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The Trinitarians: the 1983 South African Constitution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Dennis Austin
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Extract

IN TOLSTOY'S STORY OF THE THREE HERMITS, A BISHOP (TRAvelling by ship) passes by chance the island on which they live and asks to be set ashore. He discovers that they know only the simple prayer: ‘Three in One, One in Three, Praise be His Name’. ‘It is not sufficient,’ he says, and teaches them the catechism. After some difficulty, they memorize the words, whereupon he returns to his ship. Later, in the moonlight, he sees the three old men running towards him across the waves. ‘My lord, my lord, we have forgotten’. ‘Go back,’ says the bishop, ‘go back: faith that enables you to walk on the water does not need any catechism’. Mr P. W. Botha has his tricameral constitution, three in one, one in three, but can he truly walk upon the water?

Type
Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1985 , pp. 185 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1985

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References

1 South Africa 1983, Official Year Book, p. 199.

2 ibid.

3 South African Newsletter, October 1983, No. 10/83.

Legislation on matters of common concern must be approved by all three Chambers sitting separately [but] unanimity among the three Chambers will be enhanced if matters of common concern, including legislation, are referred to joint standing committees. The approach will not be conflict‐centred and winner‐takes‐all, but it will ring in an era of consensus style government in South Africa. In the new dispensation, negotiation will be of vital importance.

4 ibid.

5 D. F. Malan 1948–54, J. G. Strydom 1954–58, H. F. Verwoerd 1958–66, B. J. Vorster 1966–78, P. W. Botha 1978‐. Before the war General Hwtzog was prime minister 1924–39, followed by General Smuts 1939–48. The Afrikaner community has never cared for the turn and turn about in office of opposed parties. Vorster became president in 1978 but resigned the following year when his former Information Minister, Connie Mulder, was involved in a financial scandal. (See the Report of the (Erasmus) Commission.)

6 Coloured families can still drive past the new flats and bungalows of District Six that was once their traditional ‘homeland’ in Cape Town before it was flattened to make room for a new white suburb. Similarly, Mr Pen Lotze (Minister of Community Development until 1984) was contemptuously dismissive of Indians living in the white suburb of Mayfair in Johannesburg — living there in contravention of the Group Areas Act not out of choice but necessity because of the housing waiting list of over 10,000 Coloureds and Indian applicants. ‘These people didn’t live in the sky before they came to Mayfair. They can go back to where they came from.’ That was in the month prior to the 1984 elections.

7 George Woodcock, Gandhi, London, Fontana/Collins, 1972, p. 33.

8 The issue was troublesome not only for the six and the British government but for Rajbansi and Hendrickse. Although members of the government they were not consulted about the detention orders: it was argued that since they were ‘without Portfolio’ they had no responsibility for particular policies. The president also ruled out the notion of ‘collective cabinet responsibility’ under the new constitution.