In 1948, Afrikanerdom achieved its long-sought goal of dominance within the white minority when the Nationalist Party won the general election—offering South Africa a new policy called apartheid and, incidentally, adding a new pejorative to the international political vocabulary.

Although its authors had failed to define apartheid with any precision, political observers at the time feared that South Africa was about to enter a dangerous era of authoritarian racism fundamentally different from past policies. Those fears, based on the ugly pro-Nazi record of Nationalist leaders during World War II (among them the present Prime Minister, Johannes Vorster) and the blatant Nationalist exacerbation of white bigotry instanced by the popular election slogan die swart gevaar (the black menace), soon turned out to be fully justified.