Word: havenga
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South Africa's Finance Minister Nicolaas Christiaan Havenga, 67, is known as the Old Sphinx of Premier Daniel Malan's cabinet. While Nationalist colleagues have cried the Black Peril and built up racial tension, reticent Havenga has secluded himself in his Pretoria office or at his Free State horse farm. There he has brooded over the country's shortage of dollar exchange. He visited the U.S. last year, tried in vain to drum up a loan, discovered that his government's oppression of its black majority was giving South Africa a bad name abroad...
Dour Daniel Malan growled that the outside world's hostile opinion was "interference mania." Last week Old Sphinx Havenga took issue with the Premier. "With world opinion against us," he warned, "it is not wise or practical at the present stage to take away any of the rights which have been given to non-Europeans." As leader of the Afrikaner Party, a small, less stridently chauvinistic ally of Malan's Nationalists, Havenga holds the balance of power in the government. He used it to force a slowdown in the racial program. Among other things, Malan had planned...
...found South Africa's economy, based primarily on its gold-mining industry, in deep trouble and short of dollars. Gold sales looked like the quickest solution. What disturbed the Fund more than the first sale was Havenga's apparent determination to make additional premium sales. If Havenga got away with it, there was no reason why other gold-producing countries, notably Canada, could not do the same thing...
Fact. The Fund let Havenga get away with it this time, saying: "The Fund regrets that [Havenga] has chosen to make declarations which can only tend to undermine [its] exchange policies...
...words were polite, but the threat was evident. If Havenga does not abide by the rules in the future, the Fund has the power to expel South Africa or at least freeze the $15 million on which South Africa is eligible to draw this year. There was a greater threat. The Fund, controlled by the U.S., might persuade the Export-Import Bank to turn thumbs down on South Africa's application for a $100 million loan. In any case, the Fund had no intention of being pressured into boosting the price of gold...