RACIALISM IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 102, 2 May 1925, Page 17

RACIALISM IN SOUTH AFRICA.

IS IT INCREASING? (From Our Own Cnrrpspnudcnt.) CAPKTOWX, March (i. Once more ilio cry of racialism has been raised in South Africa. 11 is also apparently echoing in England, with the possibility of doing considerable liftrm to the L'ninn'R eorainereiul and land settlement activities. It is well, therefore, that, the allegation shonld be examined as impartially as possible. Sir Alk- Bailey, who is a staunch adherent of General Smuts' political faith, signalised his return from England recently by asserting very emphatically that there has been n marked increase ill racialism since General Hertzog's National party Government attained power with the aid of the Labour party. The lead he gave has been followed in various quarters, and the charge covers two points.

The first is that there is a deliberate attempt to squeeze out the British from the administration of the L'trion.

The second is a more general but somewhat vague allegation of an anti-British movement, the ultimate aim of which is to detach South Africa from the British Empire, As evidence of this the House of Assembly resolution asking the King not to confer titles up<- South African citizens is pointed to. as . ell as the bills gazetted to establish a definite South African nationality.

Before examining the dual charge it may be said that the twenty years 1 have spent in South Africa do not'eiidorse tl>e suggestion that there is any recent growth of racialism among the 'mass of the people.

The personal relations of British and Dutch as individuals reveal no change for the worse. There is no recrudescence of that real racial feeling which immediately after the Boer war made it difficult for to meet in ordinary social life. In the intervening years British and Dutch have become closely interwoven by marriage, by friendships, and by common interests, activities and pastimes, and the old bitterness has gone. What troubles South Africa at the moment is not racialism, put partisanism in a state of eruption. We arc witnessing not a new outburst of racial enmity, but the process which the minister of Justice, llr. Tielman Boos, described somewhat cynically in the House of Assembly the "other day when his action in making changes in the lists ot justices of the peace was questioned. "I cancelled a number of appointments." he said, "where I considered that to be in the pjihlie interest, this being largely intended to achieve the object of making appointments by which parties other than the South African party could also be represented."

The partisanism this admitted is not peculiar to South Africa. It is visible ill many countries when a new party comes into, power after a considerable period of exclusion from ollice. The newcomers attempt to redress the balance of influence In public life which has turned against them during their wanderings in the wilderness of opposition.

Nor is the process new to South Africa. It was plainly visible in 1907, when the Botha-Smut3 Ministry gained office in the Transvaal. The new Administration was soon accused of "racialism,*" and of "squeezing out the British," and there were heard most precisely the ululations which are ascending to heaven today. Yet General Smuts was not one whit more racial then than he is now. The late General Botha was at the very time preaching the gospel of racial reconciliation -which did so much to damp down the racialism which was the aftermath ot the Anglo-Boer war. The simple fact was that the Transvaal had been under purely British rule for years, and when the Botha-Smuts party gained control it tried to redress the balance of influence in public life. And now that after many years of power and patronage the South African party has had to give place to the National-Labour pact, we arc passing through another of those periods of partisanism in action which have recurred at intervals in South Africa for generations almost. The Nationalists are seizing what opportunities present themselves of redressing the balance of influence.

The change of Government, which has given a fillip to partisanism, has rendered more vocal that . demand for national recognition which is also sometimes mistaken for racialism. But this development is not in its essence racial, or anti-British by intent. It is South African. It is, perhaps, Afrikander, which connotes a still narrower form of national feeling. But it is not hostile to the South Africans of British descent. South Africa is suffering from the growing pains of nationhood. A large Dutch element in South Africa is certainly not pro-British. Tt looks somewhat indifferently upon the British connection. But it is hardly fair to suggest that even that element is animated By racial enmity against British South Africans. It may like to regard them as South Africans rather than as British, hut very rarely does one find that racial antagonism enters into its relations with them.