BJ Vorster Tenders his Resignation as Apartheid Prime Minister

BJ Vorster Tenders his Resignation as Apartheid Prime Minister

On 19 September 1978, John Vorster shocked the nation by tendering his resignation as Prime Minister for the apartheid government, at the request of his colleagues, on the grounds of ill health. Vorster was immediately replaced by the defence minister, P.W. Botha, who was sworn in on 28 September 1978, as the new Prime Minister. After Botha was sworn in, Vorster was appointed as State President, which was at that stage a ceremonial position.

In 1966, a week after the death of Hendrik Verwoerd, Vorster was appointed as the Prime Minster of South Africa. Verwoerd was assassinated, on 6 September 1966, in the House of Assembly by a “hit man” who was promoted by an international conspiracy led by tobacco magnate, Anton Rupert, with the support of John Vorster, who subsequently became Prime Minister. The main negative factor was that Verwoerd did not understand that the monetary system was based on usury and failed to reform it. Although Vorster fiercely opposed Black majority rule in South Africa and vigorously enforced the security legislation that curtailed anti-apartheid activities in the country, he was closely linked to big business circles that financed the racist project in South Africa.

Balthazar Johannes “B. J.” Vorster, also known as John Vorster, served as the Prime Minister of South Africa from 1966 to 1978 and the Ceremonial State President of South Africa from 1978 to 1979. Known as B. J. Vorster during much of his career, Vorster strongly adhered to his National Party’s policy of apartheid, overseeing, as Minister of Justice, the Rivonia Trial, in which Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage. Vorster was a passionate Afrikaner nationalist who early in his life became a member of the far right “Ossewa Brandwag” (meaning “Ox-Wagon Sentinels/Guards”), an organisation he remained loyal to even when he became prime minister, despite its rejection of parliamentary politics.

As Minister of Justice, Vorster quashed the increasingly vigorous liberation movements in a period of dramatic opposition to apartheid – the African National Congress (ANC) and its military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and other organisations. He took charge of the State’s repression of all and any opposition to apartheid, instituting security legislation that allowed the police to ban, detain or house arrest anyone he perceived as a threat to the State, including liberals, whom he saw as “proto communists”.

Following Umkhonto’s launch of a campaign of sabotage on 16 December 1961, Vorster announced radical measures on 15 February 1962 to bolster the security of the white South African State. Accordingly, on 12 May 1962, he revealed details of the General Laws Amendment Bill, commonly referred to as the Sabotage Bill. The bill equated sabotage with treason, greatly expanding the definition of sabotage to include virtually all forms of protest. It set out penalties for sabotage ranging from five years to the death sentence, as well as provided for the State to ban people from attending gatherings and allowed for the minister of justice to place individuals under house arrests. The Bill was passed by the Senate, and on 27 June 1962 it was gazetted.

On 20 October 1962, the office of the Minister of Agricultural Economics and Marketing was bombed, and MK claimed responsibility. On the same day, speaking at a National Party rally in Alberton, Vorster said he would not be scared off by saboteurs and would take strong action against them. In his address, Vorster characterised “communism” as the principal danger, but “liberalistic tendencies which were being stoked up day by day by certain newspapers posed perhaps an even greater danger. Our struggle will become tougher and tougher. It will become necessary for the protection of White civilisation to take more and more steps.”

Subsequently, Vorster asked his former comrade in the “Ossewa Brandwag”, Hendrik van den Bergh, to head the Security Police. Van den Bergh agreed, on condition that he be given the power to remake the unit, and took office on 14 January 1963. In order to make Van de Bergh’s job “easier”, on 23 April 1963, Vorster unveiled the Ninety-days Act, which was a remodification of the General Laws Amendment Bill and the toughest legislation yet introduced. The Act allowed for people to be detained for 90 days without being charged and also closed loopholes in the earlier bill, allowing the Minister to imprison people without trial, even after they had served a jail term. This was designed first of all to deal with the PAC’s Robert Sobukwe, who was soon to be released from Robben Island.

On 12 June 1963, Vorster announced in Parliament that the PAC and its armed wing, Poqo, had been decimated, and that the ANC was also going to be dealt with the same way. On 19 July 1963, following the Rivonia arrests, Vorster said, “They wanted to crucify me when we introduced the 90-day detention clause earlier this year. The happenings of the past few days have completely vindicated the law passed at the time. And as a result of these happenings, I am now pretty confident that we will not have any troubles in this country this year – or next year … People must realise that the communists are playing for very high stakes indeed. These are not men who play according to the rules. To try to combat them with conventional methods is just a waste of time.”

