Word: malanism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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South Africa waited uneasily last week for the trouble that seemed to be heading its way. Thwarted by the supreme court in his attempt to disfranchise 50,000 Cape colored voters (TIME, March 31), Prime Minister Malan declared that the court is no more than "a few judges, appointed and paid by the government." He added: "The struggle for [Boer] freedom has been reopened ... No compromise is possible...
...Malan's outburst confirmed what many South Africans had long feared: blocked by law, the Nationalists might use force. At 78-year-old Premier Malan's side last week were two hotheads. They were Johannes Gerhardus Strydom, 58, Minister of Lands, and Charles Robberts Swart, 58, Minister of Justice. Strydom, onetime Transvaal ostrich farmer, has one consuming ambition: to become the first president of an Afrikaner republic wh:ch is outside the British Commonwealth. "Britain," he says, "stands for equal rights for everyone, irrespective of color or smell." A rabid racialist, he runs thq National Party machine...
...first major setback to all-out apartheid. If Pastor Malan overruled the court, he might easily lose the support of the old-fashioned Boer farmers, who respect their judges. If he accepted the court's decision, his fanatical Nationalist lieutenants might toss him aside...
...Malan, Scram! At week's end, looking bitter and tired, old Pastor Malan hearkened to the fanatics, announced in Parliament that he would end the court's "interference" with acts of the legislature. From all over the Union came angry protests; Torch supporters paraded through the streets of Cape Town and Johannesburg, demanding: "Malan, scram!" Ominous too were the stirrings in the great Bantu slums, where Nationalist police confiscated truckloads of "murderous weapons...
Faced with a split in his own party, Malan risked revolution and interracial war if he persisted in defying the court. "Your immoral acts," said Opposition Leader Strauss, "are now also proved illegal. With every month that passes while South Africa is governed by you, the prospects become more fearful. Resign. Resign. Resign...