FOUR HORSEMEN OF APARTHEID

Abused, mocked and scorned by most of the world, South Africa's embattled Afrikaners look for leadership to jour stubborn men who are the architects of apartheid and who believe so strongly in their own views that they are oblivious to any suggestion of change.

Dr. Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, 59, South Africa's husky, silver-haired Prime Minister, was born in The Netherlands, but at two, was taken to South Africa, where his father became a Dutch Reformed missionary. Verwoerd (pronounced Fair-voort) was educated at Cape Province's Stellenbosch University, intellectual fount of Afrikanerdom, became a professor of applied psychology, which should have given him uncommon insight into the minds of his nation's n million nonwhites.

Yet, in the wake of the first bloody rioting, he told an anxious white audience: "The Bantu are orderly and loyal to the government. They understand that we are thinking of their interests." In eight years as Minister of Native Affairs in the regimes of Daniel Malan and Johannes Strijdom, genial Dr. Verwoerd fashioned South Africa's tough segregation decrees. Using such criteria as the shape of noses and kinkiness of hair, his system classifies blacks, mixed-blood coloreds and Asians by race, then allocates to each a rigid, underprivileged place in society, in which his residence, travel, employment--even his drink--can be determined by government officials. The editor of the National Party's pro-Nazi Die Transvaler during World War II, Verwoerd once fought a humanitarian scheme to provide haven in South Africa for a shipload of Jewish refugees from Germany, likes to boast that none of his seven children were ever bathed or put to bed by a black servant. His main goal is to make South Africa a republic. He plans to hold a plebiscite on the issue this year, kicked off the campaign at a recent public meeting with the words, "We are not oppressors ... we are Christians, and we attempt to do what is right."

Franc,ois Christiaan Erasmus, 64, as Minister of Justice, has powers beyond control of any court, can "name" anyone a Communist or "ban" his right to travel and meet with others by simple decree--with no evidence needed. In the first month after he took over last December, stubby, handsome Frank Erasmus issued banning orders on eight people, an alltime record. And when last week the government decided to outlaw the only two African organizations of any substance, it was stiff, humorless Erasmus who stood in Parliament to introduce the legislation. The son of a Boer farmer, Erasmus was trained for the law, but plunged into Afrikaner politics at 30, attaching himself to a then obscure leader named Daniel F.

Malan, whose new National Party spread anti-British hatred and sought a white-supremacist republic. When Malan's Nationalists swept into power in 1948, Erasmus became Minister of Defense, although he had never been a soldier and had actively opposed South Africa's participation in "Britain's war." Immediately, he stripped the revered, retired Jan Smuts of his honorific rank as commander in chief of the South African forces, set about changing army uniforms from the British model to a style reminiscent of the Nazis', and brought in loyal National Party men to take over the top posts. Erasmus beat the drums against the "Communist threat" but modeled his fighting forces with a closer enemy clearly in mind: South Africa's own nonwhites. After a study of French tactics against Algerian rebels, he deployed the army far from the coasts in key areas of potential internal trouble. And last week the heavy lorries that rumbled south from the northern Transvaal toward the trouble spots were filled with the armed territorials of the skietkommandos (shooting units), formed by Erasmus years ago with young platteland farmers for just such an occasion. Charles Robberts Swart, 65, is South Africa's new Governor General, a position which technically makes him the representative of Britain's Queen Elizabeth and removes him from active politics. But gaunt, towering (6 ft. 6 in.) "Blackie" Swart remains conspicuous in Afrikaner consciousness as a master builder of apartheid in his eleven years as Justice Minister. In the outside world, cartoonists have bestowed on him immortality of a sort as the "Man with a Whip," for his sponsorship of the notorious Flogging Bill in 1952, which made the lash mandatory for some crimes. He stood up in Parliament brandishing a cat-o'-nine-tails with the air of a man who would enjoy using it. When the opposition demanded that the number of lashes be reduced from 15 to ten, Swart cried, "What are five strokes among friends?" As administrator of the prisons, Swart expanded the system under which arrested Africans are handed over to white farmers for use as forced labor; many farmers now are allowed to build and maintain their own private regional jails, and Swart proudly attended the opening ceremonies of many such rural cell blocks as guest speaker. British newspapers protested as he bowed to kiss Queen Elizabeth's hand last December, recalling his bitter Anglophobia, which traces back to the Boer War when, as a small child, he was confined with his mother in a British concentration camp.

Eric Hendrik Louw, 69, is defender of the faith abroad. It has kept him busy. As Minister of External Affairs since 1955, Louw has had occasion at one time or another to pull his delegates out of UNESCO, the U.N. General Assembly, and sundry other international meetings, including last week's U.N. Security Council session, where the South African ambassador refused for a time to take a seat so long as his country was being exposed to the effrontery of the nations gathered to criticize apartheid. "If Field Marshal Smuts [who helped draft the U.N. Charter] could have foreseen to what lengths the U.N. would go in interfering in the domestic affairs of a member state," said Louw at the U.N.'s tenth anniversary ceremonies in 1955, "I am convinced he would never have agreed to South Africa's becoming a member." Another product of Stellenbosch, Lawyer Louw has long experience in the foreign service, serving in the U.S. as trade commissioner as far back as 1925 and as minister in 1929. In the late '305, Louw was openly sympathetic with Nazi Germany's colonial demands, was a frequent guest in Berlin. His pet hates: foreign correspondents, whom he has charged with "encouraging" the natives to resist.

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