In South Africa

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 468, 11 June 1948, Page 5

In South Africa

R. MALAN’S defeat of Field-Marshal Smuts was one of destiny’s ways of keeping us humble; like Holy Willie’s sins. What purpose it setves when folly beats wisdom and weakness brings down strength is not for man to say; bit it is for man never to forget that it can happen. Dr, Malan is no doubt a dogged and passionately loyal South Affican with courage and a kind of tough competence. There is no reason to suppose that he is not sincere or that self-interest is a bigger factor in his attitudes than it is in leaders generally. But Field-Marshal Smuts is one of statecraft’s giants; as penetfating intellectually as John Stuart Mill, as tesolute and shtewd as David Lloyd George. No one ever called Dr. Malan a philosopher or even a_philosopher’s shadow. Although it is as easy to be wrong about him as about anyone else in a distant country, he has so far been presented to New Zealand as a cantatikerous doctor of divinity with a genius for quarrelling with his friends. Yet his countrymen have voted this little man in and that big man out. They have done so, the cables say, fot two reasonis: because he is a republican, and because his attitude to coloured men is something like Oom Paul Kruger’s-that they should serve and obey the whites. Even if none of the things happen that the newspapefs say now could happen-separation from Britain, persecution of the Jews, stricter segregation and harsher repression of Kaffirs and Indians-the path has been cleared for those who wish to go that way. It may even be that democracy in South Africa is now holding a coat for fascism.