THE election campaign now being conducted in South Africa, in preparation for the forthcoming general election on March 30, is one of those curious events which history presents from time to time.

The political issues facing the country are as clear as signposts on an open road and as tangible as a barbed-wire fence, yet the political engagement taking place between the opposing parties is quite unreal.

The United Party knows subconsciously that after being in the political wilderness for the last eighteen
years, during which time it has lost every provincial
and general election since 1948, there will be, and can be no more final defeat than the one they are headed for on March 30.

NO LONGER A THREAT

The National Party inevitably has its big guns trained on the United Party, but by no stretch of the imagination can this party be regarded as a threat or challenge to the National Party in any way. The United Party today is a mere shadow of the past, a relic of British colonial thinking in South Africa in which country the political tide went the opposite way to that in Kenya and the Central African Federation. And, just as the parties of Michael Blundell in Kenya and Roy Welensky in the Federation were all washed up on the shores of oblivion, so the party of De Villiers Graaff is heading for the same end. It is going to be hard for many good people to face the realities of this coming election. Yet, few supporters of the United Party can be so insensitive as not to know that another vote for their party will merely be to prolong the agony. And yet to vote against it will, for many, be as difficult as shooting a faithful old dog to relieve its suffering. Let us take a last close look at the U.P. before the inevitability of events draws down the curtain on one of its last acts.

ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN

In South African politics, the United Party has represented the pragmatist way of thought and action, the compromise approach to challenges and problems
and which has led to its double-think, double-talk, double-dealing and avoidance of taking a clear-cut stand on any clear-cut policies. It has presented many different faces at different times — and at all times it has been all things to all men. Its supporters have never been expected to adhere to a common set of political principles, and this has resulted in the Party holding no basic political beliefs and having conflicting views on every major political issue.

This was the Party which, under General Hertzog, in 1936, removed the Bantu from the common voters’ roll, on which they were as a result of the integration
process started under the 1854 Constitution imposed on the Cape Colony by the British Government. Yet this is the same Party which, in the 1960’s, under
Sir de Villiers Graaff, now envisages representation of the Bantu by the Bantu in the White Parliament. This is the same Party which expelled Dr. Bernard

Friedman for saying that, if returned to power, the U.P. would restore the Cape Coloureds to the White voters’ roll. Yet today its policy is precisely what
Friedman (now a Progressive) proclaimed and for which he was kicked out of the Party.

  And this is the Party which, while dropping a Hamilton Russell in 1962 for his Progressive sentiments and pronouncements, picked up a Japie Basson who
proclaims himself “unashamedly left-wing” and whose natural political habitat is also the Progressive Party, and who, hey presto!, has become chief U.P. spokes-
man on Coloured affairs.

BUILT-IN PRAGMATISM

The built-in pragmatism of the U.P. has also manifested itself in many other ways. For example, it invariably condemns Communism in vague terms, but when Communist conspirators are apprehended and convicted, as in the case of the Rivonia Trial the U.P. was, as always, ready to represent their crimes as being due to frustrations caused by Govern ment policy of separate development! And then, whenever South Africa has been attacked at the U.N., where the voting invariably goes against her, the U.P. has always been ready to charge that the Government and its policies are the cause of South Africa’s “isolation” in world affairs. It has, also, been ever-ready to point an accusing finger at the Government for not bringing South Africa “into step with world opinion”, yet it now presents its policy of so-called “White leadership” as if this would satisfy “world opinion”!

PUSHED TO THE LEFT

The result of all this equivocation and, of course, its crippling defeats in every provincial and general election since 1948, has been for the United Party to be pushed slowly but surely, more and more over to the Left. And throughout, we have seen how the Left and  Right centres of gravity within the Party have har-

monised only when there was some hope of wresting power from the National Party. This was seen in 1953 when the “United Democratic Front” was launched with the financial aid of Harry Oppenheimer, who is now the mainstay of the Progressive Party; again in 1958 when it presented its Senate Plan as “a guarantee of White leadership”, a plan emanating from an Oppenheimersponsored brains trust; and again in 1960, when the U.P. joined hands with the Progressive Party in the hope of defeating the National Party in the referendum for the Republic.

DESIGNED BY PROGRESSIVES

Most of the time, however, it has been the Left wing of the Party which has determined the political course of the U.P., and set its pace. Even after the Progressives had broken away in 1959, the U.P. was left with a policy designed for it by those very Progressives. And thereafter even its present “Race Federation Plan” was announced in terms calculated to steal the Progressive thunder.

