J.B.M. Hertzog.[116] As early as 1907, Botha and Smuts had begun to move to the centre and reached out to English speakers. This was based on their growing awareness of the wider world of international power politics. The British Empire offered both security and beneficial trading links, and they realised that they could only achieve rapid economic growth if they gained the trust of English speakers of both British and Jewish descent, who controlled most of South Africa’s capital.[117]
For this reason, there was hardly any difference between the policies of Botha’s SAP and those of the Unionist Party, whose supporters were mainly English, and which took it upon itself to protect South Africa’s ties to the British Empire. The Unionists counted men like Leander Starr Jameson (of the Jameson Raid), the mining magnates George Farrar and Lionel Phillips, as well as Percy Fitzpatrick, who had been a prominent Uitlander leader in Kruger’s republic, among its leaders.[118] Both parties advocated the concept of a single South African nation, a non-doctrinaire native policy, white – but not Asian – immigration, economic development, and imperial preference. Neither party advocated special protection for the Afrikaners, a stance that aggravated Hertzog. It was through Hertzog’s intervention that the National Convention – where the terms of the Union were negotiated – accorded equal status to both Dutch and English in all public business, and provided for a bilingual civil service. Hertzog insisted that language equality could only be achieved when both languages were used as a medium of instruction in schools. As a cabinet minister in the former Orange River Colony, he had established parity in that colony, despite being labelled a ‘racialist’ by English speakers who saw no reason for their children to learn Dutch. Hertzog’s educational policy had brought about a clash between two conflicting principles: the right of parents to choose the language in which their children were educated versus the right of society to expect its children to be bilingual. Botha, for his part, felt frustrated with Hertzog for stirring up the language issue,[119] but managed to outmanoeuvre Hertzog when the new Union’s education policy was formulated. Hertzog’s system of absolute parity was abandoned in favour of one that made mother-tongue instruction for the first six school years compulsory in three of the four provinces, and gave parents the right to choose the medium of instruction thereafter. In Natal, the choice was left entirely to parents.[120]
Back in Montagu, Malan – as chairperson of the local high school’s school committee – made a point of asserting the rights of Afrikaans children to be educated in Dutch. As far as he was concerned, mother-tongue education existed only on paper in a system that was dominated by English. In response to a government questionnaire, Malan made it clear that school inspectors had to be bilingual, and requested that the Department of Education conduct all correspondence with the Montagu school committee in Dutch, since it was the language most spoken and understood by the committee, and because, ‘according to Section 137 of the South Africa Act, Dutch is one of the official languages of the country’.[121] The department replied that the practical application of the law was rather difficult, as not all civil servants could write in Dutch, to which the school committee replied that the situation had to be addressed as soon as possible.[122]
When it came to education, Malan’s concerns went beyond the language issue. At a time when poverty among Afrikaners was becoming more and more acute, his pastoral visits to his flock revealed the extent to which parents still ignored the 1905 law that made education compulsory and, to make matters worse, the limited extent to which the authorities enforced the legislation. Making compulsory education a reality in his district – and especially to the children of the town’s poor – became one of his main concerns.[123] The poor white problem was one of Malan’s most pressing priorities. During his studies in the Netherlands he had displayed sensitivity to the issue of poverty,[124] and his work as a minister made the poverty of his flock a daily reality which he witnessed at first hand as he entered the houses of his congregants. It made a deep and lasting impression on him, an impression inscribed even deeper when he later encountered some of the most deprived Afrikaners: those who lived beyond the borders of the Union.
These were also the years when mission work gained increasing prominence within the Dutch Reformed Church. Malan himself came from a family that held mission work in high regard – his sister Cinie worked as a missionary in Southern Rhodesia, and the family still treasured the memory of his deceased brother who, at the age of ten, had wanted to become a missionary. Malan displayed a formidable ability to inspire his congregation’s fundraising efforts, and motivated them to give generously to mission work. The parish of Montagu paid the salary of Rev. George Murray, a missionary in Mashonaland, and later also supported Rev. J.G. Strijdom, a missionary in the Sudan. By 1911, the Montagu parish was making the highest per capita contribution to mission work in the entire Cape Province. Malan linked these fundraising efforts to fundraising for the community’s own poor and thus, as the amount of money donated for mission work rose, so too did donations for poverty relief.[125]
When Malan took part in a large mission conference in Stellenbosch in April 1912, he was approached and interviewed by one of the Synod’s committees about the possibility of visiting Dutch Reformed congregations that were scattered throughout the two Rhodesias. Malan declared that he was able and willing to undertake the journey.[126] He would also write letters on his progress to De Kerkbode, the DRC’s periodical in the Cape Province. These letters took the form of a travel diary, and became popular reading – to the extent that they were also published by Ons Land and Onze Courant, Graaff-Reinet’s local newspaper. The letters were exceptionally well written, and made for such gripping reading that they were collated into a book that went through two prints.[127]
Malan left Montagu on 18 July 1912 in order to wander further north than he had ever been. He was accompanied by David Burger, one of the deacons from his church.[128] Together the two men would undertake what was to become a great adventure. It was to be filled with bad coffee, endless hours on trains, bumpy roads, carts drawn by donkeys that determined their own pace and working hours, a horse that was kind enough to bring variety to a hundred-mile journey by practising every trot known to his kind, mosquitoes that devoured them in the open veld and, above all, the beauty of the African bush.[129] But as he left the town in the full darkness of the night, still glowing from the hearty and spontaneous farewell in the local hall, Malan wondered whether he was to return to Montagu in order to continue his work there, or to bid it farewell.[130] A mere three days before his departure, the church council of the parish of Graaff-Reinet had addressed a letter to him in which it called on him to join their minister, Rev. P.K. Albertyn, in his work.[131] The letter was accompanied by a personal letter from Albertyn in which he implored Malan to accept the offer, as one of their main reasons for calling him to the position was because
we in these parts need a strong man on the terrain of language and nationality … our nation desperately needs you in these parts! Dear brother come, COME and help us! If you want to be the preacher and the student, I would willingly do the greater part of the pastoral visits.[132]
Albertyn foresaw that Malan was headed for great things – he assumed that Malan would become a professor in the not too distant future, and was happy to make whatever sacrifices were necessary in order to acquire the services of a man with Malan’s talents.[133] To Malan, always overwhelmed by the pastoral burden he carried by himself while his heartfelt passions and interests stretched far wider than the borders of his district, this offer must have sounded like manna from heaven. True to his nature, however, it was not an offer at which he jumped. He would mull it over while he journeyed beyond the borders of his country. As he travelled to Bulawayo, he was followed by a letter from the Montagu church council, imploring him to remain with them – unless it was God’s will that he left for Graaff-Reinet.[134] Malan did not come to a speedy decision, but he did not keep his church council in suspense for too long. By mid-August, he sent them a telegram to inform them that he had decided to accept the call to Graaff-Reinet.[135]
God’s will was also foremost in Malan’s mind as he contemplated his own future and that of the continent he was traversing. While on the train to Bulawayo, he spread a newly updated map of Africa open in front of him. It was so different from the one he had studied as a schoolboy. Earlier cartographers had filled the blank spaces
