Mohammed's Coffin

In South Africa's Parliament last week Opposition Leader Sir De Villiers Graaff called for a vote of no confidence in the government. "Apartheid," he cried, "has become something like Mohammed's coffin suspended between the heaven of total apartheid and the earth of the hard facts of the South African situation, with farmers, industrialists and mining interests demanding more labor."

As usual, the Nationalist majority easily (91-48) overrode the opposition United Party's no-confidence motion. But the Nationalists are in serious disarray. Prime Minister Johannes Gerhardus Strydom has been ill for months with a heart ailment, and a doctor's report last week made it seem unlikely he could ever serve again. With new elections scheduled for April, the scramble for National Party power is likely to be between unbendingly racist Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, the favorite leader of extremist Transvaal, and Dr. Theophilus DOenges, who draws his support from the slightly more liberal Nationalists of the Cape Town area. As a compromise, party leadership may fall to Minister of Justice Charles Swart, whose most notable recent contributions to jurisprudence have been his anti-Communist laws, his introduction of whipping for criminals, and his recent bill urging the death penalty for armed robbery.

There is unrest in the rank and file of the party. The extremist newspaper Transvaler has recently printed letters from troubled readers warning that "we dare not keep the African in our country and deny him full civil rights . . . We are going to pay with the blood of our children for the luxury we enjoy today. That is the ugly truth." There is a strong but probably wishful feeling in United Party circles that the nation is turning away from the Nationalists. For the Africans there is little choice. The United Party also wants the African kept in his place, but more gently.

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