SOUTH AFRICA: Packing the Courts

South Africa's Nationalist Prime Minister Johannes Gerhardus Strydom last week tore down the last big constitutional barrier to one-party racial control over his divided land. He had already packed South Africa's High Court bench, by adding five new judges favorable to the government; now he pressed through Parliament a bill endorsing his court-packing decree, and ensuring that a quorum of the new court would be able to override the South African constitution.

Strydom's chief objective, like his predecessor Daniel Malan's, was to disenfranchise the 45,000 mixed-blood people who still have votes in...