SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICS.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 115, 16 May 1924, Page 5

SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICS.

SMUTS' CAMPAIGN. ATTACK ON NATIONALISTS. CAPETOWN, May 15. In an election speech nt Johannesburg, General Smuts (Prime Minister) severely criticised the NationalietLabour pact. He denounced the proposal of Mr. T. Koos (Nationalist leader in the Transvaal) for a State bank, which, he said, Would lead to the evils of inflation. 'General Smuts referred to the Rand. He said he was afraid that if the parties to the pact came into office there would be strikes and other situations which they had to face in South Africa before. The mine owners in the Rand Tiad given a promise to which ho would hold them. This was that if the low-grade mines were given a chance there would be such further development,that every man displaced would be employed again. That promise could only <be carried out under settled conditions and security. I If, as General Herzog (leader of the Nationalists) had said t there was to be further taxation of the mines, there would be no further development. He said that if the leader of the Labour party (Colonel Cresswell) had stood I firm, he might have killed the secession movement. If the undertaking included a pact that secession would not be pressed on the people of the country until the English people were also in favour of it, he (General Smuts) would have nothing further to say about secession.— (Reuter.)