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The Rise of the South African Reich The Rise of the South African Reich http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.crp3b10036 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org The Rise of the South African Reich Author/Creator Bunting, Brian; Segal, Ronald Publisher Penguin Books Date 1964 Resource type Books Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa, Germany Source Northwestern University Libraries, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, 960.5P398v.12cop.2 Rights By kind permission of Brian P. Bunting. Description "This book is an analysis of the drift towards Fascism of the white government of the South African Republic. It documents the close affinities of thought and action between such men as Malan, Strijdom, Verwoerd, and Vorster and the German Nazi leaders, and traces the contact maintained by the Nationalist Party with Nazis from the 1940s to the 1960s." Format extent 335 pages (length/size) http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.crp3b10036 http://www.aluka.org FBOI IND FBOI IND -li PENGUIN AFRICAN LIBRARY API2 Edited by Ronald Segal The Rise of the South African Reich BRIAN BUNTING a 'A BRIAN BUNTING The Rise of the South African Reich Penguin Books I |0 vi. Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex u.s.A.: Penguin Books Inc., 3300 Clipper Mill Road, Baltimore ii, Md AUSTRALIA: Penguin Books Pty Ltd, 762 Whitehorse Road, Mitchan, Victoria First published 1964 Copyright © Brian Bunting, 1964 Made and printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, London, Fakenham and Reading Set in Monotype Plantin This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise disposed of without the publisher's consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published I- Contents Acknowledgements 6 Map 8 Editorial Foreword 9 i The Birth of the Nationalist Party 13 2 The First Nationalist Government 34 3TheBroederbond 47 4 Followers of Hitler 54 5 In the Shadow of War 69 6 Armed Struggle 80 7 The Draft Constitution 94 8 Making Power Secure 120 9 South Africa's Nuremberg Laws 142 iO Eliminating all Opposition 16o ii Indoctrinating the Young 193 12 The Control of Ideas 223 13 Taming the Trade Unions 252 14TheConquestofEconomicPower 279 15IronandBlood 295 16TheRot 317 Index 327 ., I ) '~ Acknowledgements I would like to express my thanks to the many men and women in South Africa who helped me in the preparation of this book. In consequence of the situation which prevails in my unhappy country at the present time, I am unable to mention their names for fear that they may be victimized, but I would like them to know that their assistance has been most deeply appreciated and is hereby gratefully acknowledged. This book is dedicated to all those in South Africa who are : fighting against enormous odds to free their country from unendurable tyranny. Long terms of imprisonment and even the death penalty face opponents of the Nationalist government who fall foul of their oppressive laws. It is my hope that this book may help to mobilize public opinion in support of the growing international campaign to end the most vicious regime the world has known since the death of Hitler. BRIAN BUNTING .j&LAO /d A 'The history of the Afrikaner reveals a determination and a definiteness of purpose which make one feel that Afrikanerdom is not the work of man but a creation of God. We have a Divine right to be Afrikaners. Our history is the highest work of art of the Architect of the centuries.' Dr D. F. Malan 'It was the Aryan alone who founded a superior type of humanity; therefore he represents the archetype of what we understand by the term: MAN .... It was not by mere chance that the first forms of civilization arose there where the Aryan came into contact with inferior races, subjugated them and forced them to obey his command.' Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf Editorial Foreword Until recently South Africa was still hesitating at the frontier of terror. One civil liberty after the other had been ceremoniously killed, but a few legal safeguards survived to protect at least those citizens who were aware of them against persistent outrage. Africans were banished for years to desolate stretches of the country, and the more vigorous opponents of government policy, White as well as black banned from all gatherings, restricted to their magisterial districts, placed under house arrest, and prevented from communicating their views in speech or print. Yet, by comparison with consummate terrors like the German Third Reich, South Africa remained a mere approach. Africans, Indians, and Coloured were frequently beaten up in police cells, but the process was disliked, in the main, by authority, and policemen were occasionally prosecuted for assault. Those who were arrested and held by the police unduly could be released by a habeas corpus application, or at least charged and brought to trial in open court. Citizens were detained without charge or trial nevertheless, but only during a State of Emergency, a claim by the government of exceptional circumstances. Then, with the General Law Amendment Act of May 1963, South Africa finally crossed the frontier of terror. The new law empowered the Minister of Justice to detain anyone he pleased, without charge or trial, for indefinitely recurring periods of ninety days, and to extend, till death if he so chose, the imprisonment of those who had already served their sentences. The new law - and this was its obvious intention - has outlawed law itself. For what meaning is left to legal procedure if, after trial and deliberate sentencing, a prisoner can be kept in gaol long after the set date 9 i-i-zI~-* EDITORIAL FOREWORD of his release? And what purpose can there be to a trial at all, if the Minister can simply ignore acquittal and imprison the accused from the court-room to the grave? There is now no longer in South Africa any legal protection against the Minister of Justice; he may imprison whom he pleases for as long as he likes. Nor is this all. Those detained - and no one but the Minister need know who or how many they are - are kept in solitary confinement, with no visitors allowed except a magistrate, a carefully selected government employee, once a week. They are permitted no writing material and no books but the Bible - most African detainees have been denied even that - and are under the complete jurisdiction of the political police. Prisoners are shifted suddenly from one city to another, so that their relatives may be ignorant of their whereabouts and the circumstances of their custody concealed. Perhaps no recent report to have come from voluntary welfare workers in South Africa is more horrible than that of police throwing the clothes of African detainees upon the pavement, laughing while the relatives scramble to sort out the pieces, and speculating aloud to each other on who among the detainees is likely to hang. Increasingly the police want to feel - and display - their power. One African detainee from Cape Town, Looksmart Solwandle Ngadle, is officially alleged to have committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell at a Pretoria gaol. Persistent rumour, however, suggests a different death, and notes smuggled out of gaol by detainees tell of constant assaults by the police, interrupted only by interrogation. An Indian, Ebrahim Siyanvala, was released from detention and then, on his way home, arrested for a minor traffic offence. He escaped from the police station, and two days later his body was found in a nearby river. Several confirmed cases of torture, including the use of electricity, together with reports of cells painted black and of lights left burning day and night, suggest why there has been at least one detainee who has found further police custody unendurable. More and more accused appear in South African courts with the marks of physical violence still upon them. The police, it seems, are not only brutal, they are carelessly so. And why should they not be careless? They have become the law. I0 r . EDITORIAL FOREWORD Brian Bunting has studied the rise of the South African Reich, and events since he completed his study have confirmed its title. The South African Reich is no longer a possibility, it exists. Hundreds of thousands of White South Africans doubtless do not know what is happening in the police cells a mile or two from their homes, as hundreds of thousands of the very best Germans thought that the concentration camps were merely manufacturing soap. And if they do know? Millions of them, White as well as black, are afraid - the blacks of the Whites, though their fear only excites their resistance; the Whites of the blacks, of the world beyond, of each other and of themselves, though their fear only furthers their dedication to violence.
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