Malan, Daniel François

Malan, Daniel François (dänyĕl` fräNswä` məlän`), 1874–1959, South African political leader. A minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, he left the pulpit after the outbreak of World War I to become editor of an Afrikaner nationalist paper. Rising to prominence in the National party in Cape Province, he was elected to parliament in 1918. He served (1924–33) as minister of the interior, public health, and education in the cabinet of J. B. M. Hertzog. After World War II, Malan's National party and the small Afrikaner party, campaigning on the issue of white supremacy, came (1948) to power with Malan as prime minister. His government initiated the racial separation laws known as apartheid. He retired as prime minister in 1954.

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Malan, Daniel François 

Born May 22, 1874, in Riebeeck; died Feb. 7, 1959, in Stellenbosch. Statesman of the Union of South Africa. Afrikaner by nationality.

Malan was educated at universities in Stellenbosch (South Africa) and Utrecht (Holland). In 1915 he became the editor of the newspaper Die Burger, which subsequently became the official organ of the reactionary Nationalist Party. Along with other right-wing nationalists, he opposed in 1933 the merging of the strongest national bourgeois parties and headed the new, “purified” Nationalist Party. During World War II, he opposed participation by the Union of South Africa in a war against fascist Germany and in effect called for cooperation with Hitler. After the victory of the Nationalist Party in the elections of 1948, he headed the government (1948-54) that declared apartheid to be a state doctrine; the government persecuted all democratic elements within the country and supported forces of extreme reaction in the world arena.