South Africans to find out what opposition movements were doing and
thinking.s"
The impact of the Nationalist regime on the mentality of Afrikaners was
profound. Their language was unique, and most Afrikaners experienced
little but the Nationalist world perspective from cradle to grave: at home,
in Afrikaans-language
schools and universities, in Dutch
Reformed
churchs, in social groups, on radio and television, and in books and
newspapers. In particular, their schools imbued them with a political my-
thology derived from a historiography
that distorted the past for na-
tionalist purposes. For example, it made heroes out of the border ruffians
who were responsible for the Slagtersnek rebellion in 1815, and it associ-
ated God with the victory of the Afrikaner commando over the Zulu at the
battle of Blood River on December 16, 1.838.25
The Nationalist government inherited a substantial coercive apparatus
from its predecessors. It expanded that apparatus prodigiously.V Among
its first punitive laws was the Suppression of Communism Act (1950),
which defined communism in sweeping terms and gave the minister of
justice summary powers over anyone who in his opinion was likely to
further any of the aims of communism. The minister could "ban" a person