This article suggests that a ‘politics of security’ characterised white South Africa from 1961 to at least the time of the death of Prime Minister H. F. Verwoerd in 1966. It is still too early to know whether under Dr Verwoerd's successor, B. J. Vorster, South African politics will assume another character, although at the end of the article I will suggest that change is unlikely. I wish to argue, however, that over the last five years of the Verwoerd premiership politics in South Africa was qualitatively different from that which existed before the creation of the Republic in 1961.