Brandwag to Hashomer

The durable old soldier and scholar who leads South Africa against the Axis, Prime Minister Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts, has found it highly convenient to have his chief home opposition split into two warring camps. One is the noisy Ossewa Brandwag (Ox Wagon Sentinel) Party headed by burly Dr. J. F. J. van Rensburg, who would like nothing better than to be Adolf Hitler's South African Gauleiter. The other is the Herenigde (Reunited) Party of bald, myopic Dr. Daniel Franc,ois Malan.* Dr. Malan preaches with pompous eloquence against "British-Jewish" democracy and advocates his own brand patterned after the old Boer republics'. His spokesmen claim that a victorious Hitler would entrust South Africa's government to the Herenigde, as the largest opposition party, but that if the United Nations win the war, Dr. Malan will fight for a republic as did Eamon de Valera in Ireland.

By preserving freedom of speech and refusing demands that the opposition leaders be jailed for seditious utterance, wise old Prime Minister Smuts has encouraged van Rensburg and Malan to vilify each other rather than himself. Recently the Ossewa Brandwag has devoted almost more attention to the comedy of paunchy Dr. Malan trying to mount a horse than it has to the Smuts Government.

Last week Jew-baiting Dr. Malan lent very little gravity to his cause when he auctioned off his Cape Town home, Brandwag (Sentinel), for which he had paid -L-4,400. He accepted a bid of -L-7,900 from a Jewish merchant named Solomon Schach. Solomon Schach promptly made the South African score-of-the-week by giving the house the Yiddish name of Hashomer (Sentinel).

* When Prime Minister Smuts came into office with the outbreak of war in 1939, General James Barry Munnik Hertzog, Prime Minister for 15 years, gathered a mixed anti-war opposition. Dr. Malan shortly ousted Hertzog from the Party leadership, and the veteran Germanophile politician retired to his Wilge River farm near Pretoria.

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