A Slow Swallowing

South West Africa is 900 miles of treeless coast and diamond-bearing desert populated by Afrikaners, Bastards (mixed blood settlers from the old Cape Colony). Hottentots. Hereros and the largest colony of Germans ever to settle anywhere in the former German empire. The name of the capital's principal street is still Kaiserstrasse, and waiters in its sand-pitted beer parlors answer to the call of Herr Ober. For 35 years South West Africa (pop. 450,000). taken from Germany at Versailles and put under a League of Nations mandate, has been run by the Union of South Africa, whose Nationalist government has long wanted to throw off U.N. surveillance and incorporate it as a fifth province.*

Last week the Nationalists won an important round in their fight by sweeping 16 of 18 seats in South West Africa's territorial assembly elections. The territory's influential German bloc, whose 10,000 members warmed up to Hitler in 1939 and seem to be all for South Africa's racial apartheid now, provided the wide margin of victory. But the winners, for all their anti-U.N. gloating, intend to go slow in merging South West Africa into the Union. The Nationalist government apparently wants first to build up its influence to the point where German Southwesters no longer think of themselves as apart from the Afrikaans-speaking community.

* South Africa's walkout in the U.N. a fortnight ago, on the ground that racial segregation is its own domestic affair, saved South Africa from debating its activities in South West Africa, which it would find harder to justify and more of the U.N.'s business.

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