When the Nationalist Party was elected to power in 1948 by a minority of the white electorate, their platform promised their followers that the white race would continue to dominate all aspects of South African society. Its ideology of baaskap, or white power, propounded that all black South Africans belonged to a perpetual rural proletariat, which could be trained to draw water, hew wood, and serve the wishes of its white masters, but which must ever be denied access to higher levels of education. They also held that the imposition of white rule was necessary to prevent the outbreak of a racial holocaust, where competing tribal interests would inevitably precipitate the country into a state of violence and anarchy.