Most conscientious employee of the (new) year

ANDRIES BOTHA, previously assistant-editor of Die Transvaler and then Die Vaderland, takes us a long way back.

IT is New Year’s day, 1963. The time is 08:00.

The Cub Reporter, slightly hungover from the New Year’s Eve dance at the Muldersdrift Hotel, is standing in front of the closed doors of the Voortrekkerpers Building, at 102 Jorissen Street in Braamfontein,
Johannesburg, publishers of Die Transvaler, a morning daily. He fishes his letter of appointment from the inside pocket of
his neat and only suit, a Rex Truform bought from the students’ favourite store, Van Zyl’s Outfitters, in Kerk Street, Potchefstroom, but not yet paid for in full.

The letter states quite plainly that he was appointed as from 1 January 1963.

He feels slightly guilty about his hangover. It was not intentional, in fact he wanted to simply stay at the party for a while, have a beer or two and return to Mr and Mrs Rademan’ house in Honeydew where the retired couple, as family friends, were more than happy to provide board and lodging for him.

Chubby Checker

But he got lost between the rock ’n roll music, the hoop petticoats worn by the young ladies that advertised their legs and often their frilled panties to boot. The beat of Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock, Mean Woman Blues, Teddy Bear, Dixieland Rock (She wore a clinging dress that fitted so tight, she couldn’t sit down, so we danced all night) and Trouble, as well as Cliff Richard’s Livin’ Doll and Jerry Lee Lewis and The Platters and Chubby Checkers with the new, very sexy Let’s Twist Again made it well nigh impossible to have an early night. And the beer tasted good. As did the vodka with lime and lemonade that followed.

It was well after five that he drove home in his aquamarine 1958 Morris 1000, the car his father bought for him out of his own meagre income as a reward for passing his first year at the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, and let himself into the cottage the Rademans had had furnished for him. Fortunately he did not have to knock them up at that ungodly hour as the cottage had its own shower. He had a shave and got dressed, meticulously tying his necktie in the Windsor knot, brushing his shoes and combing his hair. At six o’clock there was a knock on the door. It was Mrs Rademan with a steaming cup of coffee. “You’re up early. Just as well on your first day in a new job. Breakfast will be ready at half past,” she said as she put the tray with the coffee and a rusk on the small yellowwood coffee table at the entrance.

1958 Morris 1000

The Cub Reporter was not sure whether she smelled the liquor on his breath or whether he had inadvertently left any signs of the previous evening’s activities which he was certain they would not approve of. Any how, if she had noticed, she didn’t let on. After a hearty breakfast consisting of maize porridge, two fried eggs, bacon, pork sausage and toast and strawberry jam, washed down with another cup of coffee, he got into the Morris and embarked on his journey down D F Malan Drive past Northcliff, the West Park Graveyard and through Melville to Jorissen Street in Braamfontein, a route that Mr Rademan had planned for him and actually taken him on a trial run two days before.

At nine o’ clock he told himself he had to be patient. Die Transvaler was a morning paper and maybe the staff had to work very late the previous evening to cover all the events Johannesburg, South Africa’s major city, had to offer on New Year’s eve. As a history student he had made a close study of the origins and the history of Die Transvaler, a paper which was founded in 1937 coinciding with the Afrikaner people’s efforts to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps from the “poor white” status they acquired during the Depression, with South Africa’s present Prime Minister and leader of the reigning National Party, Dr Hendrick Frensch Verwoerd, as its first editor. He stood in awe of Dr Verwoerd (61), who was born in Amsterdam and who was developing a policy of equal, but separate, freedom for all the people of South Africa. He admired Verwoerd, because he had the courage to propose and to start implementing this policy which would satisfy the political apsirations of all the people in the country. He was also conscious of the fact that many Afrikaners did not support Verwoerd in this policy as they regarded him as a liberal. He was straying from the strict apartheid policy of White supremacy and the Biblically ordained condemnation of the brothers Ham, Shem and Japheth as hewers of wood and drawers of water.

And, having once heard Verwoerd speak at a National Party meeting in Potchefstroom, the Cub Reporter respected the undoubted intelligence of the man, who had been a brilliant student and lectured in psychology, philosophy and social studies at the University of Stellenbosch where he obtained a masters degree and a doctorate in philosophy, both cum laude. He turned down an Abe Bailey scholarship to Oxford University, England, opting to continue his studies in psychology in Germany. The Cub Reporter admired Verwoerd especially for the work he did among poor whites during the Depression of which his own father had been a victim. He vividly remembered how his father used to dress up in his best suit every day and walked the ten miles to Vereeniging from their house in Dolly Avenue, Rothdene, in search of a job at one of the factories. He also remembered how his father sometimes came home with the soles of his shoes worn through. And how he finally did get employed at Stewarts and Lloyds, a huge factory at the time renowned for its windmills. Those were the days of the first elections after the Second World War, the year 1948 when the National Party came into power defeating the United Party of General Jan Smuts. There was a lot of talk about “fighting” the elections and at the age of seven he wondered why Johnny Ralph, the South African heavyweight boxing champion, or professional wrestlers Willie Liebenberg or Manie Maritz were not called in to assist the National Party in this fight. But his mind was put at ease when his father told him that Dr Jack Loock, the National Party candidate, the “fighter” who stood back to nobody, had beaten the United Party candidate, Mr Theo Rood.

