SOUTH AFRICA: How High Is Supreme?

Pretoria’s old Raadsaal (council hall) was windy with laughter last week. Ninety-nine Nationalist members of Parliament assembled there, not as legislators but as so-called judges. They thought it was a great joke, and kept calling to each other: “Goeie more, Meneer Regt;” (Good morning, Mister Judge). But for South Africa’s second-and third-class citizens, the joke was a grim one.

Last March Prime Minister Daniel Malan’s apartheid (segregation) crusade bumped into a legal barrier. South Africa’s Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a Malan law disfranchising 50,000 Cape Coloreds (persons of mixed white and black ancestry). Malan’s answer was to set up Parliament as a “High Court” with powers above the Supreme Court. The opposition (which would have been outvoted anyway) refused to sit on the “High Court.” Thus Malan’s own party became the highest judicial authority in the land.

Last week the “High Court” obediently overruled the Supreme Court’s decision on the Cape Coloreds. Minister of Justice Charles Swart, one of Malan’s top lieutenants, sat beside the “High Court” president, listened tensely as he read the decision. But two days later, the Cape Province branch of the Supreme Court struck back, declared that the “High Court” was no court at all, and that its pronouncements were null & void. Dutifully on hand again. Swart sat through a seven-minute ordeal while the anti-Malan decision was read. When it was over, he grabbed his hat and rushed out into a pouring rain.

At news of the Supreme Court’s decision, anti-Malan stockbrokers in Johannesburg waltzed gleefully around the exchange floor, and many of South Africa’s good white people rejoiced.

The government is expected to appeal the decision to the central Supreme Court —the same body which ruled against Malan in the first place. If that court rules against him again, the bullheaded old Prime Minister can call his parliamentary “High Court” into session to reverse the Supreme Court. The government may try to stop this vicious circle by holding a general election and asking the electorate to vote for “sovereignty of Parliament over the courts.”

At week’s end. Daniel Malan blamed Britain for part of his plight, saying: “If she continues her past policy in Africa, I predict that Britain will find her grave in Africa.” Malan added: “To do what world opinion demands would mean suicide by white South Africa.”