Already in 1959 Mr. Marais Steyn, M.P., and deputy leader of the U.P., had said that Bantu should be represented in Parliament by Whites, but that “representation by their own people must come”. This was followed in the latter half of 1961 by speeches and press articles showing that the U.P. was clearly committed to much more than a “multi-racial parlia-

ment”. The Johannesburg “Star” of December 5, 1961 had a leading article interpreting a statement by Mr Steyn as showing that the U.P. was trying to create a “multi-racial government”, (not parliament).

Five days later the Johannesburg “Sunday Times” confirmed this in a front-page report on interviews with U.P. spokesmen. In bold print it said that “the deduction that members of the different race groups would ultimately be able to elect M.P.s from their own groups is inherent in the whole concept of race

federation. So is the idea of a racially integrated Parliament, Government and Cabinet.” (italics added)

Seven weeks later ion February 1, 1962) Mr. Steyn made it clear what This meant. He wrote in the “Cape Argus” That "instead of steadily building up discrimination against :he Non-European group we should go in ~he other direction and gradually break down all discrimination." (.italics added •

Nothing could be clearer. If words have any meaning, this means that the UP. goal is a single “non-racial” society — precisely what the Progressives

and Liberals are working for, only at a much quicker pace.

NEVER REPUDIATED

None of these statements has ever been repudiated by other leaders of the U P. On the contrary, Sir de Villiers Graaff on May 6, 1962 made a major policy statement at a meeting at De Aar, in which he confirmed that the aim of the United Party was to create a “multi-racial government”, the same that Mr. Steyn and the “Star” and the “Sunday Times” had indicated so clearly.

The leader of the UP. on this occasion said: “It (i.e. the Race Federation Plan) will contribute to an immediate release from racial tensions by providing for participation by all races in the machinery of government at administrative as well as the legislative level. It will not be mere representation without

opportunity to participate in executive and administrative functions. 1 e. the weakness as we have known of separate roll representation per se, and also of a qualified franchise system”, (italics added)

What can "Bantu participation in executive and administrative functions” mean if not a “racially integrated Government and Cabinet”, as the “Sunday Times” had stated on December 10, 1961?

INSTRUMENT OF ESTABLISHMENT'

The U.P. leaders, always under steady pressure from the Left, are in fact today committed to the implementation of the very same policy imposed on Kenya and the Central African Federation by the British Government and which proved such an abysmal failure.

This pressure from the Left does not come so much from within its own partisan ranks as from the “Establishment” for which the U.P. has been a political instrument down the years. This Establishment, consisting of our English-language press, the

Liberal universities, the Anglican and other English churches, and the big business, financial and mining interests united in the Chambers of Commerce and Mines, has been the all-powerful force moulding and directing U.P. thought and policies.

And these are the channels through which internationalist, liberal and Marxist ideas and notions have been constantly injected into the bloodstream of a Party which has had no strong Right wing to insulate itself from these influences.

Even strong conservatives like the late Tom Bowker and M.P.s like Miles Warren and Douglas Mitchell have been washed helplessly along on this leftist tide without apparently every really changing their conservative standpoints.

END OF NAT-SAP ERA

The coming election will, in all probability, finally close the Nat-Sap era of our politics.

But any new lines of political division will not immediately become apparent. This is because of the threat from outside South Africa, which will militate against any immediate trend towards division.

Increasingly, South Africa’s enemies and her political “opposition” will not be found in our Parliament — and not even mainly in South Africa itself. These will operate, as they are doing today in Rhodesia, from overseas, through the agencies of the world press, leftist universities and churches and through the internationalist agencies of big business and

finance, aided by their Institutes, Foundations and various Exchange Programmes.

It is from these quarters that the highly organized campaign against racial and national integrity will continue. And, as is now already clear, the attack is a double-pronged one.

Firstly, there are the frontal attacks on our policy of separate development, which are made to isolate South Africa on “moral” grounds and to soften up the Government and the people; and secondly, there are the continuous attempts to erode National Party principles and to pervert its basic beliefs.

These deadly influences are not being transmitted to the Party direct, but are being fed into Afrikaner “intellectual” and financial circles, from where they are being carried into, and infecting the whole political bloodstream.

THINK ‘DIFFERENTLY’

The object of these operations is clearly to neutralise nationalists and conservatives. And their effects are seen today in the financial mergers, foundations, institutes and exchange programmes in which one-time unequivocal nationalists and conservatives are collaborating with their enemies and who, while professing loyalty to the leaders and

principles of the National Party, have long since started to think “differently” on racial and national affairs.

Today they are found appealing for tolerance and moderation, on the grounds that all nationalists and conservatives should not be expected to think alike!

And it is this process which is leading inevitably to the fast growth of a liberal centre of values within the National Party, to the point that, if effective counter-measures are not taken, it will become powerful enough to paralyse the traditional conservative core of the Party — just as the “New Republicans”

succeeded in undermining the Republican Party in the United States and the “New Conservatives” the Conservative Party in Britain — and of course in South Africa the same thing with the United Party.

