Back with a Thud

Shivering under the biting wind that whistled through Bloemfontein's sports stadium, more than 30,000 South Africans watched the husky, white-haired man with two fresh scars on his face and neck hold aloft a small white dove. "This is our messenger of good will," he cried. But, as the crowd sat in stunned silence, the bird fell to earth with a small, feathery thud, declining to fly. With such inauspicious symbolism did South Africa's Prime Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd return last week to public life, two months after an assassin's attempt on his life.

In his absence, scores of prominent citizens had raised their voices in favor of a more liberal race policy. South Africa's business world was suffering badly from foreign reluctance to invest in so unstable a state, warned Mining and Industrial Tycoon Harry Oppenheimer. It had become "difficult if not impossible" to raise money in London for any South African venture, echoed Sir Charles Hambro of the powerful Union Corporation; to restore its credit abroad, declared Sir Charles, South Africa must seek "more harmonious relations with the urban native population" and "satisfactory outlets for the legitimate aspirations of all sections of the population."

Verwoerd had no such intention. "Should multiracial government succeed in South Africa . . . inevitably it will mean Bantu domination over all," he cried to the throng gathered to celebrate the nation's soth anniversary. "The whites must continue to govern." And in case anyone had any doubts that apartheid was still to remain the holy doctrine, he called for full speed ahead on the vast project to herd millions of South African blacks into segregated tribal states in the virgin bush.

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