The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. SOUTH AFRICAN FEDERATION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 113, 12 May 1908, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

SOUTH AFRICAN FEDERATION.

For the cause that leeks assistance. For the wrong that needs resistance, For Vte future in the distance, And the good thai toe can do. TUESDAY, MAY 12, 1903.

It was Irardly to be expected that th« conference of delegates from the South African Stages now in session at Pretoria would be able to arrive at once at a definite conclusion on the vexed question of federation. But the convocation of such a representative gathering to discuss such an object maiks a long step toward the realisation of this great ideal. Apparently the chief opposition to the scheme comes from Natal, which for a great variety of reasons is at present out of sympathy with the dominant political parties in the other States. Ever since the Transvaal and the Orange Biver Colony received their new constitutions, a strong desire for the unification of South Africa has been manifested.by the Boers as well as the British colonists. The "loyalists," as they still prefer to call themselves, are distinctly in a minority, and they are ■'bitterly discontented with the treatment they have received from England since the war. They have not the slightest intention of attempting to cut themselves adrift from the rest of the Empire; but they have come to believe that as Afrikanders, ev<m if governed by a Boer majority, they will fare better than if they still remain subject to t£e Colonial Office. As to the Boers, they are the ruling power in the Transvaal and Orangia, and the last Cape Colony elections have restored the remnants of the old Bond party to office. To them, therefore, the moment seems propitious for an attempt to consolidate on a permanent basis fche influence and authority that England's generosity has secured them, so we find all parties in South Africa practically in agreement ?s to the necessity for some form or other of political federation. '

As all advocates of an Imperialist policy in South Africa have frequently pointed out, the disunion which has kept the component parts of the sub-continent asunder is "artificial and historical, but not natural." In spite of its vast extent, South Africa is in its natural and ethnical characteristics a singularly uniform country. There are no insuperable natural barriers such as impassable rivers or lofty mountain ranges. There is no fixed geographical boundary and no fundamental racial distinction to separate the mass of the while inhabitants. If left to themselves, the European colonists in South Africa would almost certainly have maintained political and national unity. They were broken up into separate communities chiefly through the indiscretion and remissness of the Imperial authorities; and the Colonial Oflice has for half a century stoutly resisted every attempt to combine them into one federated State. So far back as ISSB Sir George Grey, with the prescience that always characterised his Imperial statesmanship, in vain urged upon the Crown a series of powerful arguments in favour of South African •unity. Twenty years later Lord Carnarvon made some attempt to undo the consequences of hjs predecessors' neglect, but his efforts were abortive. Yet, through all these years, the desire for a unified South Africa had been steadily growing, among the more intelligent Boers, as well as among the British colonists. It is one of the most convincing gar-oofs <*£ £ecil Kaose§* gtfaiacai genius

■fchat he was able to combine ■- the rival races in the -Cape Colony into one homogeneous body, with political ideals and aspirations in .common. The Jaaneson. raid and the subsequent -war for the time undid Rhodes' work. But the events of the past two years have shown that the forces "which make for union in South Africa are far stronger than the influences tending toward separation, and today the prospects of a Federated South Africa are brighter than ever before.

When great popular movements are working silently below the surface, they need nothing but an appropriate opportunity to reveal their strength and scope. The occasion for which the Federal movement had waited so long was the publieition of Lord Selborne's Memorandum on South African Federation last July. This important document was submitted to the five South African Governments for comment and criticism, and may be regarded as an accurate epitome of the causes that are, now acting in conjunction to bring about the unification of South Africa. Lord Selborne passes in rapid review over the great political problems which tile Soutb African States have now to solve —more especially the questions of Lar ■bour, Fiscal Policy, and Railway Administration; and in each case he decides that there is no way of surmounting these difficulties but by Federation. As to Labour, the memorandum rightly insists that the Rand labour problem is a matter that concerns the whole of South Africa, and that the question of the labour supply cannot be decided without the co-operation of all the States. As

to the railways, on which South Africa is entirely dependent for her inland communication, they are at present a fruitful source of discord. As Johannesburg is twice as far from the Portuguese border and Delagoa Bay as from Natal and Durban, jt has always paid the Transvaal, for revenue purposes, to divert her traffic from the Natal and Ca]ie Colony lines. Last year the practice gave rice to a serious railway crisis between the Cape Colony and the Transvaal; and the present situation is so strained that nothing but a system of joint administration for the whole of the Sub-Continent can prevent grave trouble in the future. As to fiscal policy, there is, of course, a Customs Convention, to which the States have all subscribed; but as the "Times" has pointed out, "it expresses no effective and deliberate economic policy for the development of South Africa as a whole, and such as it is, its effect is almost wholly neutralised by the railway rates." Here again Lord Selborne and his advisers can see no radical remedy for economic waste and political disunion but the combination of all the South African States into oae Federal Commonwealth.

We have by no means exhausted the topic, with which the High Commissioner's memorandum deals: and it is obvious that such matters as the treatment of the Native races, their claims to political representation, and the problems of national defence cannot be settled by the States individually. And while such matters must remain in abeyance a it is perfectly true, as Lord Selborne pute it, that the people of South Africa must continue to do without self-government. There are five systems of law, five organisations for defence, five series of conflicting interests to be promoted, and the inevitable result is a maximum of expenditure and a -minimum of materiaJ and political . progress. "What South Africa requires more than anything else," says the memorandum, "is stability— stability in economics, stability in in economic conditions, and stability in industrial conditions. But true stability will remain impossible so long as there are five Governments, each developing a different system in all the branches of pufcilic life, and each a potential antagonist of the other. South Africa can only be wisely and successfully governed by a South African Government responsible to the South African Parliament, elected by the South. African people." All these things axe undoubtedly true-; and the only question of any importance still to be decided is whether the psychological moment has yet arrived to take the decisive step. It is easy to understand the objections raised by Natal against any attempt to precipitate so momentous a policy, and it is to be feared that in the eyes of British Imperialists the chief obstacle to South African federation in the immediate future will be the political ascendancy which the Boers now enjoy practically from one end of the Sub-Continent to the other.