With the Rivonia trial behind his back, following the life incarceration of Nelson Mandela and his comrades in the MK High Command, Vorster turned his attention towards the underground Communist Party, with Advocate Braam Fischer being his prime target. After swooping on and arresting activists belonging to the African Resistance Movement (ARM), on 3 July 1964, despite also the time-bomb planted by ARM member John Harris at Johannesburg Station, on 24 July 1964, which exploded, killing one person and wounding a number of others, Vorster announced that the 90-day detention clause would probably be suspended by the end of 1964.

On 9 July 1964, Braam Fischer was arrested but released three days later. He was rearrested on 23 September 1964 and charged with furthering the aims of the Communist Party. In January 1965, Fischer skipped bail and went on the run, but he was arrested on 11 November 1965. He was found guilty in May 1966 and sentenced to life imprisonment. After Fischer was charged in October 1964, Vorster announced that terrorism and sabotage had come to an end in South Africa.

After his appointment as Prime Minister, Vorster continued the apartheid policies of arch-ideologist Verwoerd, his predecessor, curtailing the rights of Blacks and implementing the Bantustan (Homelands) policies, influx control, forced removals and the separation of the races in every sphere of life. In the late 1960s, Vorster cooperated with the Rhodesian Prime Minister, Ian Smith, to counter the infiltration of guerrillas of the ANC-ZAPU (African National Congress-Zimbabwe African People’s Union) alliance into South Africa through Zimbabwe in 1967.

The ANC-ZAPU cadres aimed to find a route into South Africa by first crossing the Zambezi River from Zambia and into Rhodesia, then marching across Rhodesia through the Wankie Game reserve, and crossing the Limpopo River into South Africa. That same year the infamous Terrorism Act was passed and Vorster ensured its implementation, with the complete abolition of non-white political representation, the 1976 Soweto Uprisings and the Steve Biko crisis. Johannesburg Central Police Station, which was formerly called John Vorster Square, became the home of South Africa’s notorious Security Branch during the apartheid era.

Vorster conducted a more pragmatic foreign policy than his predecessors, especially in an effort to improve relations between the white minority regime and its neighbours, particularly after the break-up of the Portuguese colonial empire. The coup d’etat in Portugal, which drew a close to Portuguese colonialism in 1974, forced Vorster to review his foreign policy, with independent states Angola and Mozambique now allowing for the possibility of ANC bases in these countries “frontline” states. He met with Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda on a train at the Victoria Falls in August 1975 and met with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1976, on three occasions.

Despite earlier attempts to establish normal relations with neighbouring countries, he took South Africa to war in Angola in 1975, ending the policy of détente and plunging the region into turmoil, and beginning the process of the militarisation of the State, which continued when PW Botha succeeded him. Being surprised by the effectiveness of the MPLA (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola) forces, Vorster decided to increase the apartheid South African Defence Force (SADF) presence in Angola by dispatching a contingent of no more than 2 500 men and 600 vehicles.

In order to dislodge the MPLA, Vorster approved weapons worth US $14 million, on 14 July 1975, to be bought secretly for the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) UNITA, of which the first shipments from South Africa arrived in August 1975. On 22 August 1975, the apartheid SADF initiated operation “Sausage II”, a major raid against the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) in southern Angola and on 4 September 1975, Vorster authorised the provision of limited military training, advice and logistical assistance to FNLA and UNITA in return for their help against SWAPO.

At the start of May 1978 Vorster authorised “Operation Reindeer” that was a three-part SADF offensive against the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) bases in Angola that would open with a large airborne raid on Cassinga some 250 kilometres inside that country and continue with an overland and helicopter attack on SWAPO’s PLAN (People’s Liberation Army of Namibia) forward operating bases within about 25 kilometres of the border at Chetequera and Dombondola. From the SADF perspective, the mining town of Cassinga represented an important SWAPO-PLAN headquarters and training centre, but SWAPO later maintained that it was a camp for non-combatant refugees.

Shortly after the 1978 internal Settlement in Rhodesia, in which he was instrumental, by pressuring Ian Smith to accept in principle that white minority rule could not continue indefinitely, Vorster worked with Henry Kissinger the U.S. Secretary of State to persuade Smith to share power with the liberation movements in Zimbabwe, while he remained adamantly opposed to Black majority rule in South Africa. Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front abhorrence of South African pressure was best illustrated by the confidential notes of a speech given to a closed white audience by Ted Sutton-Pryce, then Deputy Minister in the Rhodesian Prime Minister’s Office.

According to Sutton-Pryce, “Vorster is the bad guy. The reason for the RF (Rhodesian Front) failure was because of pressure put on Rhodesia … Fifty percent of the Rhodesian defence bill was paid by South Africa up until June. A reply had not been given since then as to whether they would support it for a further year. There has been a delay on war items for as long as 21 years. The railway system is moving very few goods – reported congestion. The border was closed over the period of the Kissinger talks, 1 – 4 days. Fuel supply down to 196 days. It is difficult to prove these facts as we cannot afford to antagonize South Africa by exposing her … Against this background they had no alternative but to accept the Kissinger package deal.”

