Nationalist Party Governments and Polichy 1948-78
Dr
Malan's NP government (1948-54) started with an overall majority of
only five seats in the House of Assembly of the white parliament. In
the election of 1948 the NP had actually received 140 000 fewer votes
than had the parties opposed to it, and had only obtained a majority
due to the weighting of votes per seat in favour of rural
constituencies where Afrikaners were predominant. Malan's first
priority, therefore, was to entrench the power of the NP. This was done
in successive steps.
First, a 1949 Act allowed the pro-NP white electorate of South West
Africa (present Namibia) to elect six seats in the House of Assembly
and four in the Senate. The NP won all ten seats.
Second, in 1951 the NP absorbed the Afrikaner Party with its nine seats.
Third, the Separate Representation of Voters Act (1951) effectively disfranchised the Coloured voters of the Cape (the Africans had been disfranchised in 1936) by removing them from the common roll and allowing them instead to elect four white representatives to parliament. This Act would make it much easier for the NP to win marginal seats in the Cape. The Act was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, as it had failed to gain a two-thirds majority of both houses of parliament combined.
Third, the Separate Representation of Voters Act (1951) effectively disfranchised the Coloured voters of the Cape (the Africans had been disfranchised in 1936) by removing them from the common roll and allowing them instead to elect four white representatives to parliament. This Act would make it much easier for the NP to win marginal seats in the Cape. The Act was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, as it had failed to gain a two-thirds majority of both houses of parliament combined.
Malan resigned in 1954, being unwilling to challenge the Supreme Court
on the issue. His successor as Prime Minister, Strijdom (1954-8), the
Transvaal strong man of the NP, packed the Senate with NP supporters
and in 1956 the required two-thirds majority was obtained. Strijdom's
government continued to entrench NP power in parliament by lowering the
voting age to 18 in 1958 - there were more Afrikaners than whites of
British origin in the 18 to 21 age group. Strijdom intensified Malan's
policy of strengthening NP and Afrikaner influence in the state
apparatus by deliberately Afrikanerizing the armed services and the
railways.
Most new appointments at senior level in these organizations were
filled by members of the Broederbond, the Afrikaner secret society
which ran the NP from behind the scenes.
The driving force of both Malan's and Strijdom's governments was not a
native-born Afrikaner but an immigrant from the Netherlands, Dr Hendrik
Verwoerd, who as Minister of Native Affairs (1950-8) was the architect
of the racist legislation of that period. Verwoerd, a former university
professor of psychology and philosophy, newspaper editor (1934-48) and
Senator (1948-50), was the ideologue of the NP and the leading
proponent of the theory of apartheid or separate development.
Verwoerd demonstrated all the zeal of a convert in his rigid application of theory to-practice as he tried to separate races and ethnic groups 'in their own areas', to unmix what had already become mixed, and to establish a rigid caste system backed with all the force of law.
Verwoerd demonstrated all the zeal of a convert in his rigid application of theory to-practice as he tried to separate races and ethnic groups 'in their own areas', to unmix what had already become mixed, and to establish a rigid caste system backed with all the force of law.
Verwoerd was elected to succeed Strijdom on the latter's death, and
ruled for eight years (1958-66) until his assassination by an
apparently demented white man, when he was succeeded by his Minister of
Justice, B.J. Vorster, South Africa's Himmler (1966-78). Verwoerd and
Vorster had past records of wartime links with the Nazis. Verwoerd, as
a newspaper editor, had sued for damages for being accused of
supporting Nazi propaganda, and lost the case.
Vorster had actually been a member of the pro-Nazi paramilitary Ossewa
Brandwag (Ox- Wagon Sentinel), which carried out acts of sabotage
against the Smuts government's anti- Hitler war effort. Vorster spent
much of the war in internment. Such men were "ideally suited for the
task of creating a South Africa where, in their opinion, the
'master-race' would rule in perpetuity, and in turning the country into
a full-blooded fascist state.
Their brand of racism was dignified by the title of "Christian
Nationalism', a doctrine based on traditional Afrikaner beliefs, as
preached by their Dutch Reformed Church, that God created the races
unequal and put the Dutch into South Africa as a chosen people to
dominate the blacks and (later) to defeat English liberalism.
The Afrikaner majority among the white voters, and a growing number of
whites of British origin, fearful of the rise of African protest,
rallied steadily to the NP in successive elections after 1958. NP
parliamentary fortunes rose and those of the opposition United Party
(UP) fell consistently (see the Table below). The number of seats held
by the National
The NP's greatest electoral triumph came in 1977 when it won 134 seats
and the two new parties (New Republic Party and Progressive Federal
Party) which replaced the now defunct UP got only 27 seats between them.
National Movements and New States in Africa