Background
Nicolaas Diederichs was born on November 17, 1903, at Lady- brand in the Orange Free State.
Nicolaas Diederichs was born on November 17, 1903, at Lady- brand in the Orange Free State.
Educated at Boshof High School, where he matriculated before going on to Grey University College. His postgraduate studies took him to Germany, First Munich then Cologne, Berlin and Leiden. An outstanding academic record took him to the chair of Economics at the University of the Orange Free State.
He was 45 years old before he turned to politics and became MP for Randfontein in 1948. A natural choice as a committee man, he was named chairman of the Tax Committee and of the Committee for Decimalisation.
Ten years after entering Parliament he was brought into the cabinet by Prime Minister Verwoerd on December 1, 1958, as Minister of Economic Affairs. In October 1960 he called for a programme of industrial decentralisation with the idea of having companies on the borders of the African reserves able to call upon the Bantu homelands for African labour. His economic expertise was invaluable to the government in September 1961 when he went to London to plead for easing the hardships on sugar producers after South Africa’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth.
A few weeks later he was switched to Minister of Mines. A hardliner on separate development he faced an antiapartheid demonstration at a United Nations world trade conference in Geneva on April 8, 1964. Eighty delegations walked out when he went to speak at the rostrum.
Once given his head as Minister of Finance, Diederichs was forecasting in January 1967 that the price of gold would be “at least doubled’’. In his first three years with international upheavals in currency exchange rates he always kept a case packed for sudden journeys to Zurich and other financial centres. On July 18, 1968, he hit back hard when Henry Fowler, US Secretary of the Treasury, called for gold to be sold only on the free market. With gold accounting for almost 90 per cent of South Africa’s reserves Diederichs insisted on maintaining the right to sell on both official and free markets. After taking measures to curb inflation in 1971 he was equally sensitive to the need for relieving tax burdens in 1972.
Architect of South Africa’s new stability, skilfully programmed on predictions that there would be a “spectacular” increase in the price of gold after a period of gross undervaluation. A late comer to politics from academic life with a doctorate of Letters and Philosophy, “Nic” Diederichs was quick to adjust to the cut and thrust of parliamentary questioning and effective in setting out financial policies with impressive clarity. Not a man of burning ambition but a loyal party member, totally dependable in a crisis.