Word: vorster
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...main problem is South Africa itself?and the future of the Afrikaner. Since Vorster's National Party gained power in the 1948 elections, it has been committed to the oppressive policy known as apartheid (separateness). In theory, apartheid means that South Africa's 4.3 million whites, 18.6 million blacks, 2.5 million mixed-blood "coloreds" and 750,000 Asians will proceed along separate lines of development under the government's benign guidance. In practice, apartheid has meant the disfranchisement of a huge majority, which is subjected to one of the most repressive and discriminatory systems of racial laws in the world...
...suggests that the Nationalists will nearly double the vote they normally get from English-speaking whites. Even opposition leaders have joined with the government in speaking out against foreign influence on the country's domestic affairs. Colin Eglin, leader of the Progressive Federal Party, sounded almost as angry as Vorster when he denounced President Carter's firm policy toward South Africa as "appalling...
...Vorster is a product of this society as well as its chief. One of 14 children, he was born in Jamestown, in the northeastern part of the Cape province. His father was a sheep farmer. Vorster attended the University of Stellenbosch, a bastion of Afrikaner nationalism, on a scholarship. He studied psychology and law and joined the junior wing of the National Party. In the early years of World War II he helped found the Flaming Ox-Wagon, a militantly anti-British, pro-German nationalist movement. Vorster was arrested by the pro-British government in 1942 and spent 14 months...
After the war Vorster practiced law, dabbled in politics and in 1953 was elected to parliament from the Nigel constituency in the Transvaal, which he has represented ever since. He was named Minister of Justice in Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd's Cabinet in 1961 and succeeded his old Stellenbosch teacher as Prime Minister when Verwoerd was assassinated by a demented clerk five years later. Hard-working and singleminded, he personifies the stubborn resolution of the white tribe today...
That leaves the coloreds and the Asians to be shoehorned into the Afrikaner political system. A primary reason for Vorster's calling the election is to gain a popular consensus for a proposed new constitution, one that would abolish the present parliamentary system, based on the Westminster model. Instead, each racial group in the country except blacks?whites, coloreds and Asians?would have a separate communal "parliament." These bodies would in turn nominate representatives to a Council of Cabinets, which would choose an all-powerful President (presumably Vorster). The council would have eleven members?six whites, three coloreds...