THE NEW NATIONALISTS

To counter the mounting criticisms of themselves and their new-found partnerships and friendships in the enemy camp, two techniques are being used by these people, whom it might now be appropriate to differentiate and designate as the New Nationalists.

Firstly they are saying that it is “negative” and wrong to regard their new-found liberal friends as enemies and that all criticisms of themselves are

designed to split the Afrikaners’ ranks!

   “Ignore them and be positive” is their injunction, as if the church can ignore sin and the medical profession can ignore disease.

     And to speak out against their fraternisation with the enemy will come to be called witch hunting!

EMPHASIS SHIFTED

The results of all this is that, subtly and gradually, the emphasis is being shifted, and the suggestions are being made that the danger comes not from the Left but from the Right!

There is, it will be said, no danger in Nationalists “co-operating” in the “national interest” with people totally opposed to the principles of nationalism and conservatism; and that the danger lies rather from those of the Right who warn against, and oppose collaboration with one’s political enemies.

   It is such double-thinking and double-talking which makes people face the wrong way in search of the enemy. By focussing attention, as they will do, on the “extremists of the Right”, whose motives and methods will then be deliberately misrepresented and distorted, many ordinarily intelligent people in South Africa will be misled — just as they are today being misled in Britain, the United States and elsewhere.

   The other technique to be used by the New Nationalists will be that the “dialogue” about racial integration, beginning with the Cape Coloureds, must continue at all costs. They know that this is necessary in order to create that sense of uncertainty and indecision needed to bring about “change”.

UNDERLYING CURRENTS

The reality underlying the present political struggle is that there are two opposing currents in South African politics.

   Broadly speaking, one is a flow from the Right to the Left, in the sense that on the party political level English-speaking South Africans are fast leaving the integration-orientated United Party for the National Party.

   The other flow is the one from the Right to Left, in the sense that in Afrikaans religious, academic, journalistic and financial circles, there is a current flowing away from the nationalist and conservative thinking to internationalist thinking.

   At the present time these two currents have a more or less quantitative-qualitative balancing effect. The one is a flow of the people and their votes to the Right, the other a flow of ideas and influences to the Left.

   When the flow of people and their votes reaches its maximum (which seems to be very close at hand), the flow of ideas and influences in the opposite direction will not necessary end, because its main sources of strength lie outside South Africa. And there is, in fact, every reason to believe that these influences, far from ending, will greatly increase.

NEXT PHASE OF STRUGGLE

   The next phase of the political struggle in South Africa, therefore, will be to reverse the flow of these currents to the Left. And this is going to be an even harder battle to win than the purely party political struggle now drawing to a close.

   The attacks to be met in the future will come not from the caucus rooms of an opposition party. They will come from the board-rooms and conference halls of big companies and corporations, from trade union councils, church conferences, institutes and foundations, and many of them not even in South Africa.

   The battle for our minds will be waged in drawing rooms and libraries where newspapers and books are read and not so much on public platforms. It will be decided in lecture rooms, at universities and colleges, and not so much in the voting booths.

   These are some of the challenges that will emerge in the new era of South African politics after the general election on March 30.

   And these are some of the challenges which, most likely, will be under-estimated because the identification of hostile forces will become increasingly difficult.

   Our enemies, external and internal, will masquerade under high-sounding and often patriotic names, and in many instances will be so interlocked in organisations with traditionally nationalist and conservative names and public figures that it will be near impossible to isolate them.

   And it is for these reasons that the virtual elimination of the United Party and the Progressive Party on March 30 will not be a final victory. The struggle for survival on the African continent will continue, and it is going to call for a high degree of courage, faith and integrity in our national and public life.

ENGLISH-SPEAKING SUPPORT

It will seem that the National Party will shed its identity as an exclusively Afrikaner party after the general election on March 30. This is because Britain’s measures against Rhodesia will ensure English-speaking South Africans throwing in their full

weight in the battle for White survival.

   English-speaking leaders will emerge and openly proclaim the principles of racial and national integrity. They will proclaim not only their patriotism to South Africa but, increasingly so, their growing sense of national consciousness and common destiny with the Afrikaner.

   They will, too, provide a vital link with nationalists and conservatives everywhere in the Englishspeaking world — in America, Britain, Australasia, and elsewhere.

   But in this fight for White survival, it will be fatal for everybody in South Africa, White and non-White alike, if

the Afrikaner were to lose his sense of mission and if his

national conservatism were to lose its solidarity — because this has been, and will continue to be,which has stood between survival and destruction of the Whites in South Africa.