(5/26/48) In a general election, the coalition of United and Labor Parties under Prime Minister Smuts was defeated by a Nationalist Afrikaaner bloc led by Daniel Malan. Malan's new government had been elected on a platform of racial segregation (apartheid), and soon this policy was implemented. The government outlawed marriages between whites and non-whites. It also passed the Group Areas Bill that divided the country into zones for separate ethnic groups.
