Justice in South Africa

In restless South Africa, where a stern and self-righteous government is deliberately widening the gulf between races, violent passions were producing more & more violent demands. Nationalist Prime Minister Daniel Malan last week asked for dictatorial emergency powers from Parliament.

The proposal was laid before Parliament by Malan's Minister of Justice, towering (6 ft. 6 in.) Charles R. Swart. Given to melodramatic gestures (he once loped into Parliament with a cat-o'-nine-tails under his arm to show his attitude toward Negroes), Swart needed no props this time to dramatize his proposal. He wanted authority to suspend most of South Africa's laws whenever he may consider that "public safety" demands it. The law would allow the government--and Swart specifically--to proclaim a state of emergency throughout South Africa, or in any part of it, and then suspend all civil rights, censor or suspend the press, prohibit public assembly, confiscate property, search and seize, create concentration camps. Swart could keep the emergency measures in force indefinitely, simply by renewing the proclamation.

With national elections in the offing (April), Malan's opposition has found-it expedient to oppose gently, for most of South Africa's whites approve of keeping the Negro "in his place," though occasionally deploring some of Malan's methods.

But Swart's bill was too much. It brought the United Opposition leader, Jacobus Gideon Nel Strauss, to his feet for a rare, effectual fighting speech. "Fear now stalks the land," he cried. "South Africa has become a crisis country . . . Today the inner clique of Nationalist leaders are in charge of a juggernaut . . . They ride it in arrogance and vengeance ... I charge these . . . leaders with the destruction of unity between the whites; with the use of fear and the trickery of a word (apartheid) to gain power--a word which has become an evil symbol throughout the world; with having shown contempt for all decent Christian sentiments in non-white relations . . .; with alienating friendly nations abroad; with . . . violating the rule of law to retain power."

The moderate Johannesburg Star also recoiled. "Both as a dangerous threat to public liberties, and as an irresponsible act on the Reichstag fire model," it editorialized, "the bill must be opposed by every means." There was no sign, however, that Malan's Nationalist majority in Parliament felt anything but. admiration for Justice Minister Swart's plan.

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