Van Bergen often stayed with the Ruperts at Graaff-Reinet. He remembers Anton’s mother as a ‘wonderful woman’ who was very hospitable and made people feel at home. And the first of the local attractions that the young Rupert pointed out to his friends was the statue of Gideon Scheepers.
Towards the end of his student career Rupert was given a lecturership in the Department of Chemistry at the UP. At the end of 1939 he obtained an MSc in applied chemistry. In 1939 and 1940 he also completed courses in law and commerce at the University of South Africa, and embarked on a doctorate in spectroscopy at the UP.
In 1939, while war clouds were gathering in Europe, Rupert chaired the on-campus committee of the ANS, of which Huberte was a member. He was also a member of the executive committee of the ANS and on the editorial board of the movement’s official publication, Wapenskou, which published its freedom manifesto that reflected the strong feelings prevalent among Afrikaans students in the tension-filled late 1930s. In this document the ANS demanded that the Union of South Africa, a member of the British Commonwealth under the British crown, should be converted into a republic with an authoritative government. White population growth should be encouraged, including a considered immigration policy with assimilability as a requirement. ‘Indigenous non-whites’ should be under state tutelage. ‘By means of a differentiation policy parallel development according to their own traditional cultural beliefs and equality through apartheid should be made possible for them.’ Natural and production resources should be used equitably for the benefit of the entire community, in which regard the state should not hesitate to infringe on vested interests. As for language, it was proposed that Afrikaans should be the official language, with English enjoying full rights as a second language.
Several of the ideas in the manifesto were not to survive the overheated atmosphere of the war years; the proposed ideas also included some with which Rupert would differ increasingly explicitly in key respects in years to come.
In 1939 the ANS took a militant stand in favour of neutrality with regard to the war, but its protest meetings were to no avail. In parliament Gen. Hertzog’s neutrality motion was defeated by 80 votes to 67 and when Governor-General Patrick Duncan turned down his request for a general election, he resigned as head of government. Gen. Jan Smuts became prime minister and on 6 September 1939 South Africa entered the Second World War. The war was to last till 1945, and once again divided the country.6
Shortly after the outbreak of war Rupert was invited for sundowners at the house of physics professor JS van der Lingen, who had worked under Albert Einstein in Europe. To Rupert’s amazement he declared categorically that Germany would lose the war. He argued that for all its technological expertise, Germany did not understand mass production. When the USA entered the war Germany would be flattened by bombardment from the air. Besides, said Van Lingen, the Germans always wanted to improve a product instead of mass-producing the armaments required in a war situation. This far-sighted view was confirmed many years later by Dr Joachim Zahn, chairman of Daimler-Benz in the 1970s, who was astounded by the South African’s insight when Rupert told him about Van Lingen’s prediction. Zahn himself had worked on an intercontinental ballistic missile during the war, a sophisticated version of the V1 and V2 rockets that rained death and destruction on British cities during the blitz. The war was over and lost before the new missile was ready.
Shortly after the conversation with Van Lingen two incidents occurred that were to change Rupert’s political views profoundly. Both occurred in the company of his student friend Dirk Hertzog, who would become a co-founder of the Rembrandt group. Hertzog was a nephew of General JBM Hertzog, who was living in retirement on his farm Waterval near Witbank.7 He had initially planned to major in political science, but Stephen Leacock’s warning that reconciling electioneering with statecraft was the cardinal problem of the parliamentary system made him turn to law. According to Hertzog, he and Rupert first met as a result of student anti-war activities. At a meeting to protest against the internment of a member of the SRC, first Rupert and then Hertzog spoke: ‘Everybody else kept mum, as there were too many detectives in the audience,’ he related.8 It was Hertzog’s interest in politics that triggered the two incidents in question.
The first was an interview with Gen. Hertzog that his nephew organised shortly after the outbreak of war. Their party comprised six members of the ANS executive, including himself, Rupert and Demps van der Merwe. They wanted the veteran leader to advise them as to where their duty lay in these turbulent times. At first the septuagenarian Boer general was sceptical. Why come to him for counsel after vilifying him all these years, he asked. He pointed out that until recently many students had questioned his Afrikaner identity and loyalty. In the end he wanted an assurance that they would follow whatever advice he gave them. The young men asked leave to deliberate. When they returned Rupert, acting as spokesman, agreed that they would accept his advice unconditionally: for his part, he had requested it because he needed it. They recall Hertzog’s words to them as follows:
‘If you ever want to exercise control, you must first learn to obey. And the true test of obedience is not when you are in agreement but especially when you disagree. Jan Smuts has declared a war that you do not agree with. As you know, I do not agree either. But it was done legally under a constitution that I helped to write, so as law-abiding citizens we are bound by it. Smuts assured me that he would not conscript South Africans for duty beyond our borders. I told him if he introduced conscription or martial law I would personally lead you to the hills [i.e. head a rebellion]. I think he learned a lesson in 1914, he won’t repeat that mistake.
‘Now I am telling you: go back and prepare yourselves to take over. The wheel will turn and the day will come when you have to take the reins, and then you must be ready. Go back to your studies, do your duty and obey the law. And remember, whatever you do unto others will be done unto you.’
The former prime minister then insisted on personally pouring the coffee and slicing the bread.
Rupert was profoundly impressed. He had expected Hertzog to instigate them to rebel against the Smuts government. He decided then and there that he would desist from protest in future and rather engage in positive, practical action. To his mind this was an even more life-changing resolve than his decision to turn down Verwoerd’s offer to join Die Transvaler. Hertzog died two years later in November 1942. His former private secretary, Wennie du Plessis, described him as ‘Boer, Soldier, Statesman, Prince among humans’. Du Plessis eventually became an MP when he defeated Smuts in his stronghold, the Highveld constituency of Standerton, in the watershed election of 1948, which brought to an end the era of the Boer generals who had ruled the Union of South Africa since 1910.
The group of student friends all followed Hertzog’s advice and completed their academic training, except Demps van der Merwe, who was interned during the war. He was a theology student, newly returned from the Netherlands, who eventually headed the Gereformeerde Kerk’s Transvaal training centre for black theology students at Hammanskraal. In Huberte’s opinion it was Hertzog’s ‘wonderful’ advice that inspired Anton to join the Reddingsdaadbond when he was asked to do so.
The other crucial incident that influenced Rupert during the war years took place in 1940, when Dirk Hertzog persuaded Rupert to accompany him to Swartruggens to attend a political meeting at which Oswald Pirow was to speak. In 1939 Pirow, minister of defence in Hertzog’s government, had started a right-wing totalitarian movement, the New Order. Back in Pretoria after the meeting, Rupert was invited to tea by Pirow’s sister Sylva Moerdyk, wife of the well-known architect Gerard Moerdyk and member of a political triumvirate in the Transvaal, together with Adv. JG (Hans) Strijdom, later