SOUTH AFRICA: Dis Baie Goed

“Is it always as hot as this?” asked Her Majesty, relaxing for an instant her almost permanent smile. The answer was an eager no. South Africans, sweltering in their hottest summer in years, with temperatures hovering around 100°, found the radiant warmth of royalty much more comfortable than the sun.

As the Royal Family, assiduously escorted by their busy host Prime MinisterSmuts—whom the King personally invested with the Order of Merit—shuttled between official receptions and informal garden parties, intransigent nationalists wilted left & right before the family’s charm. Daniel Malan, nationalist leader of the opposition, conscientiously boycotted Parliament’s address of welcome, but even he was on hand at the state banquet. In a Cape Town park, a group of ardent anti-Britishers enjoying a barbecue apologized for their open shirts and rolled-up sleeves when ubiquitous Smuts suddenly appeared and introduced them to the King & Queen.

For five days cheering Capetonians lined the royal routes and jampacked the parade grounds next to the City Hall to get a glimpse of the visitors, of Princess Margaret’s poke bonnets, and the Queen’s ostrich feathers. South African couturiers expected both to set a new style. (Since South Africa is a leading producer of ostrich feathers, this feature of the Queen’s costume attracted special attention.) At a Civic Ball in the town, Princess Elizabeth danced the Princess Foxtrot (composed in her honor) with Cape Town’s Mayor Abe Bloomberg. On the following day the entire family watched a stately quadrille at a huge ball given by the “colored community” in the City Hall. For once royal fashions played second fiddle to a dazzling array of East Indian and Malay costumes as 4,000 variously hued clerks, teachers, merchants and housemaids put on a pageant of native dances, bridal ceremonies, songs and a full-fledged oldtime Malay picnic for the sovereigns.

Next day in Paarl, a hotbed of nationalist sentiment, royalty met “General” Hendrik Marsh, whose fascistic Ossewa Brandwag organization’s purposes have ranged from sabotaging the British war effort to outlawing Santa Claus as a British imperialist importation.* Said Marsh afterward: “The Royal Family captured us completely by their gracious simplicity. We expected pomp. Now that I’ve met Their Majesties, I’d personally like to ask them to stay here.”

Later in the day Queen Elizabeth scored a personal triumph when she sampled a Paarl housewife’s Dutch milk tart. “Ah,” said the Queen in Afrikaans, “dis bale goed” (this is very good).

For their last day in Cape Town the King & Queen donned their best finery (an admiral’s uniform with the blue ribbon of the Garter for him; a gown of pale crepe and Queen Mary’s borrowed diamond tiara for her), to preside at the opening of South Africa’s Parliament —the first British monarchs ever to do so. The King spoke for six minutes, first in English, then in Afrikaans. That night the family boarded the 14-car royal gold-and-cream train, to continue their conquests over 5,000 miles for the next eight weeks.

In Eshowe, the pleasant little Zululand capital some 800 miles to the northeast, native chieftains were already laying plans to have their men come in from the surrounding kraals for a vast war-dance on the airfield to welcome royalty.

-Santa Klaus is the Dutch name for St. Nicholas, a Fourth Century bishop of Myra in Lycia. The patron saint of Russia, and of thieves, and boys & girls, he traditionally championed the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich. In 1941 the pseudo-cultural Ossewa Brand-wag (Ox Wagon) society denounced him as “a foreign importation unsuited to the ideals of the Afrikaners.” Possibly because both Santa and Smuts wear white beards and benignity, the O.B. suggested that South African Christmas gifts should be brought by one Oupa (Grandfather) Voortrekker in an ox wagon.