Isolation

South Africa last week was in the grip of a war scare. Who the enemy was, nobody quite knew. But the danger was there all right, declared Defense Minister Jacobus Johannes Fouche, who rose in Cape Town's Senate to cry: "Military action against our country is being openly advocated and secretly planned. There exists in Africa the potential to call up an army of liberation. In spite of threats we shall not yield. We must be militarily strong." With that. Fouche announced plans for the biggest military buildup in South Africa's peacetime history. The new budget called for a 70% increase (to $168 million) for defense spending.

In fact, none of the black nations to the north are nearly strong enough to rally their troops for invasion of the despised white stronghold on Africa's southern tip. It might come one day, but hardly soon. The psychosis of fear being whipped up by Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd's Afrikaner government was merely a reflection of its growing sense of isolation on a continent now virtually run by black Africans. Already. South African Airways has begun regular nonstop, 5,000-mile flights to Europe with its Boeing 707 jets, for the number of countries on the Dark Continent that will permit South Africa's planes to land and refuel is shrinking fast.

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