistic: Government newspapers were giving Smuts's United Party between 100 and 110 of Parliament's 150 seats. Prime Minister Smuts thought he smelled complacency, told his people the election would be a referendum on the war issue in which every vote would count. Then he said something most South Africans hated to hear: "I want the coming election fight to be final, for this old horse is now running its last race."

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