Obituary: NP
Nathaniel Pretorius, affectionately known as Nat or NP by those close to him, lived an interesting life, as the Chinese would say. Although the corpse is still missing, events in the last week have caused experts to presume Nat dead.
The official presumption of Nat’s demise was made on Saturday by the curator of his estate, Kortbroek van Schalkwyk. Kortbroek immediately announced that Nat’s belongings would be distributed to former long-time foe Africa Nelson Cebekhulu, otherwise known as ANC.
Nat, a lifelong Christian, would have been impressed by how Van Schalkwyk had shown love for one’s enemies, as the good book urges the faithful. In the 48 years that Nat was in power in South Africa he always acted in ways he believed a good Christian ought to.
It was on the conviction of the righteousness of the book that Nat had caused ANC, like the children of Israel, to wander between 1960 and 1990 in the wild while longing for the Promised Land.
And, in an effort to protect his people from the destructive influences of the communists — who spread a doctrine that, like mampoer, religion was the opium of the people — Nat in 1950 passed the Suppression of Communism Act.
Nat practiced what he preached. Despite his love for rugby, Nat steadfastly refused to allow the sacrilege of having the day of the Lord desecrated by having the national pastime played on that day. Bottle stores were closed on that day and up to this day it is still illegal to sell liquor on Sundays.
He also fervently believed that the good Lord had entrusted him with teaching the natives — essentially heathens who bowed before false gods or ancestors and carried on voodoo practices — the ways of the good book. On such evidence natives were inferior to his people and therefore it was okay to treat them as such.
To protect the chosen people of God from the contamination of natives, he passed an array of laws, including the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, which meant that people could only fall in love with those from the same race; and the Immorality Act, which criminalised being caught with your pants down with a member of the “wrong” race.
Born in Bloemfontein shortly after the founding of the Union of South Africa, Nat’s rule was one of the most colourful eras of local history — with colour being the operative word.
He first came to power in 1924 with Barry Hertzog as his prime minister. Nat and Jan Smuts’s United South African Party joined hands to form the United Party. Together they started a policy of being friendly to the natives.
This displeased one of Nat’s lieutenants, Daniel Francois Malan, who was unhappy about the large numbers of poor white people. Malan wanted Nat to remain pure in his fighting for the interests of white people. And under Malan’s tutelage, Nat assumed power in the 1948 general election. It would be 46 years before he would relinquish power.
Throughout his life, Nat complained about being misunderstood. His great plan of apartheid was loosely based on Robert Frost’s famous poem Mending Walls, which proposed that “good fences make good neighbours”.
Although it was not Nat who decreed that people of European descent would enjoy ownership 87% of the land while the natives, whom his followers routinely called kaffirs (non‒believers), would make do with the rest despite them far outnumbering their white countrymen.
Just as he had accepted Frost’s wisdom even when conveyed in a foreign tongue, he saw no reason for the protest by a generation of schoolchildren in 1976 against his idea of using Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.
With the use of jackboot tactics and live ammunition, the pupils were shown that their assessment that Afrikaans was a “culturally limited language leading to a dead end” was erroneous.
In his latter years, Nat tried hard to reinvent himself. Like the biblical Saul, tormentor of Christians who suddenly became their high priest Paul, Nat went out of his way to woo the voters he had spent his life persecuting.
In 1990 he surprised all when he announced that ANC and all others who thought like him could return home if they wished. He freed some old guy who had been in jail for about 27 years. Four years later that fellow’s crew replaced Nat’s gang.
He adopted a SeSotho name Neo (Gift), giving him the names NNP. Strangely, it was the so-called coloured vote, particularly in the Western Cape, that kept him on life support. Until Kortbroek, spotting a skalkse glimlag (roughish or waggish smile) announced to an astounded nation that Nat was no more.
Lala ngo Xolo nto ka Felevutha no Botha. Kudala u zabalaza.
Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya
NP, born circa 1910, died (presumably) on August 7 2004