Snapping Threads

Prime Minister Malan last week snapped two more of the tenuous threads linking the Union of South Africa to the British Commonwealth. His government:

P:Brushed aside God Save the Queen as South Africa's national anthem in favor of Die Stem van Suid Afrika (The Voice of South Africa), a thundering Afrikaner hymn.

P:Created a batch of new military awards, topped by the "Cape of Good Hope" decoration, a five-sided disk which takes precedence over all other decorations, orders and medals. South African heroes of the two World Wars who won Britain's coveted V.C. (Victoria Cross) at Flanders or El Alamein may still wear their medals, but these are now to be regarded as "foreign" decorations.

Malan's headlong rush towards a narrow Afrikaner state--anti-British and anti-black--was too much for one of South Africa's oldest living heroes: 80-year-old General Sarel Francois Alberts. In the Boer War, Alberts fought alongside the late great Field Marshal Smuts against the hated British; after Smuts made peace (in 1902), they fought one another. Alberts, in 1914, rebelled against South Africa's pro-British government; he was defeated and captured by one of Smuts's toughest lieutenants: Dolf de la Rey. Since then, captor and captive have gone their separate ways: Alberts backed Malan; De la Rey is now vice president of the anti-Malan Torch Commando.

Last week white-bearded Sarel Alberts invited white-bearded Dolf de la Rey to visit his farm. He had been thinking things over. Said Alberts to his lifelong friend and enemy: "I know the Nationalists well. They are unfit to rule the country. I want to join Torch and fight them."

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