represented rural voters. It would be crucial in 1948, when it enabled D. F.
Malan's National party to form a government and institute its policy' of
apartheid.
Fourth, the constitution made both English and Dutch the official lan-
guages of the country, Discerning the crucial importance of language to the
survival of Afrikaner culture and identity in the face of the forces of an-
glicization, J.B. M. Hertzog had recently piloted a bill through the Orange
FreeState parliament to place the Dutch and English languages on the same
footing in the white public schools of that colony. In the convention,
Hertzog and ex-president M. T.Steyn made it clear that they would have no
truck with unification unless the constitution included a strong safeguard
for the Dutch language. The language clause, and the clause protecting the
Cape nonracial franchise, were the two rigid elements in the constitution.
Neither could be amended without the approval of two-thirds of both
houses of Parliament sitting together.
The constitution also included provisions under which the British gov-
ernment might at some unspecified date incorporate Southern Rhodesia,
Basutoland,
Bechuanaland
Protectorate,
and Swaziland into the new
Union. Three Southern Rhodesians were present at the convention, with-