He recalled how his father lost his job at Stewarts and Lloyds shortly after the election when somebody who was a member of the United Party spread the word that his father had been chairman of a National Party branch during the elections. It was much later that he learned that the “fight” was not a physical contest. Against that backdrop he admired Verwoerd who played an active role in social work among poor White South Africans. He devoted much attention to welfare work and was often consulted by welfare organisations, while he served on numerous committees. His efforts in the field of national welfare drew him into politics and in 1936 he was offered the first editorship of Die Transvaler, a position which he took up in 1937, with the added responsibility of helping to rebuild the National Party in the Transvaal.

Verwoerd was a staunch republican and a friend of the Transvaal leader of the National Party and the second prime minister of South Africa after Dr D F Malan, Adv J G Strydom, and believed in racial segregation where all the peoples in the country would have their own, separate but equal, freedom in their own territory among their own people. The Cub Reporter thought that was an ideal solution to the country’s racial structure.

Verwoerd relinquished his editor’s chair in 1948 to represent the National Party in the Senate and to be appointed to the Cabinet as Minister of Native Affairs in 1950. He started transforming the Black reservations into autonomous states (Bantustans), which would eventually federate with South Africa. He was responsible for the displacement of some 80 000 Africans from Sophiatown, Martindale and Newclare to the newly established townships of south-western Johannesburg (Soweto).

The Cub Reporter was a little disturbed by the displacements as he had acquired quite a few Black friends on evening visits to the Top Location outside Vereeniging where he visited at night to join in the fun around coal fires to listen to the pennywhistle music of Spokes Mashiyane and other Black musicians. It was illegal for him as a White to be in the location at any time, least of all at night. But the people of Top had an excellent warning system against patrols by the Black Maria as the cops were known in those days and he never got caught in the act. At Potchefstroom the aquamarine Morris also soon found its way into the township where the love of music was the unifying factor.

His conscience did not allow him to regard Black people as ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’, a Biblical analogy he resented, a stand that had made him unpopular among many of his friends and family.

Verwoerd became Prime Minister in 1958 after Strijdom’s death and an all White referendum supported the republican ideal. At the time, the opposition United Party and many English-speaking Whites of British descent were opposed to a republic, but Verwoerd changed the law by lowering the voting age for Whites to 18 and allowing Whites in South West Africa to vote. On 5 October 1960 a referendum was held and he gained fifty-two percent of the votes. Verwoerd defied the constitution which determined that a two-third majortity was required to institute constitutional change. Many South Africans of English origin voted for the change believing that South Africa would remain in the Commonwealth, but opposition to South Africa’s apartheid policy by influential Commonwealth members virtually forced Verwoerd to withdraw South Africa’s application to remain a member of that body although it had become a republic and South Africa's membership officially lapsed on 31 May 1961 when it officially became a republic.

Verwoerd’s declared policy of guiding Black people to self-determination once he considered them ready won him many new White supporters. The various "tribal nations" living in the Republic would be given equal political rights in their own ‘homelands’. This represented a radical swing in NP policy as previous leaders D.F. Malan and J.G. Strijdom had preached a naked form of White racism and paternalistic domination in order to retain Whites in a position of power.

Verwoerd dismissed the international and internal rejection of apartheid and stood strong in his conviction that “equal, but separate states”, was the final solution to South Africa’s political dispensation.

The Cub Reporter could not resist feeling a little guilty about the inroads into his freedom of association, but felt that if that was the sacrifice he had to make for the greater good, then so be it.

“Excuse me, sir, but what are you doing here?”

The Cub Reporter jumped up from the steps in front of the locked doors, too surprised to react immediately. A man dressed in a uniform with stripes on the sides of his grey trousers and a grey cap with a plastic front confronted him.

It took the Cub Reporter a while to regain his composure and to explain that he was reporting for his first day in his new job.

“Sorry sir, but you have turned up for nothing. The newspaper, and the whole company for that matter, is closed today. But they will be here tomorrow.”

Highly disappointed the Cub Reporter greeted the watchman, walked off to the Morris 1000 and took what felt to him like a long road back to Honeydew.