The Other Struggle

The clash of black v. white is not the only thing that divides South Africa. The division between English and Boer is still bitter.

In its effort to stamp out British influence, South Africa's Afrikaner government has taken the Queen's face off the postage stamps, removed the wigs from the heads of Parliament officials, and renamed army regiments (the Midlands Regiment became the Gideon Scheepers). But no Nationalist will be happy until a republic is declared, removing once and for all the Crown's technical sovereignty.

Last week, secure in the knowledge that Afrikaners outnumber South Africa's English-speaking citizens, the Nats rammed through legislation for a nationwide referendum on the question. But Parliament rang with the hot passions of the Boer War. Nationalist newspapers exhorted Afrikaners to contribute toward a $420,000 fund to carry on the republic campaign. But in Natal, the stronghold of the English-speaking population, thousands of antirepublicans flocked to Durban's electoral offices to check their registrations for the vote expected in October.

Many feared the Nationalists would pull out of the Commonwealth, destroying the economic advantages of preferential tariffs and British investment money. Others were simply apprehensive at the prospect of greater Afrikaner control that a republic would bring, along with an acceleration of Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd's harsh policy of apartheid. Taking heart from Verwoerd's steady recovery in a Pretoria hospital (last week doctors successfully operated to remove both of the assassin's bullets), the Afrikaners riposted by accusing the English-speakers of divided loyalties. Nationalist M.P. Dr. Carel de Wet shouted: "The real enemy of the white man is the white man."

But the Afrikaner government was no longer hoping for the two-thirds majority it had once accepted as necessary to change the constitution. A government spokesman announced it had now been decided that a simple majority would be enough. At this, Natal's Douglas Mitchell rose and shouted at the Nationalists across the aisle: "Go and be damned!" He went on to threaten that if the government won with only a small majority in the referendum. Natal might rebel and become a South African Ulster.

But Natal's threats were mostly bluster. When the time came, most Natalians and other English-speaking South Africans would accept the republic that the Nationalists almost certainly would force on the nation, referendum or no.

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