Afrikaner Darkness

Abstract

The next 14 years were, as it were, the crowning glory of the Afrikaner Republic, marred only by the murder of Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid, by an apparently deranged knifeman in parliament in 1966. Vorster, much less ideological than his predecessor and with a lower public profile abroad, but the hub of the huge repressive apparatus, took control. South Africa was now both a totalitarian country and a police state. The great majority of the population was subject to massive controls, social engineering and arbitrary arrest. The black opposition had been incarcerated or cowed; the press was muzzled by threats. Only the continuing debates between rival white communities gave the country the appearance of pluralism, but the electoral roll was effectively rigged in favour of the National Party.