The end of a Chapter Long Walk Original Manuscript (Image #398)

the time as a team, conscious that they represented the oppressed people of South Africa as a whole. South African goods were being boycotted in many parts of the world and the government realised that in the prevailing atmosphere of international hostility she would have to be self sufficient and develop her own industries, commerce and agriculture so that she could stand on her own feet in every field. This decision was also encouraged by the knowledge that she occupied a strategic position on the African continent, had vast natural resources and huge investments sunk by foreign companies, all of which the Western Powers could never ignore even at the height of the campaign to isolate her. She well knew that she was the greatest gold producer of the West and that even those who loathed her colour policies would always waver whenever effective action against her was proposed. The referendum was held in October 1960 and by 850,000 votes against 775,000 votes white South Africa decided to become a Republic.That was the realisation of a dream that the forefathers of the AFrikaners had cherished from the earleist days of their arrival in the country. Indeed in the course of their history they succeeded in establishing several semi feudal republics, the most stable of which were destroyed by the British during the so called Anglo Boer War (1899 1902) and finally merged in 1910 with the Cape and Natal provinces to form the Union of South Africa as a single British colony. By 1948 when the Nats came to power South Africa was a fully independent country wiht its own sovereign parliament, a stable government, an independent judiciary, its own army and full control of its foreign affairs. Accordingly the decision to become a republic did not