"AN ABSURDITY."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 262, 4 November 1932, Page 7

"AN ABSURDITY."

DUAL NATIONALITY. South African Minister's Views On Imperial Tie. "SPURIOUS PRINCIPLE." (United P.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Received 10 a.m.) CAPETOWN, November 3. Despite the request' of the .Prime Minister, General Hertzog, not to raise the question, Dr. D. F. Malan, Minister of the Interior, Public Health and Education, and leader of the Cape Nationalists, asserts that the dual nationality resulting from the Imperial Conference is an absurdity.

It rests on the spurious principle of the indivisibility of the Crown. If unalterably committed to a double nationality, which could not be changed except by the consent of the other Dominions, he said he must state unequivocally that the idea cannot be accepted.

South Africans alone must decide the scope of their freedom.

Dr. Daniel Francois Malan was born :n May, 1874, at Riebeck West, Cape Colony, and educated at Victoria College, Stelleubosch and the University of Utrecht. Holland. He decided on a career in the Church, and took the degree of D.D. In 1906 he became minister of the Dutch Reformed Church at Montagu, and later at Graaf Reinct. Meanwhile he had become interested in the political issues of the day, most of which were of a racial character—whether men of British or Dutch origin should have control. Malan'.? sympathies were entirely on the Dutch side, and he became editor of the chief Dutch paper, "Die Burger." He was therefore in opposition during General Smuts' term of office, but when, in 1924, the Smuts South African party was defeated

by the Nationalists under General Hertzog, Dr. Malan, who had been elected for Calvinia, was made Minister of the Interior. An important question raised by Hertzog was the institution of a South African flag. The . idea aroused bitter controversy between the two white races in South Africa. The Government's intention was to set up a flag in which the former republics—the Transvaal and Orange Free State —were represented to the exclusion of the Union Jack. South Africa, he said, could work with Britain just as long ns it chose. Whether or not it became a republic depended on whether it was to the interest of South Africans to take that step.