‘No Prime Minister Could Want a Better Leader of the Opposition’: Sir De Villiers Graaff, the United Party and the Apartheid State, 1956–1977

As leader of the United Party and the official parliamentary opposition between 1956 and 1977, Sir De Villiers Graaff bolstered the apartheid state and destroyed his own party in the process. This essay, by investigating Graaff's personality and politics, concludes that he was a man of integrity and decency who loathed the impractical, vicious and cruel nature of apartheid, but that his lack of political acumen, vision and ruthlessness, made him a disastrous party leader. Despite his honest intentions he was the best leader of the parliamentary opposition the apartheid state could have wished for.