1966 was a bleak year in South African politics. The National Party Government celebrated the fifth anniversary of the white republic and won its biggest ever majority in the all-white elections in March. The ANC, the SACP, the PAC and their allies were all banned and their leadership was either in exile or in jail. In the Eastern Cape, Verwoerd’s theories of grand apartheid were being test-driven in the nominally autonomous Transkei Bantustan. North of the Limpopo, Ian Smith had recently proclaimed UDI for ‘Rhodesia’ and growled defiance at the world. The Salazar dictatorship in Portugal was still reasonably strong and still ruling Angola and Mozambique. There was apparent substance in the rhetoric of a great white ‘anti-communist’ redoubt in Southern Africa anchored by a powerful white South Africa.
Read the full article from the Helen Suzman Foundation here: Dominy, G (2016). Helen Suzman and the 1966 Robert Kennedy tour.