The
United party reply to them in English. This, too, is more or less a
matter of policy, but it is also because some of them can't speak
Afrikaans anyway. When today's adults in South Africa were school
children, they spoke English at school, no matter what they learned at
home, so that children of English extraction often grew up knowing only
the few words of Afrikaans that they had picked up from servants and
the occasional Afrikaner playmate. Today's children will presumably be
better fitted to cope with difficulties in the House of Assembly
because Afrikaans is now compulsorily taught in the state schools. But
that is all in the future, and in the meantime conscientious M.P.s of
British descent, of whom there are quite a few in the United party,
must either brush up on the language this late in the day or wait until
they can read the Nationalist speeches in translation. One of the ways
in which Harry Oppenheimer annoys his opponents is by being fluent in
Afrikaans.
The
room is modeled on the Chamber of Commons in the British Houses of
Parliament, but it is slightly smaller and the ceilings are not so high
that members look like midgets, as they do in London. Nor are the
benches benches: they are seats with desks in front of them, like
school desks, placed in pairs. One of the Nationalists was on his feet
speaking as the Oppen-heimer party came in. Nobody seemed to listen.
Members drifted through the door, bowed to the head of the room where
the Speaker was sitting, and took their seats and talked to each other
and generally behaved as carelessly and informally as the audience in a
Chinese theater. In the crowded gallery, visitors found seats or went
away disappointed. Mr. Waterson had not yet begun: now he took the
floor.
