“While Sailor was diving headlong at Nazi formations over Kent, Dr Malan was telling the House of Assembly that he expected Hitler would be kind, after he had won the war, and grant South Africa her long-desired status of a Republic.”
Oliver Walker “Sailor Malan” 1953
Malan’s battle with Parkinson’s had become a huge challenge when the infamous Sharpeville incident took place in March 1960 causing at least 70 deaths and many more injuries. Less than a month later, the Government banned the PAC and the ANC. The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 134 calling for “Apartheid” to be abandoned and South Africa was expelled from the Commonwealth in 1961.
He probably never met the “Black Pimpernel” headlined in the “Rand Daily Mail’” of August 8th, 1962, who was arrested and sentenced to a 5-year jail term in solitary confinement for leaving the country without a passport and inciting a strike.
On September 17th, 1963, just over a year after that headline, seventeen years after returning to the country of his birth and a few weeks before the “Rivonia Trial”, Group Captain AG “Sailor” Malan DSO and Bar DFC and Bar lost his final battle. He was 53 years old.
The Nationalist government worked hard for most of those seventeen years to discredit “Sailor” Malan and their refusal to accord a Military Funeral for one of the most illustrious Second World War RAF airmen unsurprising, given the wartime activities of highly placed officials such as then Minister of Justice BJ Vorster, who like many of his colleagues was incapable of acknowledging men like “Sailor” Malan with any sense of grace.
A sad, unfortunate snub and no subtlety was evident when fellow fighter pilots serving in the SAAF, were “informally” advised they could not attend his funeral in uniform and, had to apply for leave. However, it then became clear that for other than the SAAF’s official representative Colonel OF Wellington DFC, it was better not to attend at all.
From “A Different Kind of Enemy Flak”, chapter 11 of Jon Eagar's book. About the book.