During the same period Vorster was implicated in the Muldergate Scandal and was forced to resign because of the subsequent “Information Scandal” of 1978 that undermined the integrity of the apartheid government. The “Information Scandal” was about the use of funds to finance apartheid propaganda. The “Rand Daily Mail” and “Sunday Express” newspapers were the first to notice that something was amiss with the way the state funds were being used. Minister of Information, Connie Mulder, and General Hendrik van den Bergh, Chief of the Bureau of State Security (BOSS-Intelligence), were responsible for the misappropriation of the state funds to prop secret projects with the full approval of Vorster.

The money used to fund these secret projects were taken from the slush funds of the Department of Defence. However, the Minister of Defence at the time, P. W. Botha, was not happy that his department was being used to fund dirty tricks campaigns. By resigning, Vorster was constitutionally removing himself from the political fallout caused by the “Information Scandal”. When Botha was elected the new Prime Minister, he immediately appointed the Erasmus Commission to investigate the “Information Scandal”, which held Vorster, Bergh, and Mulder liable for the misappropriation of state funds, and exonerated Botha and a number of prominent government officials. In November 1979, Vorster was again forced to resign as State President after being implicated in the Information Scandal.

Reacting to the news of Vorster’s resignation, the South African Communist Party (SACP) stated that “Vorster is hated by the majority of the South African people; he is the symbol of oppression and tyranny, his name bracketed with that of Hitler. He won his place at the top of the racist dungheap because he proved himself capable of organising a system of torture and mayhem more sophisticated than anything known since the times of the Gestapo, and was prepared to go to any lengths of persecution and terrorism in defence of white supremacy … And Botha, is he any better than Vorster? … Vorster, Botha – to us it makes no difference. They speak the same language, act in the same way.”

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
Amy McKenna, “John Vorster: Prime Minister of South Africa”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 6 September 2025.
Stephen Goodson, “The ANC – A Liberation Movement or A Tool of the Bankers?”, Impact Magazine, 12 June 2013.
Mxolisi Dlamuka, “Harry Gwala, Political Militancy and State Trials, 1960-1977”, Andrew W Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Remaking Societies, Remaking Persons Forum, History Department, UWC, 9 January 2019.
Fernando Joao da Costa Cabral Andresen Guimaraes, “The Origins of the Angolan Civil War: International Politics and Domestic Political Conflict 1961-1976, Doctor of Philosophy in International Relations: University of London, March 1992.
Nicholas Baker, “‘Yesterday It was One Man One Vote, Today It is One Man One Gun’: Competing Nationalist Narratives and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, 1961-1980”, Master of Arts: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, June 2018.
Timothy J. Stapleton, “A Military History of South Africa: From the Dutch-Khoi Wars to the End of Apartheid”, Praeger Security International, 2010.
Anthony R. Wilkinson, “Insurgency in Rhodesia, 1957-1973: An Account and Assessment”, The International Institute for Strategic Studies, Adelphi Paper No. 100, Autumn 1973.
Hennie van Vuuren, “Apartheid Grand Corruption: Assessing the Scale of Crimes of Profit in South Africa from 1976 to 1994”, Institute for Security Studies, 2006.
Mafika Pascal Gwala (Ed.), “Chapter 10: Black Political Organisations”, Black Review 1973, Black Community Programmes, 1974.
Chris Saunders, “Kaunda and the Liberation of Namibia: Towards an Assessment”, Zambia Social Science Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2021/2022.
Editorial Notes, “Botha Takes Over”, The African Communist, No. 76, First Quarter 1979.
Johan Schoeman, “SADF Military Operations, 1975 -1989”, War in Angola Information Portal, 19 November 2012.
Bernard Leeman, “Lesotho and the Struggle for Azania: The Origins and History of the African National Congress, Pan Africanist Congress, South African Communist Party and Basutoland Congress Party, 1780 – 1994, Self Published, 2015.
Kenneth W. Grundy, “The Rise of the South African Security Establishment: An Essay on the Changing Locus of State Power”, The South African Institute of International Affairs, August 1983.
J.K. Cilliers, “Counter-Insurgency in Rhodesia”, Groom Helm, 1985.
Denis Herbstein and John Evenson, “The Devils are Among Us – The War for Namibia”, Zed Books, 1989.
Janet Smith and Beauregard Tromp, “Hani: A Life Too Short”, Jonathan Ball, 2009.
Susan Booysen, “The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power”, Wits University, 2011.
Stephen Ellis, “External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960–1990”, Oxford University, 2013.
Robin Binckes, “Vlakplaas: Apartheid Death Squads 1979–1994”, Pen and Sword, 2018.

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!