Continuing in my textbook expedition, today I’m delving into the National Party. This is the institution that set the demeaning and demoralizing laws into place against the indigenous people. In May of 1948, the whites-only electorate of the Union of South Africa voted the Herenigde Nasionale Party (National Party or N.P.) led by Dr. D.F. Malan into power. The margin of the N.P. victory was narrow. Similar to when Trump won the presidency, as the ruling United Party (U.P. ) of sitting Prime Minister Jan Smuts won the majority of the popular vote yet the electoral system was weighted in favor of the larger, rural constituencies where the N.P. managed to outperform rivals.
From this, Malan was able to form a coalition government with the smaller Afrikaner Party (A.P.) of Nicolaas Havenga. The N.P. remained in power for more than four decades and implemented an extreme version of racial segregation (apartheid). Malan and his successors enacted a series of legislative measures designed to reinforce the dominance of the minority white population over other peoples of South Africa. The ruling party sought to engineer complete separation of different racial groups in the country. This caused problems however. Those actions resulted in an explosion of opposition to the apartheid system among non-white peoples of South Africa and a growing disgust and opposition to the country from the international community. This lead to diplomatic pressure and trade sanctions.
20th Century History 