SOUTH AFRICA: Death of the Lion

Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom was eight years old when the savagely fought Boer War ended in British victory. His life was devoted to reversing that judgment of history. When he died last week at 65, after a long illness (heart disease), wasted away to less than 100 Ibs., Prime Minister Strijdom, hailed by his Nationalist supporters as “the Lion of the Transvaal,” had nearly accomplished his object.

A stocky man, thin-lipped and blue-eyed, who orated in harsh, leonine gutturals, Strijdom was the son of a Dutch ostrich farmer in Cape of Good Hope Province. By turns a farmer, lawyer, newspaper publisher and banker, Strijdom was unswervingly a politician. In 1929 he was elected to represent the rural constituency of Waterberg. Soon his fiercely Calvinist insistence on quoting Biblical chapter and verse that he thought supported racial segregation won him the derisive title of “the Messiah of Waterberg.” His opponents of the largely English-speaking United Party were all much wittier and smoother than Strijdom, but they could find no defense against his blunt, brutal singleness of purpose. “With Hans,” said Afrikaners happily, “you know where you are.”

Strijdom’s program had simplicity: he hated the tie with the British Commonwealth, he hated “British-Jewish capitalism,” he hated the threat to the 3,000,000 whites of South Africa of 11,000,000 slowly awakening blacks, coloreds (mixed bloods) and Indians. He was one of the first advocates of apartheid (segregation ). When he took over as Prime Minister in 1954, succeeding Daniel F. Malan, a man of the same stamp, his administration rammed through laws that packed the Supreme Court and Senate, began the mass resettlement of natives into reserves. He was suspicious of all outsiders, and frequently warned travelers leaving for England to beware of “the fatal British aristocratic embrace.” He went abroad only twice, once to attend a Commonwealth conference in London, and another time, when he whipped through England, Ireland, Scotland, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Denmark, Switzerland, and Italy, and reported back home a month later that the scenery was nice but “some people were unfriendly.”

Strijdom leaves his gifted pianist widow and a son and daughter. An earlier marriage to Actress Marda Vanne broke up after a year, is rarely mentioned by his Nationalist followers, among whom divorce is shameful. At his death, Strijdom had not cut all ties with Britain (there are economic advantages in staying in the Commonwealth), but the Union Jack is no longer flown, and God Save the Queen is no longer South Africa’s anthem. In his honor South Africa’s state radio played solemn music and the official anthem, Die Stem van Suid Afrika (The Voice of South Africa).

Until a successor is named, Minister of Justice C. R. “Blackie” Swart would serve as acting Prime Minister, but life will be little different with Strijdom gone. What had given him power was the depressing fact that, to most Afrikaners, Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom’s combination of righteousness and ruthlessness seemed to reflect a common ideal.