Protest & Danger

Prime Minister Strydom, who is bound and determined that the whites shall wield all the power in a nation where they are outnumbered four to one, wanted to get the last non-white voters--the 45,000 colored (mixed-race) folk--off the white voting lists. The High Court said he could not, without a two-thirds vote in Parliament. So the Nationalists decided to pack the Senate to get the bill through, and to pack the court to make sure that it was held constitutional. At that point, many who agreed with Strydom's policy of white dominance disagreed with what he was doing to South Africa's legal and political traditions. The official opposition, and the businessmen, and the English-language newspapers, and many of the Afrikaans-speaking professors of Stellenbosch University, spoke out even though they knew that their protests were in vain. Last week rose the wrath of two other groups--the white women and the natives.

The Women. In 36 South African cities a new militant outfit called the Women's Defense of the Constitution League set up tables on the sidewalks, where passers-by could sign petitions against the Senate bill. All told, 100,000 women signed the petition, and the militants climbed in their cars and descended on Pretoria, the administrative capital, from all over South Africa. Led by a lady drummer, the women marched on the government offices, many of them singing Die Stem, the official national anthem. They were met by the Minister of Transport, deputizing for Strydom, but all that he could tell them was: "There can be no compromise when the life [of the white man] is at stake."

The women stamped out, and in the freezing weather formed a laager (camp) at the foot of a statue of General Louis Botha, valiant warrior against the British in the Boer War. All night long and all the next day and night they stayed there, huddled in blankets and occasionally chanting, "Save the Constitution." Hoodlums tried to move them by throwing firecrackers, but the husbands of some of the women stood by and chased them off. Meanwhile, the women addressed letters to the people of South Africa; among them was a German immigrant who wrote: "I do not want to live in a country where arrogance and the Herrenvolk ideal can suppress honesty and freedom."

On the third day the women went home. "Their demonstration," said the Johannesburg Star, "is a warning that a country governed against its will may become ungovernable."

The Communists. The government was also confronted by a second demonstration, a "Congress of the People," which brought together 4,000 Negroes, Indians and colored at the native location of Kliptown, outside Johannesburg. There South Africa's Communists made a determined effort to pull the three big non-white groups in South Africa into a single anti-government front. For the first time, the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress and the South African Colored People's Organization (all Communist infiltrated) sent delegates to sit on the same platform. More important, they sat alongside the Congress of Democrats, a clump of European fellow travelers whose object is to convert the non-white majority of South Africans to Communism.

Communist props were everywhere. There was a Communist "pavilion of peace" and a little African girl at the entrance, selling a booklet entitled "South Africans in the Soviet Union." Communist China's Premier Chou En-lai cabled a message of support. To most of the 4,000 Africans who listened to the vivid harangues, much of the Marxist language probably made little sense when translated into Zulu or Sotho. But to the small group of Negro intellectuals, a "Freedom Charter," introduced at the meeting, did have an appeal. With the literates among them leading, Africans, Indians and colored folk alike cheered charter phrases such as "ownership of the people" with the cry: "Mayibuye, Afrika" (Africa, come back). The only thing they seemed sure of was that the charter was antigovernment.

Readymade Opportunity. In its countermeasures, the Nationalist government was at its most inept. On their way to the congress at Kliptown, many of the "delegates" were hauled out of their trucks and cars by cops on the pretext that they did not have proper papers. Police photographers shot pictures of every white man attending the congress, including newsmen ("Just for the record," they explained), and at one point, armed police forced the male delegates to empty their pockets and the women to turn out their handbags, on the suspicion that some of them were carrying "inflammatory material."

"Angered and frustrated by the police, many of the Africans seemed willing to acknowledge the leadership of the Congress of Democrat Reds," cabled TIME Correspondent Edward Hughes. "This is the tragedy of non-white politics in South Africa: Nationalist officialdom crushes all African leadership, extreme and moderate alike. The ordinary black man is left so frustrated that he is willing to listen to anyone who curses the government loudly enough. It is a readymade opportunity for the Communists."

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