Basson’s Story Now Complete

Nog Steeds op die Parlementêre Kolfblad
met Insigte oor die Afrikaner en Afrikaans

The second part of Basson’s memoirs, Politieke Kaarte op die Tafel, was a first edition sell-out and has been reprinted. It is no small wonder that there is an even greater interest in the third part of this trilogy, Steeds op die Parlementêre Kolfblad – met Insigte oor die Afrikaner en Afrikaans.
In the third volume of his political memoirs the veteran politician Japie Basson turns over a few more political stones to show us what scurries underneath. He tells us all – and more! – of what want to know about the goings-on in the caucus rooms of various political parties, and much more. This eagerly awaited conclusion of the story told in Raam en Rigting in die Politiek and Politieke Kaarte op die Tafel is available in the bookshops now!
Basson, a graduate in law, first made his political voice heard as journalist. A gifted debater and writer, with a uniquely effortless literary style, he impresses as competent storyteller and deep thinker who determinedly questioned, without hesitating, for more than fifty years, everything that he regarded as unjust and unacceptable.
In a review Paul Murray quotes an anonymous writer who summarises Basson’s intellectual energy in a nutshell: “To think, reason, weigh, sift, decide and act – this is life.” Murray goes on to say: “The historical reality of the time, as apartheid was unfolding in the dark period of our history, has been vividly captured by Basson’s descriptive yet easy-reading prose, making the book a valuable repository and archive for not only the student of South African political history, but also the reader at large.”
Basson offers the following about his writings: “The core of what I have to say is the story of apartheid ... exactly what was behind it – its soul, so to speak.”

Japie Basson devoted his whole life to politics. In this time he was a member of various parties, among them one, the National Union, which he established himself. He was one of six MPs who represented the former South-West Africa in South Africa’s Parliament, and<br /> then became the honourable member for Bezuidenhout, where he virtually became an institution. He concluded his active political career in the President’s Council, which took the first steps on the road to the democratic South Africa post-1994.

He begins his tale with his time in the political wilderness after having been ousted from the National Party caucus for opposing certain elements of Dr Verwoerd’s apartheid policy, and then tells of the creation of the National Union, an approach by Sir De Villiers Graaff which resulted in his being nominated as candidate for the Bezuidenhout constituency, his election as MP for this constituency and his joining the United Party. He also touches on the eventual disintegration of the UP, his joining and eventual expulsion from the Progressive Federal Party under Dr Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, and lastly his activities in PW Botha’s President’s Council, which Basson – in contrast to many other commentators – regards as a very important step in the eventual dismantling of apartheid. In particular he points out that the NP under Botha in many respects in fact overtook the opposition parties in regard to preparing the way for the democratic elections of 1994.

He concludes the book with stimulating chapters on the future of Afrikaans, and warns that Afrikaners should not try to retain their former privileges, because this could actually result in them losing all of them.

The previous two volumes of Basson’s political memoirs, Raam en Rigting in die Politiek and Politieke Kaarte op die Tafel, were well received on publication, and this third volume is certain to find as much favour.

The contents in a nutshell

“What every Afrikaner should realise today,” Basson surmises in Steeds op die Parlementêre Kolfblad, “is that this group as a white group has no special claim to constitutional rights apart from those enjoyed by all citizens of the country.”

Basson thinks that most Afrikaners now realise and profess that apartheid was “a brew of great injustice and misfortune” against fellow South Africans – a view he himself maintained throughout his own political career and which brought much political opprobrium on him.

“The incontestable truth,” Basson maintains, “is that the Afrikaner as a white group will never again come near political authority – not over himself, and even less over others.”

In Steeds op die Parlementêre Kolfblad the author thinks about his “Afrikaans-ness”, about the well-being of Afrikaans, the Stellenbosch language debates and double-medium and mother-tongue education. He quotes W.E.G. Louw: “A unilingual person in South Africa is not only half a citizen, but also half a person.”

“There is,” Basson says “no ‘language plan’ one can dream up which is not going to produce conundrums in our quickly changing circumstances.”

He begins his tale with how he ended up in some sort of “no-man’s land” in his tenth year as MP when he became an independent MP after Dr Verwoerd had required of  him to leave the NP caucus during the previous session. Consequently he began thinking about a national party of reform (the National Union) which would be strong enough to have a real influence on political decision-makers, and which would steer South Africa in a different direction to the disastrous apartheid road. His decisions, amongst others, that coloured voters should have direct representation in Parliament, were greeted with contempt, but he persevered in his belief that one day people in the NP would realise that the apartheid policy would have to be swept from the table.

Requests began streaming in for Basson to help create a new party in South West Africa, and a founding conference was arranged for 10 February 1960, scarcely a month after the commencement of the Parliamentary session.

He also writes about the role and policy and particularly the direction and thinking of the NU – thirty years before 1990 – as a movement that rejected the apartheid fiction of a “White South Africa”, and realised that the overarching political question of the time was the problematic of relations between individuals and nations in South Africa, a country with a heterogeneous and widely diverse population.

We read about the referendum of 1960 on changing South Africa into a republic, and more about Verwoerd’s “flim-flam politics” which he used to manoeuvre South Africa into leaving the Commonwealth. The real question was why Verwoerd found membership of a friendly constellation like the Commonwealth so much more problematic than South Africa’s relations with the United Nations, where attacks on us were the order of the day?

In one chapter he describes the “most stressful and bravest closed meeting” he ever experienced in his days as an organiser: before the 1950 election there were doubts about damaging aspects of Mr HJ Klopper’s NP leadership in South West Africa, and there were fears that this could affect the outcome for the party.

The decision to end Klopper’s leadership was taken without any dissenting votes – and yet Dr Verwoerd eventually appointed Klopper as Speaker of Parliament!

Basson writes about the referendum campaign waged by the UP and Progressive Party against becoming a republic, and about financiers who “pumped up” the “No” campaign “to the tune of millions”.

A “Yes” vote for Verwoerd’s republic was too much to ask of a group of English-speaking NU members. “Their distrust of the Doctor’s political programme ran far too deep for this,” according to Basson.

He tells of how an influential mining magnate invited him to his office and pleaded for the NU openly to come out in favour of a “No” vote. His group was prepared to cover the NU’s campaign costs in this regard to an astonishing amount.

As Basson was completely divorced from the NP following his expulsion from that party in 1959, sympathetic circles exercised the same pressure as those that resulted in the creation in the NU in the south: he was requested to create a new South West African party. Prominent German-speakers offered financial help. The “SWP” or South West Party was created in 1960.

In a very interesting chapter under the title “’n Spoor van Geweld” (A Trail of Violence) we read how the Prime Minister of the time, John Vorster, said to his biographer John D’Oliveira in 1977, with reference to Basson: “I have to be honest, I don’t like the man, so everything I say about him is prejudiced ...” This chapter also contains shocking revelations about the planned – and violent – disruption of political meetings where the author and members of his party appeared in Vorster’s time.

One could go on and on quoting and telling – but not in the easy style of this gifted writer and debater, and certainly without his political insights and knowledge of the inner circles. Steeds op die Parlementêre Kolfblad is the capstone of his work, and a reading experience one should not miss.

Nog Steeds op die Parlementêre Kolfblad
met Insigte oor die Afrikaner en Afrikaans
ISBN 978-0-620-40906-3
204 pages, 152 mm x 230 mm, soft cover
Price: R190.00

Available from Protea Boekhuis, Clarke's Bookshop, Exclusive Books, Van Schaik, Wordsworth and all good bookshops.