In 1959, Swart was appointed Governor-General, but like his predecessor E.G Jansen, he was a staunch republican. Despite this, he had earlier kneeled before Queen Elizabeth II and kissed her hand. In a referendum the following year, a small majority of White voters endorsed a government proposal to become a republic. In 1961, after signing the new republican constitution passed by Parliament into law, he asked the Queen to release him from office, and Parliament then elected him as State President, the new post which replaced the monarch and the Governor-General as ceremonial head of state. Nelson Mandela and other underground Black resistance leaders tried to protest against the change to the new system by planning a three-day general strike of non-White workers, but the government preemptively averted most of these plans through an extensive use of police force to persecute the dissenters.